The Whiteboard: Paintball, Furries, and Mad Science (anyone read?)

[Willie the Duck]

Am I the only one here who reads The Whiteboard?

It's a furry webcomic, focused on Alaskan (although that rarely comes up) paintball enthusiasts, repair shop owners, field owners, and their relatives and loved ones. It's straight up wish-fulfillment (in the Least I Could Do vein, except Alaskan and blue-collar) in that the obvious author-insert gets to be a inventor-madman who never is at a loss for funds and gets to do the insanely dangerous without a consequence to be had (and paintball shop owners apparently have contracts with DARPA to build powered combat armor and nuclear reactors).

It's fun. It's zany. I trust the author to talk about Big Important Things (tm) about as far as any of the other webcomic authors. Otherwise, really nifty.

I'm really just looking to see if anyone else reads it. Other than having a TVTropes page, it is hard to judge if it has a couple dozen fans or tens of thousands.

[jwhouk]

Any webcomic where one of the main characters is asked if "you and (Doc) are supervillians" is okay by me.

I'm not even into paintball and I find the whole thing hilarious. And Doc (the artist) rolls with it.

[Rockphed]

I read it occasionally. Some of the zany side adventures are interesting. Sometimes they are tedious and somewhat boring. Thankfully we occasionally get to see Doc interact with customers, which is always funny (even if I sometimes have no idea what they are talking about).

[PhantomFox]

Eh, I wouldn't compare it to LICD, the two feel vastly different. The Whiteboard is a lot more lighthearted and Doc is actually likable. I do quite enjoy it though. Great comedy.

[Rockphed]

Eh, I wouldn't compare it to LICD, the two feel vastly different. The Whiteboard is a lot more lighthearted and Doc is actually likable. I do quite enjoy it though. Great comedy.

The character in The Whiteboard I don't understand is Swampy. Well, I understand him, but I don't understand why people put up with him. Is stapling him to the ceiling really worth all the stupidity that accumulates around his person?

[Willie the Duck]

Eh, I wouldn't compare it to LICD, the two feel vastly different. The Whiteboard is a lot more lighthearted and Doc is actually likable. I do quite enjoy it though. Great comedy.

I meant in terms of basic architecture and tropes. They are both wish-fulfillment fantasies for author avatars. LICD stars a ladies-man (who later turns into devoted life partner to his girlfriend when the author's ideas of life success changed) who sweet talked himself into a non-existent-in-real-life corporate positions where he makes crazy money making a (female) Jeff Bezos/Elon Musk-like character do the right thing (by the author's politics) while not doing much real work. TWB has Doc, who is supposedly a paintball repair/sale shop owner, but also gets infinite cash from the defense department, has a nuclear reactor, spends most of his time (a running gag being his backlog of actual work) goofing around with powered armor or invisibility cloaks or pizza teleporters, and now has a girlfriend who thinks he's the best thing ever (with very little justification except he guessed right on what she'd like on the 2-3 dates we've seen them on. Both only suffer consequences for their insane actions when that consequence is the main story thread.

The character in The Whiteboard I don't understand is Swampy. Well, I understand him, but I don't understand why people put up with him. Is stapling him to the ceiling really worth all the stupidity that accumulates around his person?

Swampy doesn't actually do all that many truly stupid things. He honestly doesn't do all that much at all except eat, sleep, and set up jokes for others. How he has a girlfriend or enough money to eat/pay his half of rent (assuming he does) are open questions. He's this comic's 'Kramer' character--in real life he'd be your deadbeat friend and it wouldn't be funny at all. Watching from the outside, it works (except that honestly it has gotten old and there are plenty of other characters who could take over most of his duties).

[PhantomFox]

I think today's strip may be a lampshade of that.

[Willie the Duck]

And now it appears to be gone. That was unexpected.

[Rockphed]

And now it appears to be gone. That was unexpected.

I thought it was just server problems, but it has been about a week now.

[PhantomFox]

It is server problems. Renovations by the host. Forums on tapatalk are still up and he's posting the comics there in the interim.

[Willie the Duck]

It is server problems. Renovations by the host. Forums on tapatalk are still up and he's posting the comics there in the interim.

Interesting expression of a server issue. Today I looked again and got the art page of some guy from Texas who paints basketball teams or somesuch.

[Rockphed]

Interesting expression of a server issue. Today I looked again and got the art page of some guy from Texas who paints basketball teams or somesuch.

I get a page that says:

Web Server's Default Page

This page is generated by Plesk, the leading hosting automation software. You see this page because there is no Web site at this address.

You can do the following:

Create domains and set up Web hosting using Plesk.

I don't think they forgot to pay the bill. More likely they changed hosts and the files go scrambled in the move.

[PhantomFox]

I'm just getting the default web server page. But if you need the link to the forum, here you go. Doc says they think it'll be up later today.

[Ailurus]

If you don't want to forum crawl, Doc has also been posting the updates with full visibility on his Patreon page . As well as an explanation of the outage. Seems to be a malware scare that lead to the discovery of hardware problems.

[jwhouk]

The word directly from the bear himself:

The story is, supposedly they found some malware on the system somewhere, and had to take part of it offline to clear it out. That also meant that all the backups had to be scanned or analyzed or whatever as well, and that took time.

Also, while all this was going on, it either caused or led to the discovery of apparently a pretty serious hardware failure that then had to be addressed- which could mean they had to order replacements from the States or even Asia, but that's guesswork on my part.

Anyway, they've been working pretty much 24-7, making sure backups are clear of malware, installing the new servers (or parts thereof, whatever) and getting everything back up and running.

I'm told that they're hoping for tomorrow, Wednesday the 3rd, to have it back online, but of course there's no promises. We all know how unexpected issues can crop up.

All I can say is thanks for your patience, and ask that, once it's back up for good, do me a favor and spread the word. I have no doubt that more than a few readers, who aren't Guilders, MCB'ers or Patreon members, have no idea what happened, and may have bailed after a full week of no-shows.

[Rockphed]

The word directly from the bear himself:

I probably would have taken a couple weeks to get back to reading it. It is nothing on Real Life that just stopped updating for nearly 4 years and started up again a couple weeks ago.

[jwhouk]

Current strip:

[Rockphed]

The site is back online. And there is a comic where Doc is pleading for us to tell everyone about it. He even has the gall to blame it on gremlins. How can he possibly blame anything on the cute little snookums? Who's a cute little monstrosity? Ah, you are!