Another project I’ve been working on in my free time is ‘live’ for all intents and purposes. Awhile back, I linked to a posting on The Comics Journal Message Board by a guy named Jonathan Barli, in which he described his endeavor to digitize as many surviving turn-of-the-century newspaper comic strips as possible. This is necessary because many (bordering on most) libraries have sold or destroyed their original newspaper collections, effectively eliminating the most visible primary sources of comics history. See Nicholson Baker’s Double Fold and The World on Sunday for more thorough discussions of this.

     Shortly thereafter, Mr. Barli sent me an email thanking me for the link. Since I think he’s doing something important, and I was working on a similar bit of coding for another project, I offered to throw together and host a quick, three template, database-driven site so he could showcase the results of his work, spread the word, and raise money to continue. Here ’tis: Digitalfunnies.com.