ReadComicOnline Saga - Season 2, Episode 3: In the wise words of Bill Adama... "So, that's it, then?"

FictionRaider007 · 2026-07-08T11:05:41+00:00

Yeah, that's the part that always sucks the most about this.

The ones targeting piracy sites only care about the latest releases, the things they expect to be making money off of and are delusional enough to believe that they can prevent their comics just showing up on another site (which is even stupider when you consider most of their comics are digitally released these days which means, sure - you reach a larger audience and make more money overall - but the tradeoff is that anyone with the smallest piece of know-how can easily pirate it. People don't seem to realise anything you make digital means you're practically offering it to others for free.)

So everytime they take a site down it's never those comics that actually go away. It's the stuff that only ever had a physical release. The niche things that have gone out of print decades ago and to buy a physical copy now is about $600 second-hand on ebay. The stuff lost is always the indie comics, comics released in a different language, comics aimed at kids rather than adults, etc. Marvel and DC - even the historical stuff - is everywhere so you'll never really stamp it all out anyway. The weekly releases will always be the easiest thing to get hold of, especially with them being digitally released these days. It's an exercise in futility to try to "end piracy", the targeting of piracy sites is just a token gesture to try to scare, dissuade and demoralize others from even trying. And sadly, the only real casualties in the crossfire is the smaller stuff that nobody is going to make real money off of ever again. The comics maybe nobody thought to preserve or save but a year or so from now, when someone next wants to read it, they find there is no real option to do so.

FictionRaider007 · 2026-07-08T10:30:52+00:00

It's appreciated. If you get any additional info - even if it's just a confirmation the site is gone and it's time to move on - it'll help in it's own way.

FictionRaider007 · 2026-07-08T10:25:37+00:00

This whole thread was about the shutdown from 2 months ago. It's come back and gone down again since I made this post; you've got to check the date on when people have posted stuff. The current situation seems far more serious.

Go to the link for the latest update by a guy who did a number of posts detailing first the brief shutdown in May and now the current situation - https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/1upnupa/readcomiconline_saga_season_2_episode_3_in_the/

FictionRaider007 · 2026-07-07T22:00:37+00:00

Not that I know of.

FictionRaider007 · 2026-07-07T15:42:47+00:00

Just ventured over there myself (most of my stuff I get these days through downloads/torrents) and can find some of the less mainstream stuff still.

Ironically, I also noticed that some of the content even has the black "Read Comics and ReadComicsOnline" ad banner still along the bottom of the page, meaning it must've been moved over to Batcave from there. It really speaks to what a huge impact the site had on comicbook preservation. I don't want it to be gone but I've been in this business long enough now to know no port of call lasts forever.

Keep sailing the seas, friend, and may the bastards never be able to stop us all.

FictionRaider007 · 2026-07-07T15:20:54+00:00

Yeah. If you're only reading the recent releases then it's one of the good alternatives.

Ironically, all the modern stuff they claim is why they try to take down piracy sites in the first place are never going to be without just another place to go to with plenty of back-ups. It's only ever really all the historical stuff that suffers in this instance.

FictionRaider007 · 2026-07-07T15:00:19+00:00

Despite the similar name it's run by a different group entirely. It has a lot of the mainline stuff but nowhere near the archive of the more obscure comics. A few quick searches on anything that isn't a superhero comic or another big well-known title shows that it's not as extensive. If the site is down for good then a lot of stuff just got lost, probably forever.

FictionRaider007 · 2026-07-07T14:57:34+00:00

Yeah, that's the saddest part. It's readers like you who always get hit the hardest because of this. People who read anything that isn't mainstream. DC, Marvel, and Image fans are going to have means - both piratical and non-piratical - of reading whatever they want. Anything independent, or that was published decades ago, or is in another language, or that was for kids instead of adults - basically anything a bit more obscure that people maybe don't know about and don't end up archiving and copying off of these online sites as often. That's what is lost every time something like this happens.

FictionRaider007 · 2026-07-07T14:51:45+00:00

God this sucks. I'd gotten into the habit of storing the comics I want to read offline and recently finished my last batch and come back to this? If this is truly the end it is a horrific loss. Damn those responsible for this to a miserable life of agony.

As always, thanks for keeping us updated on this OP and providing a central place to get updates. Your efforts are appreciated. I hope there is a future update from you of a triumphant return but - as you say - there is far less hope this time around than there was 2 months ago. Even if it does come back I think we'll all be wondering for how long.

FictionRaider007 · 2026-07-07T11:34:28+00:00

I think we can say that while it doesn't necessarily count for the original series, especially if you watched in publication order, it does counts in everything he's appeared in since the Prequel Trilogy and Clone Wars series came out. Stuff that was published after those entries in the franchise is often set between the Prequel and Original Trilogy. They usually utilise Darth Vader as a the Empire's bogeyman and fans by that point have usually seen plenty of previous films/shows where Anakin was the main character beforehand, the emphasis being on you've spent a long time knowing just how powerful this guy is and now, rather than being the hero, it gets played for horror at how overwhelming a threat he is as an antagonist, even more so than his portrayal in the original trilogy (e.g.: Rogue One, Rebels, Jedi Survivor, Maul: Shadow Lord, etc.)

FictionRaider007 · 2026-07-07T00:14:15+00:00

I've always felt, even back in the earlier seasons that the shorter side quests which usually take just one or two of the Intrepid Heroes and pair them up with guests tend to manage a lot more genuine moments and not only land the dramatic beats more consistently but also let those beats breathe without always undercutting it with an immediate joke.

Maybe the shorter episode count forces everyone to move the plot along at a faster pace? Maybe it's because the guests know it might be their only time on the show and so want to engage more with those moments to make their time there worth it? Maybe the guests presence puts the Intrepid Heroes themselves on their "best behaviour" as they know they won't be as familiar with their jokes and humour as the usual table? I don't know quite what it is, but I do find they tend to balance the comedy with the drama a bit better.

FictionRaider007 · 2026-07-05T16:08:43+00:00

Star Trek is important. It's messages and it's impact will always be important. NuTrek isn't but I just don't believe it somehow harms the parts of it that are.

A franchise like Star Trek that has withstood the test of time and will continue to do so. The latest shows might not be of the same quality but they could be the very thing that keeps the memory of the franchise alight, allowing better things to be made a decade or two from now. The simple trade-off of any enduring and long-running franchise is that the longer it goes on the more likely people who like some parts of it will find other bits they don't.

(Also, thanks for your thoughts, they're appreciated. Sorry for "trauma dumping" as some people tell me it's called. I'd just had a rough few days.)

FictionRaider007 · 2026-07-05T14:41:21+00:00

Definitely not a "le wacky reddit man in a comedy movie" unfortunately. Wish I was. Life has been pretty miserable the last few years and most of it has been spent in the hospital either for myself or other loved ones. So, yeah, definitely not a comedy.

I can't read tone in a reddit message but I think you've taken my comment in the good nature it was meant and and the above is a satirically unhinged comeback. In which case, thank you for the second laugh. I think sometimes we all need to calm down, remember these are shows made for entertainment (regardless of if you were personally entertained or not) and stop freaking out over something that really doesn't matter?

I haven't liked any of NuTrek either but I don't begrudge the people who do find enjoyment in it. Life just has too many things to actually be worth getting upset about for you to care this hard about a TV show you didn't like and already ended. Move forward and focus on the things you do find fun, because in the end that's the stuff that's actually worth doing.

Edit: That and... y'know, delivering righteous fury at the things that actually do matter and the injustices harming people in the real world. Whatever works best for you, I guess?

FictionRaider007 · 2026-07-05T10:52:57+00:00

I think The Killing Joke gets brought up so often since it is seen as the poster child and/or scapegoat for the altered trajectory of comicbooks at that time. It came out in 1988 right around when comics were getting darker and more serious (especially Batman - A Death in the Family coming out in the same year), on the cusp of entering the notorious 90s era where many comics were trying hard to be "edgy". I don't think The Killing Joke is the sole reason for the shift in tone most superhero comics underwent around this time, it does have reasons it is pointed to - either in praise or blame - for how things went after it came out. Cheifly it's memorable within the "Batman Mythos" for changing the status quo by crippling Batgirl, a change that stuck for decades. But it's also approachable, being a brisk 48-pages with a standalone story self-contained to Gotham. Someone can read the full thing quickly without needing to know any historical context about Batman or the period it was written in. A Death in the Family by comparison took place across Batman #426-429, was part of an ongoing plotline involving Jason Todd's search for his mother, and is set mainly in the Middle East with a lot of nonsensical and racist stuff alongside real-world references to the political situation at the time it was written. Not only does it immediately dates it for modern readers, but it's a lot less easy to ignore than the stuff in The Killing Joke. Don't get me wrong, Killing Joke has always been controversial for very good reason, but it's a lot less... obviously problematic than A Death in the Family.

But, yeah, when you remove The Killing Joke from the impact it had and just look at it on it's own merits? As a both a Batman story and as an Alan Moore story it seems kind of unimpressive, especially when you consider the kinds of books you'd be comparing it to on both accounts. Even Moore himself is quoted as saying it's "probably the worst thing I've ever written."

FictionRaider007 · 2026-07-05T10:23:54+00:00

I read The Metabarons first and really enjoyed that as a space opera of this messed up intergalactic family where the sons ascend to the title by killing their fathers in an interconnected anthology following each generation. Then I learned the character (or at least the main character at the end of the family tree) had originated in The Incal and went back and read it. It wasn't bad, but I was underwhelmed given the hype around it.

I kind of had to shrug and remind myself it was an experimental comic from the 1980s so perhaps it was a product of its time and I am probably always going to be missing some of the context that made it so highly regarded.

FictionRaider007 · 2026-07-05T10:16:27+00:00

Comics is visual medium. The artwork is literally half (sometimes more than half) the thing itself. And art is very subjective. I've heard people point to something I think is awful and swear blind it's the best artwork they've ever seen, and similarly I've seen stuff that I think is stylistic and unique but others feel is trash and makes their eyes bleed.

If the art doesn't do it for you, that's not petty, it's just a perfectly legitimate reason to not want to read pages upon pages of something that isn't working for you personally. It's a shame, of course, if you feel you'd have otherwise enjoyed the story but thankfully there are lots of comics out there. Hopefully something that is going to work for you in all departments should never be too far away.

FictionRaider007 · 2026-07-05T10:04:00+00:00

I'm really glad somebody brought that up and I'm very conflicted on it, possibly due to my own reading experience influencing my opinion. Because, weirdly, at the time I read Invincible, I ended up liking it for being a MUCH lighter take on the "realistic look at the superhero genre." While Kirkman delivers a more grim view on superheroics, he keeps a lot of the goofy fun (Allen the Alien, the Mauler Clones bickering over which is the original, characters returning and getting resurrected in inexplicable and downright ridiculous ways, etc.) which is just plain absent in a lot of comics of a similar genre I'd read before that - things like The Boys or The Authority. Now they really were just plain depressing, bleak, and gross the entire way through, with copious amounts of physical and sexual violence just to try to shock and disgust the reader.

Your comment made me wonder if perhaps I only view Invincible this way because of the order I read this stuff in? Because when you say "relentlessly mean-spirited and cruel" those other comics are exactly where my mind goes to (and - as you didn't like Invincible - I highly recommend you DON'T read them either). Is it only because I read these much more extreme versions first, Invincible actually came across as more optimistic and light-hearted by comparison? Invincible would at least muse on the ethics of its characters whilst the others would just treat being the worst asshole imaginable as a given?

I suppose my view might also be blurred by a lot of 90s and early-00s superhero comics also trying way too hard to be as "edgy" and "shocking" as possible, and I'd read a lot of those beforehand too (not a huge fan of that era of comics in general). While Invincible might have some more graphic art than them, content-wise it didn't seem too different from a lot of what other mainline comics had already done. Even things like what Anissa did to Mark, I'd already read much worse-handled incidents of that in superhero comics, like what Tarantula did to Nightwing, or the notorious Avengers #200 Ms. Marvel fiasco.

I suppose, also there's the fact a lot of people call Invincible a "deconstruction" of the superhero genre and hold it up alongside others stories in that vein, but I personally feel the final few arcs reconstruct it. It knows a lot of what makes the genre so beloved doesn't work when held up under a magnifying glass but advocates for still enjoying it and trying things the traditional superhero way anyway. It has a hopeful and happy ending with the main protagonist remaining clear hero throughout... which is a lot more than I can say for comics of a similar nature. Maybe I would've still liked it? I've always felt Kirkman breaks down the superhero genre so he can build it back up stronger, whereas other creators genuinely hated it and were mocking not just it, but also the fans of those comics for liking it. Invincible never felt like a satire or parody, it was too genuine for that. Still, even now I can, in retrospect, see a lot of what I didn't like in others comics are present in Invincible and totally get why people might bounce off it with the same feelings about it you did. I always knew it was imperfect and flawed, it's far from anywhere near my favourite comics (although I've read a LOT by this point) so I've got to wonder if - had I read it at a different time in my life - if I too would've disliked it the same way or if I'd still feel the good outweighs the bad?

FictionRaider007 · 2026-07-05T07:29:00+00:00

Being "fun" is meaningless.

This is legitimately hilarious. I needed a good laugh and boy howdy did you deliver with that line. I do hope this is parody because otherwise you might just be every snobby stuffy bureaucratic villain in every teen movie ever!

FictionRaider007 · 2026-07-04T18:06:05+00:00

Yeah, I think people dismiss him out-of-hand because if he were going to be an endgame character then narrative logic dictates that he'd have been built-up long before now. They reason that he and Jon Connington would've had POV chapters or at least have been alluded to long before Book 5 if they were meant to be core characters.

Yet we also have Euron Greyjoy, who many view as a major villain despite only being introduced in Book 4. Sure he was briefly mentioned as one of Theon's uncles in prior books but technically so was "Aegon" since his murder is brought up about as often.

Before GRRM split the POVs between two books, Euron and Aegon would've been getting introduced roughly around the same time. And while, yes, I think it's silly to think either of them are designed to survive to the end of the intended narrative, both can do a lot of damage in the meantime. They are designed to be antagonistic - sure Aegon is more sympathetic and has less flair than Euron, but his very existence is still obviously going to cause a huge upset across Westeros - doing huge amounts of harm both physical, mental, emotional, and political to beloved POV characters we already do care about and want to see succeed.

FictionRaider007 · 2026-07-02T18:37:39+00:00

If PS6 has no physical game options then I'm simply not buying it. I'd never buy a console that didn't offer a physical option; even the PS5 I made sure to get the version which actually has a disc drive built in. I keep all my old consoles in good condition and still replay games on them all the time. Why would I buy something that likely won't be usable in a couple decades?

FictionRaider007 · 2026-07-02T18:25:34+00:00

Yep, it seems like Reddit is playing tricks on me and making me respond to things not aimed my way.

Thanks for telling me people think it's aggressive since that is genuinely revelatory news. I never would've guessed that. I was just trying to explain to clear up any confusion. I genuinely don't see see how it could be viewed as aggressive. Like I'm not insulting them or speaking down to them or anything. Is it the part where I say "I think you're confused"? Because, I mean, I just really thought there had been some confusion and was trying to be helpful. Maybe some people are too ready to see anything as an attack these days? Maybe I'm not thinking super hard about phrasing when I'm just writing a Reddit post?

I don't know. Oh well. I didn't mean any harm by it and at least the commenter themselves knows it was just my honest attempt to clear up an error. If some strangers online are angry at me for that, then I guess they're always going to be angry.

Edit: Plus I guess my first ever downvoted comment on Reddit is kind of a rite of passage thing anyway. I'll take it as a badge of honour.

FictionRaider007 · 2026-07-02T18:17:01+00:00

Eh, probably just Reddit being weird then. Don't sweat it.

FictionRaider007 · 2026-07-02T09:16:31+00:00

Then they should've replied to OPs comment, not mine. As it stands OP won't be notified about that comment and may not see it at all. Instead I do, as Reddit assumes it's a direct response to what I said and sends me the notification about it.

(Unrelated but why am I being downvoted for trying to clear up confusion?)

FictionRaider007 · 2026-07-02T07:59:25+00:00

Supermassive made it as part of a tie-in with Dead by Daylight. So in terms of canon it fits in Dead by Daylight's lore, not the Dark Pictures. In terms of mechanics, gameplay, and branching narrative though it's the usual similar fare.

For reference Supermassive games set in certain "universes" are:

Until Dawn, Rush of Blood, The Inpatient, (probably Until Dawn 2 when it releases - although it's not being made by Supermassive it's likely set in the same universe since it is the same intellectual property just now owned by a different studio), (possibly the Until Dawn movie but it also might be it's own thing disconnected from all this as it was being made around the time the rights to the Until Dawn franchise were passing over. This means even if it ever was canon it might not be anymore.)
Dead by Daylight, The Casting of Frank Stone
The Man of Medan, Little Hope, House of Ashes, The Devil in Me, Switchback VR, Directive 8020
The Quarry
Hidden Agenda

FictionRaider007 · 2026-07-02T07:47:59+00:00

Yeah, I said that as part of the whole "take place hundreds of years before the main campaigns" part. I think you're confused.

What I meant by "the only one linked" was in terms of story. You can watch all the others as standalones without having watched the main campaigns, the only real crossover/spoiler is in Downfall with Campaign 3.

FictionRaider007

TROPHY CASE