[continued from previous message]

archived in the middle, and years later, no one will be the wiser! Give
me a minute to cackle at my own genius, and I'll be right with you...


LNH.

I can't even remember what it was about those initials that brought a
curious post- Desert Storm, post- GA Tech MSEE Intel newbie to the group.
At the time, my most recent comics experience was the Morrison _Animal
Man_ (but be fair -- how could you go back to comics after that run?), and
I was much more interested (net-wise speaking) in motorcycles,
Libertarianism, hockey, board games, and pulp magazines.

Maybe I was between compiles, maybe I'd temporarily exhausted
rec.motorcycles (yeah, right), hell maybe it was that synchronicity thing
we hear so much about. There near the top of the alt.* heirarchy it sat
-- shy, unassuming, yet playfully ambiguous. I took a dip. Only recently
came up for air.

Others of much greater pedigree have hinted at the chaos, cooperation and comraderie of the early years. I was just too late for all that, but I
could still catch it in reposts. The funny thing was, that despite its hopelessly amateur execution, underneath it all was the whimsy, wonder and
joy of the best of my old comics-fan memories. Without the pollution and pornography the industry had since fallen into. I was hooked. And not a little "outside looking in."

My first offering was _Agent of PULP_, in homage to my fondest
hobby. Everyone was having such a good time with each other, I didn't want
to crash the party uninvited, so I figured a tangential entry was
best. Plus I _really_ wanted to write pulp. To say it vanished without a
trace is untrue: I got hate mail. Had it been from Drizzt, dvandom,
Martin or wReam I may not have come back, ignorant as I was of the tongue- in-cheek nature of the Council of Elders. But it wasn't, so I pressed
onward, content for a time to speak quietly into the din, damn the critics
full speed ahead.

I found I loved it, the writing. Then Ken Schmidt (who I considered a contemporary, since he started posting after I started reading) called to
arms, and I answered. Though he was probably ignorant of me, I considered
him a member of my freshman class, so if he could, why not me? Many works
of comedy/tragedy/adventure/homage/romance and of course pulp later, I
looked back and saw fulfilled something I hadn't know was missing.

Since then, I have assumed command of a CAV Troop, been promoted away from
free time, and become a father. Though I may be strained to breaking and burning at both ends, I still find time to scan RACC. I still get charged
with plots and characters begging for release. And by God I'll still do
the rACCIES. ;]

Thanks everyone for all the crossovers that made this more community than creation: Drizzt, Jaelle, Chad, Jameel, Tick, Badge, The Retcon Hour
Singers, the EEPSIODSRC clan and the OMEGA rag-time band. Thanks
especially to the friends I've met here: Hubert, Marc, Badge, Chris,
Martin, Drizzt, and Dave who may not consider me close but who picks out
way too many of my hidden teasers to not have some sort of empathy. And
thanks to LNH/RACC for making me notice that hidden behind the mega-tits
and gore, good comics were still being made. Both on and off the Net.

Most of all, thanks Ken, for calling me out of the corner.

My command ends in a year or so. I'll be back. The stories we've
awakened aren't content to stay asleep for another 30 years. Be afraid ;]

Later, JJMcC

From: Marc Singer <m... at wam.umd.edu>
Subject: Re: [LNH] LNH Fifth Anniversary Special, Part #1
Date: 1997/05/06
Message-ID: <5kmh4j$4ck at rac6.wam.umd.edu>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 239670790
Sender: e... at windlord.Stanford.EDU
References: <336CE23E.3323 at precisionet.net>
X-Date: 6 May 1997 01:55:31 -0400
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.creative



A few words from outside Net.ropolis...

I realize that anniversaries are the perfect times for the original
writers to get back together and reminisce, but I wanted to say something
about the "latecomers" as well.

I'm a true latecomer, a very-latecomer, a later-than-latecomer, because
I've never written a word for the LNH and I quite possibly never will.
But I read lots of it avidly. I discovered the LNH well after its
creation, in spring 1994, when some of the stories were still getting crossposted to rec.arts.comics.misc (back in those halcyon days when such
an act wouldn't get you three dozen automated net.coppings from the
irascible cartoon characters who now dwell there). I found serious
stories and humorous ones, old series and new ones, and in time I even
found series that started after I'd begun reading. I also found that I
was enjoying some of these series a lot more than most of the comics I was actually *buying*. And here you were making this fantastic stuff for
free.

I had no idea who the originals and who the newcomers were, of course; I
only saw quality. And lots of it. From my very beginning -- around the
time Pliable Lad fought Jestalt, I believe -- to a brilliant Marvin and
Wendy parody, to a brilliant Silver Age gorillas parody, and beyond, the
LNH has always been top-quality entertainment. So top-quality that it
(and its friends in the NTB, the Patrol, and Superguy) created this
newsgroup for all of us. It's a terrific forum, and that alone is reason enough for everyone to say a word of thanks to the LNH.

But it also led to something even more beneficial for me personally. You
see, one hot summer night in 1994, I noticed someone had posted a giant
"TEB" ("What?") that looked really promising. It had daring versions of
all the characters I'd just discovered, strangely warped and yet
recognizable; it had a plot that not only modeled itself on the classic _Watchmen_, it *improved* on it. I became hooked immediately and read the whole damn thing in one night. I think I must have been quite mad at the
time; I know the author thought so when I e-mailed him. But that story
really altered my relationship to this newsgroup. I no longer wanted to
just lurk and read. I didn't think I *could* do that kind of work, but I
knew I wanted to try. So not long afterwards, I was one of the people to answer a request to start a new story universe. The requestor used the
old anon.petet.fi anonymous e-mailer, though -- so I only knew him as
"Badger." And that was the start of something else.

Lots more universes have sprung up since then, all of them owing something
-- perhaps without even knowing it -- to the LNH. So thanks for
everything, folks. Anne, Harvey, Hannibal, Jack, the Paint Crew, the
Indigo System, and the Belgian Waffle all salute you.

You know, I feel really badly for old Dr. Killfile. Like the Sheriff
outlawing Robin Hood, like Loki creating the Avengers, the poor guy had no
idea what he was starting...

Marc



From: The Lone Warrior <tabr... at ptd.net.no.spam>
Subject: Re: [LNH] LNH Fifth Anniversary Special, Part #1
Date: 1997/05/08
Message-ID: <5ku6cp$gu9$1 at news.ptd.net>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 240382622
Sender: e... at windlord.Stanford.EDU
References: <336CE23E.3323 at precisionet.net> <5kmh4j$4ck at rac6.wam.umd.edu> X-Date: 9 May 1997 03:41:13 GMT
Organization: ProLog - PenTeleData, Inc.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.creative
Nntp-Posting-User: tabrock


In article <5kmh4j$... at rac6.wam.umd.edu>, Marc Singer <m... at wam.umd.edu> wrote:

You know, I feel really badly for old Dr. Killfile. Like the Sheriff
outlawing Robin Hood, like Loki creating the Avengers, the poor guy had no
idea what he was starting...

Marc

Ain't that the truth.

Well... since we're all on this big nostalgia kick, I suppose I should
give my own backstory.

The year was 1994. I was a college sophomore, and was
knowledgeable
about the net in general in order to post. I'd started off in the alt.* hierarchy a semester before, but esu.edu didn't carry aclnh. Then, one day between classes I got bored, and started looking through newsgroups. I
spotted racc. Being a (then) casual reader of comics, I stopped by to
lurk and
read. The first thing I read was one of the few SuperGuy stories that were cross-posted. At the time, I didn't know the characters, but the story
just
had me hooked.

(If I recall correctly, it was part of that "Pie In The Face" storyline... where one character was gonna end up with a pie in his or her face. I still chuckle when I remember the nitroglycerin pie.) :]

At the time, I and a friend were working on a few storylines that apparently weren't going anywhere. We had a truckload of characters,
with no
histories or anything. Well... his had no histories. I had histories and ideas, but writing for them dragged on. And on. And on. Suffice to say, nothing ever happened with them. Until I saw racc.

After reading RACC a while, I thought I'd had it figured out.
At the
time, there were two major imprints, the LNH and OMEGA, which occupied
opposite ends of the spectrum: the LNh was the parody universe, OMEGA
was all
seriousness and angst. There were also a few others out there, but they
never
really struck a chord with me.

I remember blasting into racc; my first post was very
newbieish. I
announced my own Imprint, "StarFall", which was, in my own words, "THE MOST SERIOUS UNIVERSE ON RACC". Man, did I get flamed for that... and rightfully
so. For such blatant newbieism, I apologize. All I wanted was a serious imprint that was light on angst. I also had plans for characters that
wouldn't go well with other imprints' backstories.

Since then, I've been a rather quiet poster to racc, posting
whenever
I finish a piece. At first I stuck with StarFall, but just last year I
drifted into the Looniverse with "Johnny Fearless", followed earlier
this year
by "a.outSiders". I've been experimenting with different genres
("Fearless"
and "a.outSiders" in comedy, "Blood Ties" which I intended to be closer
to the
horror/suspense genre), and I've been fighting a constant battle with the Writer's Block Beast. My own City Streets title still holds a special
spot in
my heart, even though I plan on ending the series with #25 (say, in another three years?). :) Still, I've seen good writing, bad writing, and tons of reviews on both.

I've met some interesting people here in racc... Hubert,
Drizzt, and
Eagle being the most influential to my own work. I haven't had the
opportunity
to meet anyone here in person, but give me time.

Long Live the Looniverse!


--
Arsenal
+------------------------------------------------------------+
| StarFall Archive: |
| http://home.ptd.net/~tabrock/starfall/starfall.html |
| Beyond StarFall: |
| http://home.ptd.net/~tabrock/fan-fic/index.html | +------------------------------------------------------------+


From: Jeff Barnes <drizzt at precisionet.net>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.creative
Subject: [LNH] LNH Fifth Anniversary Special, Part #2
Date: 4 May 1997 17:30:08 -0700

------------------------------------------------------------------------------ TORI FIKE


"Your thoughts and comments on the 5th Anniversary," the man said. Seemed innocuous enough at first glance.

But this reminiscence will, no doubt, seem stranger to most of you than
the wildest doings of the LNH in all of those five years. To describe the murky beginnings of our (usually) amiable band, I will have to describe
the world in which it took place--which is _not_ the Net As We Know It
Now. (Thanks, Cliche Dude...)

So: Picture Usenet as it exists today. First, take away all the spammers
and Make.Money.Fast dreamers. Cut the population down to, say, a third of
what it is now...maybe even a quarter. Reduce the traffic to the point
where there were perhaps 3-400 articles a day _total_ that dealt with
comics, and that on a busy day. Finally, chop the rac.* hierarchy from
its current glorious listing down to one solitary group: rec.arts.comics itself. Now, my friends, you have the setting of Spring, 1992.

Myself? I was that ultimate Net nightmare, a college freshman (though, as
you can judge from the season, I'd passed through the worst months
already). I had been reading rac for several months, but posting very
little, as is my wont; I always had a terrible fear of making an ass of
myself in public, and an equal fear that no one really cared about what I
might have to say anyways. Moreover, I didn't feel qualified at all to
jump into discussion with people who were practically eidetic with respect
to character appearances and crossovers. So, of course, when a subject
came up where I didn't feel I was at a handicap, and which was light and humorous enough that any contribution would be taken in good part, I was
eager to charge in.

It shames me that I cannot remember who started the trend (though, who can predict the avalanche from the first pebbles fall?), but whoever it was,
in the course of a thread he attached an heroic name to the end of his
post. Like a .sig virus or the Kiersey temperament sorter, this caught on immediately, and almost everyone jumped the bandwagon, from the "TYGger"
on downward to my humble self. Most everyone, of course, thought it was
an amusing one-off; they made their joke and moved on. There's always a
few troublemakers, though...

Marvel Zombie Lad's original call-to-arms still exists, and no doubt you
have all seen it and its fallout: "Against the Brotherhood of Evil.Net.Villains", aka the Cosmic Plot-Device Caper. Although the participants were enjoying themselves immensely, there were already some grumblings about waste of bandwidth which would, in the not-too-distant
future, develop into a truly ugly flamewar. But for the meantime, most of
rac took the incursion with tolerant smiles.

Then, the 2 1/2 month gap: summer break. Almost all of the LNHers were in college at the time, and a significant number, including myself, lost
access over the summer. (Remember, this is 1992...AOL wasn't even a
threat on the Usenet horizon yet, and the average household was _not_ net.connected.) I still don't know what transpired over that time. But
when I got back to Columbia in late August, I was delighted to find that
the LNH was still going strong.

Unfortunately, not everyone was so delighted. The thunderheads of the aforementioned flamewar began to pile up in the western sky. rac was
getting mighty crowded in any case, and a number of the devoted readership
did not want it cluttered up with our silly fanfic. We'll add an [LNH]
tag for easily killfiling? Nope, some people have to pay by the byte for downloading, others don't have access to good killfiles; you guys will
have to leave. Fine, we said, the Great Split is actually going to happen soon--just tuck in rec.arts.comics.lnh with the rest of 'em, and we'll be
out of your hair.

Nope, nuh-uh, no good. A more militant party didn't even want us in the
rac.* hierarchy. We protested that alt groups got very poor propagation
(it's still not wonderful, but back then, many places didn't carry alt.*
at all), and with as far-scattered as the LNH membership was, it seemed
very unlikely that newsadmins at alt-free sites would consent to carrying
an alt group for one user.

The discussion, both on the newsgroup and in private email, grew
acrimonious in the extreme, and much to my chagrin, there I was in the
middle of it. Not only was I shooting my mouth off in front of a large audience, but I was contesting with individuals of much greater
experience, and furthermore some whom I respected very highly indeed. I
can confess it now, I suppose, that one flat email from a rac'er I had
(and still have) the highest regard for, stating that he would do all he
could to oppose the creation of rec.arts.comics.lnh, had me literally in
tears. Still, what was there to do? None of us wanted to vex the rac populace, but neither did we want the LNH to wither and die. As it turned
out, the decision was taken out of everyone's hands.

The fugitive newgrouping of alt.comics.lnh changed the situation entirely.
I never knew who did it or why; I was given to understand that the proper alt.config procedures had not been followed (I was utterly unclued on news-admin matters in those days), but whether it was done by an irate
rac'er to get us the Hell Out or by an over-eager LNHer for the same
reason, I still don't know. In any case, most of us took what we had and
moved on over. A number of sites, as predicted, didn't pick up the group
for quite some time (this was the era, if I recall correctly, that
Netlurker had to crosspost in from alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo), so we lost a
few people for a time, but eventually we gained momentum. So many
projects--a giant twelve-part series involving just about every character
ever mentioned (with collectible trading cards in every issue!),
crossovers and new characters galore, RPG versions of characters, our TinyMUD...oh, did we have visions! And most of them were fulfilled.

In fact, they were almost too fulfilled. Many of you probably haven't a
clue who I am, for I drifted away from alt.comics.lnh back in 1994. There
are a plethora of reasons I could cite--working 2 jobs, the impending
spectre of graduation, etc.--but the real reason is that I was
intimidated. The LNH had become gargantuan; not just the roster, but the
sheer volume of material and writers. I have over 15MB of plain text
archived, and I wasn't even saving all the storylines as of late 1993. In
the early times, the LNHers had been a very close-knit group (as the
persecuted tend to be? well, that's unworthy...); "family" might or might
not be pushing it a bit far, but we were all good friends, even outside
LNH matters. Sometime in '94, though, I looked around and realized that
most of the prolific writers were people I _didn't_ _know_, and most of
the people I _did_ know were quiescent or gone entirely. For better or
for worse (I think we can guess which), instead of jumping back in with
both feet, I retreated back into my lurking shell, and eventually drifted
away altogether.

I missed whatever events led to the LNH being welcomed (?) back into the
rac.* hierarchy; I missed the initial contact with our new colleagues, the Superguy people and the rest; I missed whatever other landmark events that transpired without my knowledge. I don't know what's come of half the characters that Lurking Girl interacted with, which knowledge had been the center of my existence but a few years ago. But I will always have the memories of where we came from and what we were, and if I'm diligent I may
be able to catch up with everything that passed me by. For while digging
in my archives to trigger my recollections of those days, while reading
the histories of the Elder Days, I've found that I really miss the LNH.
The faces may have changed, but I can't believe that the spirit has; it
takes a special kind of person to want this job...and I doubt I need to
tell you that it's the spirit that's the heart of our creation.

So if you see a shiver on the corner of your terminal session, don't
adjust the screen. It's just the prodigal lurker trying to return home.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------ TODD "SCAVENGER" KOGUTT

It was five years ago today, Scavenger taught the band to play...
Five years. Wow. Doesn't seem that long. When Drizzt told me
it was five years, I didn't believe him. Figured he had to be wrong.
Well he wasn't.
So what happened five years ago? Why are we making a big deal
about this? Well, five years ago, a dream was born.
Oh, it didn't start out that way. At first, it was just a running gag. It was fun, but really didn't mean anything. But then came the
first Fall of the LNH, and that changed everything.
I had just come back from summer vacation. I was a Junior at the University of Colorado, where I am now in Grad school. And innocently I
asked, what happened to the Legion of Net.Heroes? And like the shot heard around the world, it caused everything to change.
Due to something little more than a clerical error, rather than
the LNH wound up being mainly stories written by single authors, using
shared characters, rather than the sorta tag team storytelling that had
run rampant before. I looked around and thought it was good.
And then came the first chaos. A lot of people wanted to play,
and my mailbox got flooded with requests to join. Despite the
protestations that I wasn't in charge, they still came. So, feeling the
eyes of the net upon me, I remembered the words of a great philosopher,
"With great power comes great responsibility." I knew what must be done.
I reached out and gathered from those now active in the reborn
Legion the ones judged to be the most noble, the most courageous, the
most. . . literate. Taking half from the Golden Age and half from this
new Silver Age, I formed. . . the Council of Elders. And this too, was
good.
(Ok, so what really happened was that there was a lot of people
unsure of how to join, I sent out a letter to the most active LNHers at
the time, drafting into the group that would try to organize things, and I
gave us a silly overly dramatic name.)
And joy flowed through the land, but then came the War. There
were those who didn't like us. There were those who hated us. Why, there
were even those who plotted against us and sent trained assassins to kill
me in my dorm room. (Well, maybe no one really hated us.) It was felt we should be ghettoized out of the sight of proper comic reading folks.
Well, it was at this point, I realized that the LNH was more than a group
of idiots writing stories. It was a dream aborning.
As I recall, I stayed out of the flame war initially, figuring it would blow over. There were some personal attacks against friends, and I didn't stand for that. It was then I asked for the fighting to stop. I remember writing a post asking the LNHers to stop flaming back. I also
told the anti-LNHers that their opinions were respected and we would do
what we could do to make it easy to ignore us (using the LNH prefix to
make us killfilable) but We Would Not Leave the comics newsgroup until
there was a way that everyone who wanted to read the LNH would be able to
(at the time there was a bootleg alt group and a rather innovative and brilliant news server, but neither was even near 100% reliable).
And what was the dream? I realized that we had created someplace
that people could come and try telling a story, letting their creativity
run wild. Sure, some of it was lousy, but that was never the point. The
point was merely to try. It was a good idea, and it was one worth
fighting for.
Well we won the war (and I even gained net.status for the even
minded way I dealt with the flames) and peace reigned again. Then
something new occurred. I learned I had fans. Here are two stories:
I was at home talking to my friend Kenny. He and I had gone to
the same high school and he was now at M.I.T. He was telling me of a
friend of his at school who was a big LNH fan. That we had fans alone was surprising. I joked with Kenny and asked him if he told his friend that
he knew me. Kenny actually said yes, and that his friend thought that was
so cool.
At another point, I had sent Victoria Fike, Lurking Girl, a
birthday card (it being her birthday). She told me that she got the card,
and a friend of hers saw it. This friend apparently said to the effect,
"Wow! You got mail from Scavenger! That is so cool! The LNH rocks!" I
asked Tori that didn't her friend realize that she was an LNHer, one of
the Council of Elders, herself? She told me yes, but her friend found her getting mail from me much cooler.
(Tales have been related to me of being getting excited when they
got email from me, making it feel like they had been accepted. I
understood this, kind of. When I first joined the comics newsgroups, I
felt that way whenever I got mail from Tom Galloway and Connie Hirsh
(Tygger and Fuzzy of the LNH-Draftees respectively).
Well, all good times must come to an end, and this time of bliss
in the LNH was soon to end. This was I think sometime in the third year.
Time and life took many LNH regulars away to other things, and I was
included. I just didn't have the time, and with certain events happening within the group, the inclination, to really stick around.
Eventually, I took Rebel Yell and sent him on a mysterious journey which even today he has yet to return. I've revisited the LNH a few
times. Telling a story here or there. There's a few stories a page or
two left to be written before they can go off to the world. Even Knight
Fall, the story of Rebel Yell, bangs on my mind every now and then. I
joined with some other LNH alumni and co-founded Crossroads. I haven't
had much to do with the actual writing of that either, but I'm all over
the back story. And should the net be kind, Something will be coming from
me in that arena soon.
So, looking back over the past five years, what has the LNH meant
to me. It has been many things: A great dream, a creation I can look to
with pride, a since of shame, and a great disappointment. What had
started off as a cheap joke had come to represent a great hope to me, and
I was, for a time upset that things had fallen apart in a way, and that
maybe all the effort I had put into this had been for naught. Well, I
found out that my dream had not one, but two successes, and perhaps
others. They know who they are, and I thank them for validating my hopes,
and allowing your spirit to shine. This essay is dedicated to you.
Before I go, I promised Drizzt I'd reveal why May 3rd is the
Observed Anniversary for the Legion of Net.Heroes. Well it goes like
this. I knew that the first anniversary was coming up but didn't have the exact date. So, I checked my files. I found my earliest hard copy of a
LNH post was dated May 2nd. I felt it would be awfully egotistical to
declare that day the anniversary, it being my birthday. So, I chose May
3rd (which is the day I actually joined but that couldn't be helped.)
So there you have it, my view on the five years of the Legion of Net.Heroes. It's been a weird ride, and it's still not over. Let's see
where it'll take us.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Whew. Glad that's over. I'll see y'all in five more -- except
next time someone else can do this. =)

Best,
-- jdb
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Barnes drizzt at precisionet.net Software Engineer, Alydaar Software http://www.eyrie.org/~drizzt/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------
"There are three types of people in this world: those who are good at
math, and those who aren't."

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)