User Friendly
| User Friendly | |
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| Author(s) | J. D. Frazer, a.k.a. "Illiad" |
| Website | www.userfriendly.org |
| Current status / schedule | On hiatus, repeats daily |
| Launch date | November 17, 1997 |
| Genre(s) | technology and geek humor |
User Friendly is a daily webcomic about the staff of a small fictional Internet service provider, Columbia Internet. The strip's humor tends to be centered on technology jokes and geek humour.
Drawn and authored by J. D. Frazer, a.k.a. "Illiad", it has been running since November 17, 1997. Frazer is one of the few, and first, webcomic creators successful enough to make a living as an artist. This is probably because it is one of the first webcomics, and was targeted at a specific, tech-related audience, which was already abundant on the Internet at that time.
It is remarkable for having been updated daily from when it started in 1997 until June 2009 (most webcomics are updated only a few times a week), and for having all previous strips online in the archive.
When it is being updated there is a running storyline and sometimes several days' worth of comics are drawn in advance, but the Sunday comic is always drawn for immediate release and breaks from the regular storyline. The Sunday strip is based on current events and is in full color, unlike the regular daily strips.
Periodically, there will be "nag-strips" which are special strips drawn for promotional purposes. These strips appear for 20 to 30 seconds before jumping to the daily strip. The content of these strips is to ask for donations or introduce advertisers, often presented by the characters or a cameo by Illiad.
The strip went on hiatus from June 1, 2009 to August 2009 due to personal reasons. In this period, previous strips were re-posted. A second hiatus lasted from December 1, 2009 until August 1, 2010, again due to personal reasons. New cartoons, supplied by the community as part of a competition, started to appear as of August 2, 2010. From November 1, 2010 through November 21, 2010, Illiad published a special "Remembrance Day story arc", and stated that it is "vague and at this point random" what will happen to the strip afterwards, that "going daily again is highly unlikely", but that "there are still many stories that I want to tell through UF, over time". Since then, previous strips are re-posted on a daily basis.
User Friendly started when J. D. Frazer, working as creative director for a Canadian ISP, started doodling a few cartoon jokes about his coworkers and boss. His boss encouraged him to post them online. Then people started emailing him, asking for more cartoons. Before that, he tried another comic, Dust Puppies, and sent it to six major syndicates, but was rejected by all.
The cartoon has been running online since November 17, 1997.
It is regarded as one of the first webcomics to achieve success, both financially and by popularity. It is also one of the few self-sufficient webcomics available, out of the thousands available on the Internet. His revenues come from advertising, sponsorships, the printed O'Reilly books and merchandising.
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