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ELECTRONIC BOARD SURFING AND THE COMIC WAVE by Frank Pisarski

I'm sitting in front of my computer minding my own business, when one of 
my users (who shall remain anonymous) says he wants me to write an 
article for his rag on Bulletin Boards and Comics.  What kind of 
bulletin boards, I inquire smartly.  Big ones.  Who's paying for the 
connect time I inquire with great foresight.  You are, with even greater 
foresight.  "Cheap schmuck" I reply under my breath. Will there be a 
gold foil, die cut cover in a poly bag with my trading card involved I 
ask.  Yep!  With modem and dialing directory in hand I venture forth.  
After a few steps, I went back for the computer.  

First, let's define the beast we're after.  What is a big Bulletin 
Board?  Hell, what's a bulletin board?  In a nutshell (where exactly is 
this humongous nutshell we keep putting things in?), a bulletin board is 
a computer system that allows people or other intelligent creatures to 
call it and run software that is resident (or even passing through on 
the way downtown).  Normally the software is designed to handle 
messaging between users, private mail in some cases, file transfers to 
and from.  Some systems will let you play games on them;  some are 
designed to let you order stuff, etc.  The primary focus here is the 
ability to message or "talk" to and interact with other users sharing 
your passion for something.  Most systems have rules of some sort 
regarding language and buying/selling/trading on-line.  Most systems 
have fees.  Some systems can be reached by local access telephone 
numbers, thereby cutting your phone bill (Maybe!).  Some systems offer 
techniques on-line so it's cheaper to call long distance and pull down 
the message base.  I'll get to the long distance misconception later. 
Most boards rely on forums, conferences, rooms, etc. as their vehicle 
for discussion.  This means you type your message into an area devoted 
to the topic and everyone else reads it and responds to it the same way.  
It's not "real time".  You will have to wait around for the response, 
sometimes for days.  A few boards rely more heavily on "on-line chat"; 
this means you type it and other users on-line see it and immediately 
call you a jerk!

Most people are familiar with Compuserve, Prodigy and America On-line; 
they do the most freebie advertising.  A few more users are aware of the 
other "biggies"; Delphi and Genie.  I'm going to be bold and distinguish 
these from Bulletin Boards and call them On-line Services.  All have 
local access numbers, all have fees; some simple some so complex that 
the Wharton Business School couldn't figure out their bill.  All have 
lots and lots of users.  Each has its own personality and its users 
reflect that.  Most people don't join this type of service for a comics 
discussion; they join to avail themselves of the vast array of other 
services offered.

The second group of boards are true bulletin boards run by little guys 
like me on their personal computers.  No big advertising budgets here;  
you've got to root them out.  They range from one line to 250 line 
boards.  Usually the rules are relaxed somewhat, and free speech is 
tolerated a little more.  In some cases it's too tolerated.  I included 
one of these boards in my sample.  Why you may ask?  Because I'm already 
a member and it's a flat fee board (see the cheap schmuck comment 
above).  It's long distance, but cheaper to use than local access 
boards.  

There is a last group that are not really Bulletin Boards;  the "NETS".  
I'll get to those too.  We've got the Internet, FIDOnet, Smartnet, 
Lostnet, IOMagnet, Throbnet; pick a word followed by NET and it probably 
exists.  A "NET" is a group of boards that shares their messages on 
topics and wings them all over the globe electronically.  You post a 
message on my board in Illinois, I do magic and send it to a board in 
Arkansas; wallah, you've just posted your pithy comment regarding 
Superman in two states or more with one phone call.  Even better, a user 
in Arkansas can take offense at your inane comment and tell you so on 
his/her board and it will get to my board,  thereby ticking you off; you 
respond ... you get the picture. The big nets do this daily with 
thousands of messages.  The real miracle is;  a message only shows up 
once after its travels all over the world.  

Onto our journey:

Compuserve (CIS) - the big daddy of On-line Services.  It's the oldest.  
It's the biggest.  It has the most complex billing structure in 
existence.  With this service, I think you can do anything.  Before I go 
further, let me say that you can spend a lot of money if you don't know 
what you're doing.  I cheated and used navigators and off-line readers 
to cut my costs (see cheap comment above).  The basic CIS command 
interface can be tough to use.  CIS has been around so long that there 
are numerous interfaces to make life easy if you use DOS, DOS/Windows 
and even OS/2.  These are available from CIS or as shareware.  Get one.  
Charges are based on time spent in certain premium areas in addition to 
normal monthly fees for basic access.  Guess what, this topic is a 
premium area.  Once I found the right forum, (and it's not that 
difficult), I pulled down the message headers to pick my reading sample 
and see what kind of discussions were going on.  First I read a 
discussion with Neil Gaiman regarding which American actors can simulate 
British accents best and vice versa.  (I think the winners were Meryl 
Streep and Kevin Klein)  A plus if you are into it - CIS has a listing 
of industry professionals that are members. I understand they get a deal 
on rates as long as they agree to participate.  Onward to comics 
discussions.  Discussions were interesting and all over the place.  
There seems to be a backlash in this group with DC's beating up of 
Superman and The Batman.  Azreal certainly isn't popular.  The 
perception that DC is using abhorrent tactics to generate sales received 
mixed reaction.  Some don't like it because of the commercialism 
involved; others agree with the commercialism because DC is after all, 
in business to get readers.  There is mucho discussion whether the comic 
market has been saturated with titles.  There was discussion of a 
Fantastic Four movie and the ramifications on the death of Reed 
Richards. (When did he die?) I even found somewhere to get Bats #500 for 
50 cents.  CIS does have chat capacity, but it costs more so I didn't 
try to find one for comics.  CIS seems to let you buy/sell/trade without 
being herded to a different area.  CIS seems to have a more mature user 
base due to its cost and its age as a system.  There are people who grew 
up with this system.

Prodigy (P*) - you've all seen the yellow boxes with freebies in them.  
The first service to provide a graphical interface for its users. That 
means pictures folks! Hundreds of thousands of people suddenly are on-
line (if they can get their modem installed, that is).  Prodigy provides 
propriety software to enter their system.  The big complaint with 
Prodigy has always been the slow speed of their system, not a big deal 
when you're only paying $9.95 per month for unlimited access.  It is a 
big deal when you are suddenly being billed by the hour.  Prodigy's 
editor for writing messages is fairly crude.  It uses the big blocky 
letters and you can't fit much on a "page".  You find yourself hitting 
"NEXT" a lot to read the pearls of wisdom you've found. Of course, you 
have to wait for the screen to bring up those pearls.  On the plus side, 
if you wear eyeglasses, you can probably take them off.  The discussions 
in the "ARTS BB" section tend to be fanboy oriented, i.e. "my comic is 
better than your comic" or "the Azreal Batman's cool". There are lots of 
messages for hours of reading.  Oh yeah, you gotta pay by the hour while 
you read them.  I will admit, I found the top ten lists from users 
interesting. Spawn was only in one, and the discussions didn't include 
Image, centering more on DC and Marvel. You can't buy/sell/trade in this 
section. There are moderators who keep an eye on this and will kill what 
they feel is inappropriate. There is, however, another section for 
Collectors where you can buy, sell and trade (assuming you're not a 
dealer).  Prodigy has been in a state of change lately and can't seem to 
decide on its screen design, room structure or billing structure.  One 
comment of note; one of the users responded to inquiries regarding the 
best service by saying the best comic discussions were in one of the 
"NETS".  Huh, what are you doing on Prodigy then?

America On-line (AOL) - is the new kid on the block. They have the 
little white boxes with freebies in them. After it was discovered that 
the everyday person could be lured to an On-line Service, they jumped 
in.  AOL also provides proprietary software to use their system.  They 
have an interface for the DOS world and the DOS/Windows world.  This 
service is probably best known for its "Chat" rooms.  AOL doesn't rely 
on or implement Forums as well as others.  Unlike the massive message 
bases of other systems, AOL's are small. I did a search for comic and 
nothing came up.  However, it does implement "Chat" better than anyone.  
The good part of this is your discussions are real time.  The bad part 
is you need to find someone to "talk" to you.  If no one wants to talk, 
you might as well hang up.  Without extensive message areas to read, 
there is nothing to do.  Typically, user groups will schedule a meeting 
time on-line and create the room for discussion.  Everyone shows up and 
shoots the bull.  If you happen to be busy, too bad, you missed it.  The 
Comic Connection meets Sunday nights from 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM.  I 
entered a couple of discussions and was somewhat disappointed.  You must 
understand the difficulty with chat based systems; it's like a real 
conversation, everyone breaks in whenever they feel like it.  The chat 
entering box is only one line long.  If you need three lines, expect to 
see others' comments breaking up your conversation.  It can get really 
hard to follow.  At times you can totally lose the train of 
conversation.  On the other hand, you can get some apparently unusual 
conversations.  I've been in rooms where John Doe took offense at Harry 
Doe's answer to his comment; only to find he was answering the question 
5 lines before his on the screen, which then takes 10 more lines to 
straighten out. Oh, by the way, you're paying for this by the hour after 
a certain point. Frankly, the discussions become very loose, lose focus 
and disintegrate, just like a real conversation. These rooms are policed 
by "Guides" who get to kick you out if you don't follow the rules. That 
happened while I was there. Some yutz claiming to be an attorney was 
scrolling the screen by constantly entering the same word over and over 
with the enter key.  It effectively ends the conversation.  I think the 
age group runs the gamut due to its "point and shoot" use. I use the 
Windows version, it seems slower than I remember and I always have 
little windows all over the place.

Delphi - No pretty graphics here! Get on the system and do your thing. 
Read messages to your heart's content. Pure text, and actually easy to 
read. It took me awhile to learn how to navigate it and find the comics 
area within the Hobby Area.  I kept reading Ham radio talk!  Once I 
found the comics section, I was surprised to find that the discussion is 
very heavily into Anime.  I must admit, the level of discussion was very 
high and insightful.  Heck, I got so absorbed in the discussion, I'm 
trying to find some of this Anime stuff! Don't get me wrong, the users 
and moderator encouraged people to open comic discussions; they just 
didn't. Maybe this will change.  I get the impression that the system 
caters to adults more than a younger audience, and the traditional 
bashing doesn't go on.  What a concept! By the way, the messages are 
long.  That's good; you get a lot from one person. Some of these people 
are deep into the plots of Anime and obviously very analytical of the 
storylines.  I sorta like this service!  But I would use the Internet 
availability more.

GEnie - I didn't do this one.  Frankly, I wasn't able to find a freebie 
package anywhere.  And I ran out of time.  No offense.

Big BBS (EXEC PC) - This is a BBS folks! No graphics, no pretty menus, 
no advertising, you need your own software.  You get a menu with letters 
to hit to do something and it does it.  Don't get the wrong idea folks,  
this sucker is fast and the owners very responsive to questions.  EXEC 
PC is best known for its huge file areas and liberal access rules.  If 
you need software or picture files, and can't find it here, it doesn't 
exist.  I read somewhere that they were going to move into the 
traditional messaging base more than in the past; so I gave it a try.  
First, the users are generally BBS'ers and don't have time for nonsense.  
They get on, find what they want, leave a message and get off. The non 
technical message bases aren't mature yet, possibly reflecting the 
change in focus.  But I'm sure it will get there.  For example, I call 
to dump the OS/2 base because it always has lots of good info and 
problem reports and answers.  There is one message base advantage, 
however, and that is the addition of the FIDONET and QWK mail.  
Unfortunately,  the QWK/FIDO system wasn't quite working when I was 
calling, so I only got one message base dump.  Not to fear, I got 3,000 
messages. (I forgot to reset my upper limit!) or I would have gotten 
more.  Do you know how long it takes to read 3,000 messages on comics? 
Consider that when you deal with a service that makes you stay on-line 
to read them.  It's important as we'll see later. When you get into a 
board like this, you are really joining the board's other features and 
its membership cost and dialup costs.  FIDONET is not owned by EXEC PC 
or any board.  It's available to the guy down the street from you if he 
wants it.  Technically, you can get it yourself without being a BBS if 
you know how.  You are really getting into ease of use, availability and 
access features.  

THE "NETS" - These aren't BBS's.  They are collections of BBS's that 
share message and file bases. Huh!  What does this mean to me, you say!  
Let me show you.  The big On-line Services have large memberships in the 
hundreds of thousands of users.  In theory, any one message area can 
have lots of messages on your topic of interest for you to read.  The 
little one line BBS down the street from you that charges $10 to join 
doesn't have that large a base to draw from.  Let's say it has 100 
members, of which ten leave messages on comics. Not much.  Let's say 
there is another board a mile away in the same situation. Now we have 20 
messages, but you can only read 10 unless you join both boards.  
Multiply this all by 20,000 or more boards worldwide and you suddenly 
have a whole lot of discussion, but not with each other.  Enter a "NET", 
any net.  Through the net the sysops of the dinky little boards can 
share their messages with everyone else by calling each other and 
uploading and downloading all night when rates are cheap (this is 
referred to as "echoing").  If done right, no board even has to pay long 
distance charges.  Everyone simply passes it on to the next guy down the 
road, and so on, and so on .... You call up the next day and there are 
3,000 messages for you to read! Not bad for one phone line.  Of course, 
you need to find a board with the NET and "echo' you are interested in.  
Imagine, sitting at home with a beer in one hand, learning that some guy 
in Germany or Luxembourg wants to pay bundles for your comic!  Of 
course, now you have to worry about foreign currency translation. Call 
CIS, they can provide that info.  Better yet, you can write to that guy 
in Luxembourg for 22 cents if you know how to do it and your local board 
cooperates!  Be warned, all net echoes are moderated strictly to stay on 
topic.  If you don't they kick you out; then they kick your sysop's 
board out, which means he has to hunt down another NET to join. This is 
anarchy in action, but it works.  Here's the neat thing; you can get a 
huge amount of info, CHEAP! I forgot; the messages run the entire gamut 
of topics as you would expect, with a large audience type, as you would 
expect.  

HOW TO DO THIS RIGHT - First, all of the On-line Services offer freebie 
demos up to 10 hours of free use.  Get them and try them.  Be careful, 5 
or 10 hours gets sucked up fast.  That's important.  Even the little 
BBS's usually have some type of promo time.  See how long it takes to do 
what you want to do.  Second, get a high speed modem. They don't cost 
much more than a 2400 Baud and they will greatly reduce connect time if 
you download files.  Check the rate schedules, the Biggies charge more 
for using high speed.  Try to find a Board with a NET that offers what 
you want. If they don't, ask the sysop.  If possible, find a way to use 
off-line readers to use the board.  Remember the 3,000 messages I read?  
I didn't read those on-line, it was long distance for me.  I used QWK 
mail to download them and a high speed modem. It took me 16 minutes to 
get them and lots of other stuff. (If I'm correct, the cost is 16 x .11 
or $1.76 at long distance rates. YOU can calculate the cost of calling 
local access at .03 per minute and hourly rates to read 3,000 messages 
while you are on-line.  At 30 seconds to read a message, $.11 per minute 
the phone cost alone is $165.00. Since it would take 25 hours, you would 
have to pay for overage use on the service; and if you went to the 
bathroom during that time, highly probable, you would pay by the minute. 
Arggggghhhhh!!!  Now you know the misconception ; long distance boards 
may be cheaper than local access boards if they provide more useful 
features.).  After downloading the messages, I put them into my reader 
and read them at my leisure.  It didn't interfere with the football game 
or anything and I did it over days; no cost pressure.  QWK mail or other 
formats are easy to find nowadays.  By the way, most readers let you 
write your messages off-line too. (But Frank you yell, I don't have one 
of those readers you keep talking about!  Big deal, I casually retort!  
Call my board;  I've got one that you can have for free, legally free.) 
Little point; find a board that processes the mail fast and reliably.  I 
belong to one local board that always drops the carrier in the middle.  
Not good.  You lose mail and have to start over.  Last, get good 
communication software.  Do it right and you can have the software call 
your favorite board at 3:00 in the morning, get your mail and the 
message bases you want; deliver your nasty commentary, hang up when 
done, unpack your mail and be ready for you in the morning! All this 
while the next guy is still trying to connect with his service and 
reading the first message!  Oh yeah, if you are a mouse user, get RIP 
capable communication software and use a board with RIP or other 
graphical interface.  (But Frank you yell, I don't have one of those RIP 
type communication programs  you keep talking about!  Big deal, I 
respond!  Call my board;  I've got one that you can have for free, 
legally free. And it works with any board.)

Damn, someone just logged on and wonders if I would consider writing an 
article exploring Bulletin Boards as a vehicle for matchmaking and 
introduction services.  What kind of Bulletin Boards, I ask wisely and 
with great foresight ...... Cheap schmuck! Hmmmmm, the user name is 
FAN............  Where's the power plug!!!!!

Bye! Feel free to call my board and leave a message on comics. Maybe 
I'll have my second NET by then.

(NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: When he's not polybagging his comics or calling 
me a schmuck, Frank operates the Comics, Cards & Collectibles BBS: (708) 
304-9804 by modem (8/N/1) or (708) 304-9803 (voice).)

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Copyright 1994 - FANBOY Magazine & Frank Pisarski. All rights reserved.
