I Heart sandwich
Transplants have been on my mind a little recently… It’s all tied up with how I ended up moving the site’s host earlier this month.
Most of you will be aware that I belong to a collective called Transplant Comics – and a fine collective it is too. In fact, it was Transplant that really encouraged me to turn The Flowfield Unity into a webcomic. It had existed online after I made a webcomic at Smackjeeves to promote it as a book but I decided to see what they thought of it.
I submitted my request to join and waited for them to mercilessly tear my comic apart, but they didn’t. Instead they gave me some really good advice and feedback and eventually, they accepted The Flowfield Unity.
This was great for several reasons, but perhaps the most important to me was the fact that they offered to host my comic… I couldn’t really afford to host it myself, and besides, my technical knowledge of how to run a webcomic was patchy at best. Most of all though, they enabled me to run my comic as I saw fit.
And that’s what made me a webcomic creator.
Holding my hand through all of this was Steve Voudrie, the technical master and evil genius behind Transplant. He helped me figure out databases, css, and all manner of weird web-related acronyms – the things that run a webcomic.
Steve had his own webcomic too, Professor Paradox.
You’ll notice, if you followed that last link, that the Prof. hasn’t been updated in a while. That’s because… well, we don’t don’t why. All we know is that he also stopped appearing at Transplant about the same time too. No explanation, no indication… and we haven’t heard from him since.
That has made us all worried – what happened to Steve? Is he alive? Is he well? Is he ‘detained’? We have no clues, and all attempts to locate or contact him have failed. I do hope he’s OK.
The problem left facing our community is not just that of losing a founder member, no. As I said, Steve was our tech-guy and as such was in charge of the site’s hosting account. Truth be told, he was the only one with the password and username to the site’s host.
This leaves us with a quandary. When the current hosting period is up (we’re not even exactly sure when that is), we won’t be able to stay where we are, we’ll be evicted. The same is true of the domain name, Transplantcomics.com, technically our collective identity.
So, that’s why I had to move host, because sooner or later I would have to do it anyway. There are other reasons why the move was probably a good idea anyway. The old host is quite slow, and I was starting to chew up some serious bandwidth via people visiting my site via StumbleUpon, but I didn’t feel I was ready just yet… yet here we are.
So what is to become of Transplant? Well, we’ve all been chatting, and I can say that if there’s one thing that will induce true community spirit and some great ideas, it’s a crisis on the Internet. We’re going to have to move, and we’ll probably be changing our name, but we’ll be doing it together and we’ll be doing it with style.
Obviously, there will be more information on that, nearer the time and whilst it’s there, the Transplant site will still provide our hub and a great place to find comics.
And Steve?
I really hope I get a chance to say ‘Thanks’.
Sean on 
Maddie on
Well that is sad.
I have read a heap of comics thanks to Transplant Comics.
I think I may have even found TFFU via Transplant.
That’s more than likely… a lot of my new readers come from the Transplant hub.
It’s not so sad though – it just means a change, and hopefully one that will result in a stronger, better community.
I hope Steve is okay.
Me too.
What do you do though? Because of the way the interweb works, I’ve never met him in real life, I live thousands of miles away and whilst I’m fairly sure it is, for all I know Steve may just be a made-up name.
Perhaps there should be an internet police department where you can report missing persons.
Maybe a virtual forensics team.
I’d volunteer to be on the electronic riot squad.
I had set up instructions with my wife for going online and notifying everyone if anything ever happened to me, but earlier this year when I went into the hospital it didn’t work as planned. Fortunately I wasn’t gone for long.
I don’t know Steve well. By the time I started hanging out at Transplant, Professor Paradox had already gone on hiatus. I certainly hope he’s okay, wherever he is.
Transplant is a great community. Everybody should go out right now and check out all the Transplant comics that they haven’t read yet. I have to decide what I’m going to do about my own hosting. I’m tempted to follow your lead and get some space on my own, but at the same time when the official server goes up I plan to contribute there as well.
Here, here.
It is, in my opinion, a great collective. The variety of comics and the diversity of personalities involved is almost the exact opposite of what you’d expect to find in a collective. No two comics are alike.
Any help you need, at all, with your site, just let me know. I’ve already volunteered myself to help set up the new Transplant site when we get going… but it seems like you’ve been been hanging on for ages to get your new home set up…
After I make the next release of GH2 I can start worrying about Ataraxia Theatre again. I’ll be starting some fresh comics on the 29th in any event. I’ve been saving the return of the Vole with No Name for my premiere at the new site, but I’ve got some other strips to until then.
I was born with a congenital
sandwich for a heart. The
lettuce has become wilty.
For my money, Transplant is probably the most intelligent webcomic collective out there (and is one of my first points of call whenever I actually have time to read any). It’s heartening to see it’s future, in some form or another, is secure.
Transplant Comics has provided me with links to many of what are now my favourite webcomics. TFFU being the first i found through it. It’s a shame Steve has dissapeared. I’ve never talked to him, and admittedly never read Proffessor Paradox (I will sometime though), but i do hope he comes back, Webcomics wouldn’t be the same without Transplant. And with my list of favourites at 38 and still counting, I need someone to supply me with new ones every now and then!
Hmm. this may end up being the saddest little bit of writing and following comments you’ve had here at the unity…
I promise you, it’s really not that sad.
I mean, the bit about Steve is, sure, but there’s an upbeat message there – We’re just going to be changing our name and coming back a little bit brighter.
Because of the problems we’ve had, with Steve not around, we’ve not been able to add new comics, like Joseph’s, to the site and that has reduced our ability to introduce new comics… similarly there are some that haven’t updated for a while that need to be addressed.