In another life, many, many years ago, I was the elected moderator of fidonet comics. The internet was around, but at that time it was primarily a tool for academics and it was a precious few that had access to the real internet. It was kind of a geek "holy grail" that the rest of us wanted to get ahold of.

In those days, online life consisted of networks of BBS (bulletin boards) that traded messages and posts in a bizzare hybrid of today's message boards and what we call "list-serves" now. In those bygone days the biggest net was one called fidonet

The fidonet "node" I logged onto was a board called the Red Phoenix BBS, run by a dude named Rudy Rothemund. I quickly found out that in addition to downloading adult personals, you could join various fidonet forums. A kid from New England named Dave Thomer had started a fidonet comics forum and I quickly became an active user and eventually, his co-moderator.

Fidonet was a unique democracy in that many of the forum moderators were "elected" by the forum users. I eventually became the fidonet comics moderator and remianed so until AOL and the internet lured me away from fidonet. Since starting this blog, many old friends from those days have looked me up and corresponded with me through my blog comments and emails.

Though there are a million comics-oriented bulletin boards out there, none have captured the magic for me of that early fidonet comics community.

My tastes have broadened far beyond comics now and I've become a consumer of all mass media though comics, like a first love, will always be special to me.

I hope that this message forum can blossom into the haven of geekdom, and repository of obscure trivia that I used to love so much.

If your reading this and you remember those days, or if you're a closeted geek dying to debate the merits of Facts of Life vs. Different Strokes, I ask you to pass this link along to the geek-centric friends in your address book and let's populate the hell out of this place!

Posted by wayneb at June 19, 2006 11:23 PM