Back in 2012, I managed to get 8 Different LNH Writers (with some help from Rob and
Drew) to write down some thoughts about the 20th Anniversary. And now it's ten years
later and we have reached the 30th Anniversary of the LNH. How many writers will I
snag this time? Will I double that amount? Perhaps triple?

Let's see where the Enthusiasm Meter is for this 30th Anniversary!

** Looks at the Enthusiasm Meter **

Crickets begin chirping.

And then quit chirping and head to the parking lot so that they can beat the traffic.

Heh.

** sheepish grin **

*Ahem* okay, looks like I'm doing this one solo.

** sheepish grin **

And here we go -- The 30th Anniversary of the Legion of Net.Heroes!

My rambling word salad look back at my 30 years (okay -- more like 28 1/2 for me).

First off -- The 90s:

It was 1993 (November/December?) when I first checked it out. I was in my final year
of High School, 18 years old, was using an educational network called Nova-Net which
had some access to the internet (there was e-mail and gopher -- and that was about
it). You could use the gopher protocol to read the various USENET groups and I
discovered a way to post to the groups using e-mail. I was probably aware of USENET
by at least September of '93 so if I had been a bit more curious about what this
alt.comic.lnh was -- I could have probably found it a bit sooner.

But I got really into reading all the FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) that were
being posted on rec.arts.comics and that's when I became aware of what the LNH was.
And when I knew what it was -- a bunch of writers doing superhero parodies all set in
the same share Universe (err -- I mean LOONiverse!), I had to join because I loved
superheroes and parodies -- and all these brilliant ideas in my head for even more
crazy characters that populate it. And all these stories were free!

At the time I was living in a small town that didn't have any comic books stores or
book stores or anything cool. I think the Safeway did have some comics in the
magazine section -- so I could have bought those, but they always seemed expensive
(like a $1.50 for part seven of a seventeen part arc). I liked superheroes, but
whatever money I had usually went to computer games -- which seemed like a better
bang for the buck. With the LNH, this was something I could read every adventure for
free and not only that I could participate in its creation.

Tales of the LNH #299 (the conclusion of the Blood Kitty Saga by Hubert Bartels),
Some issue of LNH Comics Presents during the Looniverse Adrift event (by either
Joltin' Jeff McCoskey or Ken Schmidt), and Part II of Pigs in Space (by Gary "The
Saint" St. Lawrence) were some of the first LNH stories I remember reading.

I remember during Christmas break discovering the old LNH archive (this was one I
think that was maintained by Tori "Lurking Girl" Fike (or at least I got that idea
from a Jeff McCoskey story)) and pretty much binged every story in it (which, okay,
was a lot easier then since there were quite a bit less stories back then). About
this time also Russ "Eagle" Allbery was setting up the current archive, which would
be a lot more complete. Unfortunately at the time, since those were compressed files
I didn't have the ability to unzip them so I usually had to pester Russ to send me
some unzipped files and would have to wait till college for access to the unzipping
technology.

So, I started writing at that time also -- brought in this character that I made from
this novanet computer game called Avatar and had written a few stories with -- The
Slobbering Grue! Called the series JONG (don't remember why). Then got involved
with the Omaha Project (well, wrote one issue, but had all kinds of plans). Helped
vote in rec.arts.comics.creative into existence. Graduated from High School around
that time -- and was going to lose access to my novanet account although I think I
did have it long enough to say I was going to write something for Retcon Hour (the
big crossover of the day -- parody of Zero Hour) -- but other than creating The
Chuggernaut didn't really contribute much to it. I didn't really have much in the
way of access during the summer (my Dad had this aol.com account, but because of like
long distance costs -- couldn't really use it a lot).

Then I started college -- so I had the ability to post again. But I never really did
that much writing -- some more issues of JONG, some more Omaha Project stuff --
started doing On the Deadbeat, which while being NTB I did reference quite a bit of
LNH stuff.

I did have the opportunity to see some real life LNH writers. This would've been
around the time Paul Hardy came to the States (Operation ArseDeath as he would call
-- in 1995). I think I did try to convince him to make a stop in Flagstaff --
although he had very constrained schedule and instead he invited me to go to Phoenix
-- where he was going to meet up at Jeff McCoskey's place with Hurbert Bartels also
in attendance. I declined though -- was a bit to timid to try my luck on the Phoenix
Freeways -- and figured I'd probably get lost. So didn't get to do that.

Around 1998, probably inspired by various comics I was reading at the time
(Morrison's JLA, Busiek's Thunderbolts, and Ellis's Stormwatch) I created the Saviors
of the NET as a cascade for other to jump on if they wanted. And various writers
added to that bit of craziness and that was fun.

Around 1999 was the end of my college (my terrible, terrible college years -- where I
basically flunked out). I think in January of '99 I did promote a bunch of possible
projects (like another issue of the Saviors of the NET -- I did have some ideas on
how to end it), but then I pretty much disappeared off of RACC for like 5 years.

The 00s:

I did manage to survive Y2K and my parents helped me get a job in Yuma, AZ -- so I
moved there (and sadly enough still have that job). I don't think I had an internet
connection during that first year -- although I would eventually get an aol account.
I did sometimes go to the library and use their computers to check out what was going
on in RACC and did see Marc Singer finish the Saviors of the NET storyline (and he
did a great job ending -- no complaints here). So between 1999 and 2004 I was in
deep lurk mode -- occasionally thinking about writing, but not doing anything (I
would occasionally whittle away at what would become the first LNHY story).

And in 2004, I decided to start posting again (which I did by dipping my toes into
the Bride of C'thulhu cascade). Definitely by 2004 quite a bit of the posters that
had been hanging around RACC in the '90s had gone off to the other parts of the NET
(messageboards, blogs, live journal and so on). I think by the time I came back all
of the OMEGA Writers had already left RACC. There were still plenty of people -- but
you could tell that USENET was beginning to have some very bad health problems.

I created the LNHY Imprint in 2004. There had been some talk before about creating a
more orderly version of the LNH (Dave Van Domelen posted his own attempt -- you can
find by searching "Acton Lord 0") But during various discussions about the various
problems of the LNH -- you'd always have these 'There are too many characters' or
'There are not enough rules' as reasons why less people were joining up or not
reading. And so LNHY had a lot more rules and way less characters (each writer was
only allowed one character to be on the LNH). And it kind of proved that too many
character too few rules wasn't the LNH's problem. It wasn't a great success (but
there were people who wrote for it -- so I can't really complain. I mean given a
choice between writing for LNHY and LNH Classic -- I preferred the Classic one like
everyone else).

The health of the LNH between 2005 and 2007 -- it was fairly robust. Mostly old
timers were keeping it alive -- but you'd occasionally have a new comer pop in. One
of the big high points of this era was the Infinite Leadership Crisis (or Cry.Sig)
that happened during April 2007. You had Jamas Enright, me, Martin Phipps, Amabel
Holland, Mitchell Crouch, Saxon Brenton, Jessica "Jaelle" Ihimaera-Smiler, Rob
Rogers, and Lalo Martins participating in it. It was great fun -- I suppose the only
problem was my idea for ending it as a prelude for my Beige Midnight storyline idea.

And so from 2007 to 2012, I was deeply immersed into the whole Beige Countdown/
Midnight storyline (my original plan was that it would only take like a year or so to
write. Hah!) (Also in 2007 I created the first (and sadly only) LNH Webcomic --
called The LNH Webcomic.)

The 10s:

By 2011, I still hadn't finished Beige Midnight and we were getting close to the 20th
Anniversary of the LNH and there was a big discussion about making a new LNH Imprint
(and I think some wanted to just reboot it). I had my own ideas and others had their
own ideas and there was a flame war between me and this other difficult person who
always had a knack for getting into all kinds of arguments with other LNH writers. I
decided to just let others do what they wanted with the new LNH imprint (called
LNH20) and I'd focus on trying to finally finish Beige Midnight.

On 4/29/22 1:15 PM, Arthur Spitzer wrote:
<snip>
> Let's see where the Enthusiasm Meter is for this 30th Anniversary!
>
> ** Looks at the Enthusiasm Meter **
>
> Crickets begin chirping.
>
> And then quit chirping and head to the parking lot so that they can beat the traffic.
>
> Heh.
>
> ** sheepish grin **
>
> *Ahem* okay, looks like I'm doing this one solo.

Aggggggh, I'm sorry. X3; Obviously, it's been A Time.

> I was in my final year
> of High School, 18 years old, was using an educational network called Nova-Net which
> had some access to the internet (there was e-mail and gopher -- and that was about
> it). You could use the gopher protocol to read the various USENET groups and I
> discovered a way to post to the groups using e-mail.

Oh, fascinating. God, all those old protocols, huh...

> And when I knew what it was -- a bunch of writers doing superhero parodies all set in
> the same share Universe (err -- I mean LOONiverse!), I had to join because I loved
> superheroes and parodies -- and all these brilliant ideas in my head for even more
> crazy characters that populate it. And all these stories were free!

yessssssss yesyesyesyes |> Boy do I know that feeling <3

> At the time I was living in a small town that didn't have any comic books stores or
> book stores or anything cool. I think the Safeway did have some comics in the
> magazine section -- so I could have bought those, but they always seemed expensive
> (like a $1.50 for part seven of a seventeen part arc).

Also familiar. X3;

> About
> this time also Russ "Eagle" Allbery was setting up the current archive, which would
> be a lot more complete. Unfortunately at the time, since those were compressed files
> I didn't have the ability to unzip them so I usually had to pester Russ to send me
> some unzipped files and would have to wait till college for access to the unzipping
> technology.

Awwwwww. X3 I remember filling up, like, all my dad's floppy disks with text files.

> So, I started writing at that time also -- brought in this character that I made from
> this novanet computer game called Avatar and had written a few stories with -- The
> Slobbering Grue!

Dun da-dun! :D

> Called the series JONG (don't remember why).

Curse you, Dr. Jong!

> Graduated from High School around
> that time -- and was going to lose access to my novanet account although I think I
> did have it long enough to say I was going to write something for Retcon Hour (the
> big crossover of the day -- parody of Zero Hour) -- but other than creating The
> Chuggernaut didn't really contribute much to it.

That's a memorable addition, at least. |>

> Then I started college -- so I had the ability to post again. But I never really did
> that much writing -- some more issues of JONG, some more Omaha Project stuff --
> started doing On the Deadbeat, which while being NTB I did reference quite a bit of
> LNH stuff.

Hmmmm, I see

> he had very constrained schedule and instead he invited me to go to Phoenix
> -- where he was going to meet up at Jeff McCoskey's place with Hurbert Bartels also
> in attendance. I declined though -- was a bit to timid to try my luck on the Phoenix
> Freeways -- and figured I'd probably get lost. So didn't get to do that.

Awwwww, I'm sorry.

> Around 1998, probably inspired by various comics I was reading at the time
> (Morrison's JLA, Busiek's Thunderbolts, and Ellis's Stormwatch) I created the Saviors
> of the NET as a cascade for other to jump on if they wanted. And various writers
> added to that bit of craziness and that was fun.

:D That's been one of the big influential things for me.

> Around 1999 was the end of my college (my terrible, terrible college years -- where I
> basically flunked out).

Oof. Also, unfortunately, familiar. :/ Happens to a lot of us.

> I did manage to survive Y2K and my parents helped me get a job in Yuma, AZ -- so I
> moved there (and sadly enough still have that job).

Hey, keeping such a thing thru all the bullshit of the last twenty years is an
accomplishment.

> I did sometimes go to the library and use their computers to check out what was going
> on in RACC and did see Marc Singer finish the Saviors of the NET storyline (and he
> did a great job ending -- no complaints here).

Very agreed. |>

> Definitely by 2004 quite a bit of the posters that
> had been hanging around RACC in the '90s had gone off to the other parts of the NET
> (messageboards, blogs, live journal and so on). I think by the time I came back all
> of the OMEGA Writers had already left RACC. There were still plenty of people -- but
> you could tell that USENET was beginning to have some very bad health problems.

Mmmmmm, yeah.

> But during various discussions about the various
> problems of the LNH -- you'd always have these 'There are too many characters' or
> 'There are not enough rules' as reasons why less people were joining up or not
> reading. And so LNHY had a lot more rules and way less characters (each writer was
> only allowed one character to be on the LNH). And it kind of proved that too many
> character too few rules wasn't the LNH's problem.

Yeeeeeeeah. Like, I love LNHY, and I think the rules give it character, but the
LNH being full of characters and highly freeform never really stopped people -
heck, it was the most so when it was busiest.

(The 1996-97 era did have stuff happen that poisoned the well a bit, but I don't
think the solution to that was rules - on the contrary, I think what was needed
was a more open and forgiving community, and developing one of those is a big
reason RACC has lasted as long as it has.)

> It wasn't a great success (but
> there were people who wrote for it -- so I can't really complain. I mean given a
> choice between writing for LNHY and LNH Classic -- I preferred the Classic one like
> everyone else).

I really need to get back to Death of Trophy Wife, I have such plans, but, well,
me and plans. X3 The fact that HHS is actually, properly finishing is a
testament to the fact that I'm *finally* catching up with what I want to do.

> The health of the LNH between 2005 and 2007 -- it was fairly robust. Mostly old
> timers were keeping it alive -- but you'd occasionally have a new comer pop in.

Definitely an excellent time. |>

> One
> of the big high points of this era was the Infinite Leadership Crisis (or Cry.Sig)
> that happened during April 2007. You had Jamas Enright, me, Martin Phipps, Amabel
> Holland, Mitchell Crouch, Saxon Brenton, Jessica "Jaelle" Ihimaera-Smiler, Rob
> Rogers, and Lalo Martins participating in it. It was great fun -- I suppose the only
> problem was my idea for ending it as a prelude for my Beige Midnight storyline idea.

In particular, I think the only problem was that "where are the leaders going
and who's doing it" was set up as a mystery, but it wasn't really solvable. If
it had been, the Beige Midnight lead-in would've been great, and honestly, it
still does work. :>

> And so from 2007 to 2012, I was deeply immersed into the whole Beige Countdown/
> Midnight storyline (my original plan was that it would only take like a year or so to
> write. Hah!)

God, do I know that one X3

> (Also in 2007 I created the first (and sadly only) LNH Webcomic --
> called The LNH Webcomic.)

God, I should do one of those... I want to do everything, sigh. X3

> By 2011, I still hadn't finished Beige Midnight and we were getting close to the 20th
> Anniversary of the LNH and there was a big discussion about making a new LNH Imprint
> (and I think some wanted to just reboot it). I had my own ideas and others had their
> own ideas and there was a flame war between me and this other difficult person who
> always had a knack for getting into all kinds of arguments with other LNH writers.

God, that guy. I'm so glad we got rid of him.

> I decided to just let others do what they wanted with the new LNH imprint (called
> LNH20) and I'd focus on trying to finally finish Beige Midnight.

Super fair, but you're definitely always welcome there. n.n

> In 2012, I went to my first Real Life RACCCon in Benicia, CA -- and met Rob Rogers,
> Saxon Brenton, and Scott Eiler. And that was great -- glad I got to do that. And
> afterwards I managed to finally finish the whole Beige Midnight Saga in September of
> 2012. I don't know how long the whole thing was (pretty sure it was over 100,000
> words), but probably the closest I'll ever get to writing a novel.

HELL YEAH. That was so amazing. <3 <3 <3 Inspiring! I should reread it sometime
soon. X3

> And after finishing Beige Midnight -- I felt the need for another big creative
> project, but I kind of knew that it needed to be something outside the LNH and RACC.
> So in October of 2012 I started working on the Ripping Off King Arthur webcomic and
> that's been my big focus (well that and my more smutty comic!) even since.

On Sunday, August 21, 2022 at 7:08:27 PM UTC-7, Drew Perron wrote:
> On 4/29/22 1:15 PM, Arthur Spitzer wrote:

> > *Ahem* okay, looks like I'm doing this one solo.
> Aggggggh, I'm sorry. X3; Obviously, it's been A Time.

That's okay. :)

> > (Also in 2007 I created the first (and sadly only) LNH Webcomic --
> > called The LNH Webcomic.)
> God, I should do one of those... I want to do everything, sigh. X3

The offer still stands for anyone who wants to write an LNH Webcomic
script, I'll make a webcomic from that strip (well, assuming there isn't
an insane amount of words for it.)

> > Went to Benicia, CA again -- and saw Rob and Scott for another RACCCon in 2019. And
> > that was fun.
> n.n Someday I will go to one of those. X3

Maybe if I ever retire maybe I'll do some Paul Hardy World Tour to see all the surviving
LNH Writers.

> > I kind of think that maybe writing for the LNH should be a young
> > persons game and if the LNH is to have any future you can't really depend on the over
> > 40 crowd to save it. But those of you stubborn old timers that want to keep
> > breathing life into the LNH to keep it from its final rest -- well, here's to you.
> > And here's to all the writers and readers that kept it alive for 30 years.
> :> Honestly, I find it hard to imagine not writing it for the rest of my life.
> But I would love to see new blood come in...
>
> Drew "maybe someday I'll find a way" Nilium

Probably needs to be on some platform that isn't dead (RIP USENET)...
where ever the youngsters hang around for there Prose Shared Universe
content...

Arthur "Old..." Spitzer