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| May 2013: Owing
to rising costs - in part, it appears, due to a dramatic rise in "hot
linking" to images, which results in excess bandwidth charges of
£50 per month, despite taking steps to prevent it - we have been forced
to temporarily close down our main site, www.downthetubes.net. downthetubes normally costs some £500 a year to operate - in part to pay for hosting of the main site, but also the monthly cost of running this forum. The site is run by volunteers. I cannot currently justify that cost in the current economic climate. I have begun steps to move the site to a new home. However, I want to stress that our news blog is still active at: http://downthetubescomics.blogspot.co.uk and we as always welcome news and information about comic projects. The downtheubes forum will continue to operate. I'm in the process of securing a new ISP and we've had a very kind offer from a UK publisher to host the site which will enable us to get back up and running at some point in the next couple of months. In the mean time, I'm finding alternate homes for some of the features I know get a lot of visits from comics fans. A very special thank you to those of you who responded to our hopefully temporary crisis by sending donations, which will help fund the current costs of the site - the forum and other services used to promote the site via social media. I was very touched. My Current British Comic Sales Figures is now on GoogleDrive. I hope you find this useful, although it is always depressing to read compared against these figures for 1960s and 1970s Comic Sales. I often get asked questions about the state of the British comics industry, and I've moved my very general and opinionated piece to a page on this blog. If you're a journalist looking for more information on our energized but, it would seem to the outsider, embattled industry as it competes for the pounds in teenagers wallets, I hope this remains a useful resource. My resources for colleges and course teaching comics in the UK is also a page on this blog: Learning the Comics Art My guide to writing comics is slowly being moved to a standalone blog: Creating Comics: http://creating-comics.blogspot.co.uk. Be warned, I'm not expecting to update this very often - there are a lot of other great, although US-oriented comic creation bogs and websites out there which are much more active, including Tim van de Vall's impressive site. If you're interested in the new comic strip, Crucible, which I'm co-creating with Smuzz for STRIP: The Adventure Comic Magazine, there's a behind the scenes blog here and some additional stories from the world of Crucible at http://crucible-comic.blogspot.co.uk Discussion of British comics and creating comics continues on the downthetubes forum: new members welcome! Writers Wanted! I'm still looking for people to write articles for downthetubes. At present, juggling my day job of ROK Comics and freelance work on STRIP Magazine means I'm quite busy, so apologies if I have been slow at posting stories about your work on the blog. If you're a creator attending upcoming comic events, we'd love more 'insider views' on these. Thanks for your time and your shared passion for British Comics! John Freeman, WebMaster I can be contacted via Facebook or Twitter |
downthetubes
is run entirely by volunteers. Please help with our running
costs by making a donation. Thanks!
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Upcoming British Comics Events |
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add events to this calendar: just scroll down to the bottom of the
dates listed and use the "Add Event" button. Information
very welcome. Release dates for new British comics would be great.
Please note this is a moderated service. |
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downthetubes © 2013 John
Freeman. Contact: johnfsfreemanATbtopenworld.com |
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