"General Protection Fault" Online Comic Ends After 26 Years

 

On Friday November 1, the online comic strip "General Protection Fault" officially concluded with it's final strip going up. This brings to an end one of the longest-running online comic strips that was updated regularly. Cartoonist Jeff Darlington would say a few words.

And that's a wrap, folks. As of last Friday's update (November 1, 2024), the main GPF Archive is finally complete. I hope you enjoyed the strip's "big finale" ... First and foremost, I'd like to thank all of you who have taken this journey with me over the past quarter century. Whether you started reading from the beginning or you only just recently discovered it, it has been an immense and indescribable joy to have you read my little story and look at my random scribbles. I've heard from a great many of you over the past few months about how much GPF has meant to you, and your kind words have warmed this old cartoonist's heart. While it's obvious GPF wouldn't exist without me creating, writing, and drawing it, it's no stretch of the imagination to say that it wouldn't exist without you reading it. It's been your encouragement and engagement over the years that kept me going, and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

I would do a review of the comic a few years ago as part of a larger story on longtime running online comics. It started of as the misadventures of several computer geeks,two sapient slime molds, and their employer at the small business that bears the comic's name, with stories about life at the workplace and on computers doing things like coding and other things such as science-fiction conventions, enduring alien abductions, taking a ride on a time machine, and more. There are also occasional dream sequences such as "Harry Barker and the Napier's Bones" that parody popular stories. Over time, the skills of one go beyond programing and he starts building things that over time help set the stage for some adventures for the characters. However, over time they also attract the attention of secret agents, James Bondish villains, aliens, and a few characters not of this universe. 

 

Four times in the course of the story are major plotlines that take months to resolve, "Surreptitious Machinations," "To Thyne Own Self," "Scylla and Charybdis," and "The Enthropy War." Following the end of each, the characters have to deal with some big changes in their lives. The story ends with the main characters, save one, returning to normal lives following their big adventures, looking forward to "just another quiet day at the office."

 

Darlington stated that now that the comic was done, he planned to take some time off, and then finish a side-comic, "Surreptitious Machinations 2," which describes what happened to some secondary characters after the comic's first major plotline story. Then the comic itself will go into reruns. Darlington also stated plans to write some novels. But this may not be all. There were a few hints in the last strips that there may be further adventures of some of the characters.

And so ends one of the longest-running online comics, coming to an end some thought odd but was satisfying.

 

To read the comic, Click Here. 

Bixyl Shuftan

Commentary: Of Sansar, Ebbe Linden, Hamlet Au, and "Complete Geekdom"

If the Newser's predecessor paper, the Second Life Newspaper, and the self-described tabloid of several years ago, the Alphavile Herald, were "arch-rivals," then the relationship between the Second Life Newser and that of Hamlet Au's "New World Notes" can be described as something of a friendly rivalry. We've occasionally poked fun at Hamlet, such as when he got stuck in a Japanese schoolgirl avatar and couldn't get out. But in the end, he's respected as a journalist with a good record.

Still, his comments on Friday, shortly after he'd given his newsletter's appearance it's first big change in years, left me with a chuckle. Of the recent article on Sansar in Upload VR magazine in which Ebbe Altberg/Ebbe Linden was interviewed, near the end the article talked about how they were trying to make Sansar more user-friendly than Second Life, which even it's core users acknowledge has something of a high learning curve, "Enabling people ... to create amazing content, while still keeping the interface intuitive and user-friendly for the average consumer. That’s something that Second Life never quite achieved, but in building Sansar, Linden Lab is determined to draw lessons from its predecessor."

“We learned some positives but also a lot of ‘that’s not how you do it’ from Second Life,” said Altberg. “So we’re having a much more user-centric approach from the beginning, and try to make sure we stay away from the territory of complete geekdom.”

So as a joke, Hamlet suggested tongue-in-cheek, "This should actually be Sansar's unofficial slogan: 'Avoids Second Life's Complete Geekdom.' "

Hamlet was trying to be funny (Hamlet being a ham?), and some of those responding also made crack comments. A few weren't laughing, "the best proof yet they have no clue who their customer (base) is!" Me, I simply responded in kind, "Staying away from geekdom? So instead of Star Trek and anime fans, it'll have rednecks drinking beer and waving Confederate flags?"

What Ebbe was trying to say was that Linden Lab was trying to make Sansar easier to use, though as Hamlet pointed out, he could have done a better job of doing so. If Second Life was ever in "complete geekdom," it left those days long ago and became filled with people such as war veterans, housewives, farmers, and others whom don't exactly have a reputation for being part of "geekdom." Of course, some farmers can be a *lot* smarter and tech-savy than "city slickers" give them credit for.

Still, if Hamlet Au and Ebbe Linden wish for Sansar to be less "complete geekdom" than Second Life, perhaps they should invite content creators to start making Confederate Navy Jack banners and cans of Budweiser with drinking animations.

Bixyl Shuftan