Comics.com Down for Second Day in a Row
This is the second day in a row when United Media’s websites are down completely. Among these websites we can count unitedmedia.com, snoopy.com and comics.com.
Comics.com is the website where you can read for free comics like: 9 Chickweed Lane, Agnes, Alley Oop, Andy Capp, Get Fuzzy, Pearls Before Swine and Luann. For the first time online on 15 December 1998, Comics.com (or maybe just the admins) has a reputation of server and website problems.
The website cannot be reached since yesterday although the newsletter has been sent, but without any images being shown. This problem seems to be a serious one, with an increasing number of people complaining about it and the lack of a notice page does nothing to help with the situation.
Sometimes bad things happen but it is a decent thing to display a notice page for your visitors.
- THIS POST WAS WRITTEN BY:
- Mihai Andrici
This is the only comment about Comics.com site being down. I think it is stranger yet that no one else is making any comment.
Tom
Well, I hope they get it all figured out soon. I quite like reading my comics… No newsletter was sent today.
Actually, I just got it. A lot later than I normally get it, but still no pictures…
This has kind of screwed up my mornings. You would think they would at least stick a “sorry, servers have exploded” message on some other server and pointed their domains at it. It’s not that hard to do.
I want my comics.com!
Comics.com has been down for at least two days here.
I also noted that the comments section for 9 Chickweed Lane had been offline for a while. Always a good place to go to giggle at people for whom the strip seemed to be more like real life than real life.
As with all these things, the people in charge seem to think that constant upgrades and more, and more, Flash and Java are what the masses want. That and a load of adverts that, personally, I avoid.
Maybe that’s the problem? The business model for sites like Comics.com needs us to be so excited by Flash and Java that we take notice of the adverts for stuff we don’t need, or don’t want?
I’m just glad I found something out. This is the only news I’ve heard about it so far.
This is pretty bad, but I think comics.com track record is still a lot better than dailyink.com’s.
Can’t say I am surprised.
When that site was redesigned not long ago they created this behemoth with pop-ups on top of other pop-ups. It’s a nightmare to navigate without constantly having to cancel ads that you accidentally roll over. And the site loads Forever if the server is slow for some reason.
May be they’ll learn something from this and simplify the structure from the layout-on-acid that it is now.
I just found this spot today. Have wondered why I can’t get comics.com to come up. Hope things work out. I miss Rose is Rose to start my day!
I miss comics.com too, but there are other sites where one can get their favorite comics (just google for the comic you want). Some of my favorites are yahoo, seattlepi, ucomics… BTW I rarely ever have problems with popups – using Firefox 3 does an excellent job of blocking them
how much do you wanna bet that it will come backup as a pay only site
that seems to be the going trend
Yeah, I’m missing Pearls Before Swine. It’s a daily read for me.
I was able to track part f it to failed nameservers – you can “sort of” reach the website if you go directly to http://64.58.142.26, but the images are all linked via name, so about all you can see are comments.
A few of the comics also have images hosted at the Houston Chronicle (chron.com), but not many of the sunday installments.
Google isn’t going to help you for most strips as they’re all linked back to comics.com. I’ve looked at several different papers for Pearls Before Swine and Rudy Park and the comics just ain’t there folks.
If United Features does something like mycomicspage.com where you pay $10 a year to access their ‘toons, I’m cool with that. The artists have got to get paid somehow other than hoping you’ll buy a dozen t-shirts. Now if they want $5 a month or something, that’s just outrageous, but under a dollar a month for access to hundreds of cartoons per day sounds reasonable.
The newspapers are all moving towards subscription based access, and since your monthly internet bill is only going to the profits of your carrier, not to the providers of content, some of your money is going to need to start going to the people making the stuff you look at. The big media groups screwed the pooch on this one when they decided to utterly destroy the Napster community instead of figuring out how to collect a small amount of money from everyone and using that to pay artists. Instead they’re still suing people for hundreds of thousands of dollars for sharing a couple of records. It’s insanity.
Sorry for the rant. I get grumpy when I don’t get to read all my funnies every day.
I saw this coming when Comics.com went to free content. I like free stuff too, but I’m a firm believer that you get what you pay for. I wonder who’s supposed to be paying for server maintenance.
The comments section of 9CWL was closed by cartoonist request after a major battle among some of the regular posters some time during the last “Monty” story arc.
I don’t mind advertising and a few pop-ups (which, except for NetFlix for some reason, can be stopped with a blocker) if it means I can get free daily comics. I love Comics.com and Ucomics.com and even KingFeatures.com (even though they don’t have a lot of content) among other sites.
But… I go along with the notion that there could have been some word sent by the site that they were down. I miss my daily newsletter–okay, not the newsletter, but the pictures within
)–and my Dilbert, which has not sent any newsletters in the past few days.
I hope it returns soon!!
I’m going through withdrawals. I’m glad others feel my pain. I hope they have it fixed no later than 5 a.m. Tuesday like the San Francisco Bay Bridge.
Living in Los Angeles, I can get two papers. But they, and gocomics.com do not have some I can’t get anywhere else. Nancy, for example. I checked a few newspaper sites, and Over the Hedge didn’t come on those either.
Alas, it’s all a function of the breakdown of manners and civilization. Plainly, Comics.com didn’t have the manners to make a tiny announcement to searchers. It’s greed, pure and simple. Otherwise, they’d have made the tiny effort to get an announcement out to people who go to the site.
Thank God I’m not crazy, been thinking google and my computer needed fixing
I to look forward to the morning comics and do miss them. Thanks for the info
hope they fix it soon.
Yahoo groups have been discussing this as well. Some of the comics you just can’t get anywhere else, such as Pibgorn, which is too racy for papers.
If comics.com is down, that means the artists can’t be paid their shillings for posting their art there and they cannot sell merchandise, which has to be their major source of profit.
I agree with one poster above. For a pile of comics, $10/yr is not too much to ask, but $5 a month sure is. Some of the comics are covered at gocomics.com, but not most of them.
Strange how some graphic artists manage to survive on their own without comics.com or another syndicate. Sheldon is a good example, as is Schlock Mercenary.
Well, there is no DNS entry for comics.com anymore! Curious. Day three for me. Just checked and unitedmedia.com and dilbert.com are up (although dilbert.com says coming soon on all the daily comics on the home page) but comics.com and snoopy.com are down (No DNS entries.) Dilbert widget in iGoogle only shows comics from Friday. I am starting to have comic withdraws.
Many of the comics.com strips can be found at http://www.unitedfeatures.com/?title=C:Comics. Specifically, Dilbert, Nancy, Over the Hedge, Pearls Before Swine, Rudy Park, to list just the ones I’ve seen mentioned here.
The bad news – the United Features site doesn’t have the current Sunday strip. AFAIK, they only carry the current dailys. They DO have some old Sunday strips (“Sunday samples”), but that doesn’t do us any good.
http://www.creators.com/comics/cat-seeall.html is another place to look for comics. IF you can find the strip you want, the good news is creators.com seems to carry the Sunday strips. The bad news is they don’t have many of Dilbert, Nancy, Over the Hedge, Pearls Before Swine, Rudy Park, et cetera.
The Houston Chronicle site, http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComics.mpl, has already been mentioned as a source.
I noticed this yesterday morning. Like Ray Peltzer, I quickly tracked it down to a domain issue. Backbone providers can’t even figure out where the nameserver is supposed to be, according to those providers’ own tools. It still shows up in whois, though, so the domain’s valid but doesn’t point anywhere. Somebody really screwed up. Like others, I’ve also found it very surprising that there’s almost no available news about this. You’d think the total failure of such a high-profile site would get more attention.
*peers deeply into lamb entrails*
“Heads will roll over this one.”
*uses entrails to make a fresh haggis*
The Comics.com servers ARE NOT DOWN; thank to Ray Pelzer for pointing this out. As others have mentioned, there is a DNS problem, meaning that no longer (at least temporarily) can your browser find the comics.com servers when given an address such as comics.com. For the technically inclined, I have found that 64.58.142.223 is that IP of “assets.comics.com” and again 64.58.142.26 is the IP of “comics.com.” For windows users, a simple edit to your hosts file (c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts) with both the above addresses will allow you to get to a working comics.com in your browser. Note: the hosts file is protected and you will have to edit it with administrative privileges (try Run As…). Edit the hosts file with your favorite text editor (notepad will do, “edit” works if you’re on the command line); there are instructions in the hosts file. Lastly for good measure, after editing your hosts file, close your browser and run “ipconfig /flushdns” from the command line. Remember, after comics.com resolves this DNS issue (note that it may not be a problem they caused), you’ll need to undo the editing of your hosts file, otherwise you’ll eventually find yourself unable to get to comics.com. If you’re not technically inclined, try to find someone who is to do the above modifications or at least be very conservative; doing something wrong with the hosts file could easily lead to problems with you computer.
Maybe comics.com let their domain name lapse…
@ComicGeek: Thanks! That did the trick, I couldn’t find the IP addresses for assets.comics.com – care to share how you found them?
@Comic Geek – 64.58.142.223 is 404 for me. Any ideas what I might be doing wrong? FWIW, 64.58.142.26 does work for me, in that it gets me to the comics.com home page.
Darn, sorry about the typos above, obviously I proofread too fast
For you Mac users, here is a page to help you work with your hosts file:
http://decoding.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/how-to-edit-the-hosts-file-in-mac-os-x-leopard/
I also wanted to respond to Fred’s post:
The problem right now is that your browser cannot find the server(s) holding the comics.com stuff. Thus, a “sorry” or “we’re having problems” page simply wouldn’t be useful, because unless you follow my instructions above, you won’t be able to see it either.
@ John: I was searching google for a bit until someone reminded me of a site I already had in my favorites: netcraft.com. They keep a history of what IPs sites have used.
@ Elliott: Don’t bother going to 64.58.142.223 in your browser; you have to completely follow my directions above, and then put comics.com in your browser’s url bar.
@Comic Geek: I’ll have to add that one to my bag of tricks at work. Thanks again.
This is a comment collected from comments on a competing comics website.
*The CdotC homepage can be accessed, but there’s no content on it except for a few ads. *
That’s actually really bad news …
It means their physical servers are running but the DNS servers aren’t pointing to their address. Since it’s just them that implies this is likely not their original IP address (which CdotC still points to) — most likely the changed service providers over the long weekend without co-ordinating a DNS update (service providers each own unique blocks of IP addresses that they assign to clients), and thus they can’t change back — the old IP belongs to their old provider — and can’t post a note about it because their servers aren’t at that address any more. They won’t be able to fix it without going though the separate DNS registration services — which could be closed for the holiday (and is no longer centralized, so they may be having trouble finding who to contact if their tech support is as unsavvy as all this implies in the first place).
The Morseman comment about 9 Chickweed Lane comments being unavailable for weeks before is a separate issue. The author of 9CWL had CdotC block them due to excessive trollism and violation of copyright by one person stealing the strips, changing the dialog to be insulting and pornographic, posting it elsewhere on the web, and commenting on it with pointers to his inane efforts.
Piggy Lew commented about strips not in print not available elsewhere, like Pibgorn. Note that Pibgorn is not on CdotC. It is on GoComics.com. There is no problem with Pibgorn or any other GoComics web page. They are all up and working fine.
Jeff Darcy has it. Apparently CdotC did not properly coordinate in advance some change, and the DNS servers do not have the info needed to point CdodC requests to the proper place.
But The Old Wolf has it best of all. The only solution is fresh haggis. If you have the guts to try it.
@Comic Geek – Thanks!
FWIW, about an hour ago I posted a comment here with links to some alternate sources for some of the strips found at comics.com. For me, my comment is still showing up at “Your comment is awaiting moderation”, possibly due to the links I included.
OK, to try to get around that, you can find Dilbert, Nancy, Over the Hedge, Pearls Before Swine and Rudy Park (to list the strips I’ve seen mentioned here) and many other comics.com strips by Googling for “UFS Feature Bank”, then selecting “Comics”. The bad news is that this site doesn’t have the current Sunday strips, only the current dailies and some sample old Sunday strips.
Another source can be found by Googling for “Creators Syndicate” then selecting “Comics”. This site apparently DOES have Sunday strips. What it DOESN’T have is any of the strips I mentioned above, or many more of my favorites. (It might have some of your favorites, though.)
Thank-you Comic Geek! I popped it right into my Firewall machine and up it comes.
The pages and images are still available, but the DNS is down. The pages are at 64.58.142.26 (comics.com), and the images are at 64.58.142.223 (assets.comics.com). Add these two lines …
64.58.142.26 comics.com http://www.comics.com
64.58.142.223 assets.comics.com
to your /etc/hosts or c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file, and the pages should load fine.
Thank you for providing the IP to assets.comics.com. I just converted “9 Chickweed Lane: An Unofficial Reference” (http://image66amarillo.com/9cwl/) to IP-based links rather than DNS-based, and the CdotC content is once again available.
Comics Geek – Thanks again!
patrick – Thanks for your comment as well!
Had some problems at first, but I did in a reboot (on general principles) and afterwards everything is working fine.
Thanks Comic Geek and patrick
Comics.com is still down — hopefully they address this soon, I sent an email to the contact “service@comics.com” address but of course got this returned back to me — It’s good to know other people are complaining/noticing!
Bill, if this is indeed a DNS problem, email to “service@comics.com” is just as dead as “http://comics.com”. Try sending your complaint to “service@64.58.142.26″.
I miss my daily and sunday comics. I get the email daily to access my favorite comic and it doesn’t access it. Hope comics.com gets fixed SOON.
Third day (MON, 9-7, 3:37 AM PST)
Grateful to have found this info . . . was gone for long holiday weekend and first thought was that my housesitter had done something to my computer — glad to know that’s not the case, and good to have an answer and know that it’s not just me. I did google LuAnn and got a few other places to view the strip (albeit not in color and without the comments of the forum regulars), but at least I could catch up and see that the story arc has changed.
I’m guessing that they might be going to a pay to play site, too . . . it will be interesting to see — it would control some of the forum traffic (a good thing). Thanks for the information and the comments.
Comic Geek and Patrick: thanks for the advice, that works very well and now I can get caught up on some of comics!!
Yeah, I too missed my favorites at first. Luann, daily comic, and Rose Is Rose.
But I found them in the paper. Yup, sure enough, there they are, plain as day, right here in the Arizona Republic. But I was surprised. Didn’t need them as much anymore,now, I guess.
Yep, it looks like only their DNS servers are failing. According to OpenDNS stats, there are 2 nameservers down. Must be their provider problems.
Seems they forgot rule #1 of DNS servers: DO NOT PUT THEM ON THE SAME NETWORK!!! Microsoft learned that one the hard way.
I’ve had a nice little exchange with Darrin Bell (Rudy Park) and he echoed many of your thoughts about the site design. Here’s the most pertinent bit: “The problem now is they closed for labor day weekend and when the site went down, nobody was minding the store. I don’t think it’ll be up till Tuesday.”
Can someone get me the IP address for feeds.comics.com? I like to read just my favorites in my newsreader, and that one isn’t working, either. Thanks!
As of this am, Comics.com is still down. Driving me nuts.
Thanks you Comic Geek! The HOSTS edit got me going too.
horrible thought–maybe they just went bust? but then I am still getting my daily email…with images that I can’t see….
the heck with Afghanistan, health care, and stayinschoolgate–we need Bam to fix this and FAST!!!
As mentioned above, I’ve edited my C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file to add the IP address Comic Geek found.
I just noticed that I can get to the comics.com strips that I have bookmarked as “http://comics.com/whatever”, but not to the comics.com strips I have bookmarked as “http://www.comics.com/whatever”
Is this just me? Or are other seeing the same thing?
Do I need to make another edit to my hosts file?
I don’t think they went bust. The domain is still valid. The machines are still there *and being updated*. The only thing missing is some way for the rest of the internet to associate the domain with those machines. That indicates a technical, rather than business, failure.
@ Bill & AmriloJim: I would hope that they’ve noticed their traffic logs show almost zero activity! But I guess an email wouldn’t hurt.
@ Jeremy: I used the IP history logs at netcraft.com, but they don’t have much information for “feeds.comics.com,” sorry. You might try adding an additional line in your hosts file for feeds.comics.com and then using one of the IPs for comics.com or assets.comics.com. Let us know whether or not you got it to work. Otherwise, can anyone else find the IP of feeds.comics.com (and then tell me how you did it
@ Elliott: I noticed this last night, sorry, I should have added another post. It seems that http://www.comics.com should resolve to the same IP as comics.com, so just add a line in your hosts file for http://www.comics.com and use 64.58.142.26 again.
NOTICE: softsailor is trying to be smart by adding “http://” to some of the addresses in my post. When editing your hosts file, do not include the “http://”
I subscribed to Comics.com when it was a pay site, and I would gladly go back to paying if it meant getting a reliable site. The day they became a free site, I signed up to have my favorites E-mailed to me. A couple of weeks later, I got the E-mail for exactly two days. Nothing since then. I sent a couple of E-mails about it, but never got a response. I got around the problem by putting their site on a homepage tab, but their site has never been very reliable, so I wasn’t surprised at first when it went down.
What does surprise me is the lack of media coverage or communication. No press release, no mention on United Media’s (the parent company) site, and apparently no mention in their newsletter (as if I’d ever gotten a newsletter.) When it comes back, there will probably be no explanation or apology. Since it’s a free site, I guess they don’t feel any sense of responsibility to their readers.
Thanks for the info RE Comics.com and why I am no longer receiving my beloved morning Get Fuzzy comic.
I must say I don’t at all understand how to edit the “hosts” file.
Got this when I tried going there today (using OpenDNS)
Nameserver trace for comics.com:
* Looking for who is responsible for root zone and followed a.root-servers.net.
* Looking for who is responsible for com and followed m.gtld-servers.net.
* Looking for who is responsible for comics.com and followed umns3.unitedmedia.com.
Nameservers for comics.com:
* umns3.unitedmedia.com returned (SERVFAIL)
* umns5.unitedmedia.com returned (SERVFAIL)
Hope those two NameServers get fixwd SOON!
I found this site through Yahoo.Answers. I’m so glad I found this information! I have thought I was going crazy for the past three days. Day three here for me of getting blank daily e-mails. I tried sending an e-mail to customer service and it got bounced back. I also tried what was suggested above, sending an e-mail to: service@64.58.142.26 and I got the error: (after RCPT TO): 553 sorry, that domain isn’t in my list of allowed rcpthosts (#5.7.1)
I’m so not a computer geek so the instructions above about how to get to the site using IP address doesn’t work for me, and I’m afraid to screw up my computer. I sure hope that they are not defunct and that it is only the DNS error and because of the holiday that is why they have not fixed it.
It is unacceptable in this day and age to have DNS servers fail for an entire weekend, and claim “its a holiday weekend” as an excuse for not getting it fixed in a timely manner.
Both of those DNS servers are on the same network. They probably have a network issue, making both of them unavailable. You NEVER, EVER put your DNS servers on the same network, behind the same firewall, etc.
Argh… SoftSailor seems to have swallowed one of my posts; here’s a recap.
I’d find it hard to believe that Comics.com hasn’t noticed their site activity drop to nearly zero; I’d guess that the delay is due to the holiday weekend. I wouldn’t bother emailing them, though I guess it doesn’t hurt.
@ Jeremy: Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find an IP for “feeds.comics.com”. You could try following my directions above, and then add an additional line in your hosts file for “feeds.comics.com” but use one of the IPs for “comics.com” or “assets.comics.com”, (if you try this, please let us know whether it worked or not). Otherwise, can anyone else find the IP to “feeds.comics.com” (and let me know how you did it
?
@ Elliott: I noticed this too; I should have posted earlier, sorry. It seems that “www.comics.com” should resolve to the same IP as “comics.com”, so yes, add another line to your hosts file for “www.comics.com” and use 64.58.142.26 again.
Lastly, my 9:10 post today referred to the post that got swallowed, but it may or may not apply to this one as well.
Comics.com appears to be back up… at least to this viewer in Amarillo TX whose WIMAX modem insists he’s actually in Kirkland WA.
If you copy and paste this address you will get to comics.com. http://64.58.142.26 I have looked at Alley Oop today and took up where i had left off in Oct. of 2003. It works fine. -irby
Its up for me!
Yep, it’s back up for me here in Michigan.
Currently:
comics.com 64.58.142.26
http://www.comics.com 64.58.142.26
assets.comics.com 64.58.142.223
feeds.comics.com 74.125.43.121
Cheers everyone, make sure to undo the editing in your host file!
Back up for me now too – I’m in Michigan. I also just got a response from service@comics.com
Please Note: We have been upgrading our email system so there may be interruptions with your daily email. We are aware of the problem and will shake the bugs out of the system shortly. Thanks for your patience
Well, jeez, if this was planned, they could have TOLD us about it in advance.
I emailed their customer support and this was in the first part of the email.
This is an automated response from Comics.com
Please Note: We have been upgrading our email system so there may be interruptions with your daily email. We are aware of the problem and will shake the bugs out of the system shortly. Thanks for your patience
Thanks for Writing In!
Seems like it’s working again for me. The images just showed up in the email from Sept 5
I appreciate if the Comics.com staff, could give us a notice, because without this site it is not possible (laughs!). I miss Monty, Wizard of Iz, Dilbert, etc
thanks
Alvaro
It’s back up but running like a slug. I’m trying to review my favorite strips but the site keeps locking up.
Does anyone else get a javascript error when loading the page? I’ve been getting it for a couple of weeks now. Don’t know if it’s a pop-up trying to override Firefox or what.
Thanx Comic Geek for the “hosts” entries. I’m on my own laptop, so I was able to edit using Notepad without admin-related issues. They work like a charm. Thanx again, CG! Recommendation: make a backup copy of the file before you edit.
On a side note: Comics.com’s troubles did not just start this weekend. In the last 1-2 months, I have been getting my e-mails about 2-3 times a week. Accessing the site has also been like rolling the dice.
I guess the haggis fix worked eh?
Tuesday Morning 9-8-09 8:00 a.m. Pacific daylight time. Welcome back Comics.com. You are back on line. Hurrah! Now my day can begin.
It’s back up today (9/8/09)!! Great!
By the way, just for those interested, I left my hosts file entries alone on one computer and the old IP addresses still work. Of course, the old server isn’t being updated, but it’s sorta interesting that it’s still online. I guess they (or the provider folks involved) don’t need to redeploy their spare capacity!
So to end the week comics.com has not updated from 9-10 yet (5:33pm EDT).
Alan, I’m not sure what the problem is at your end, but comics.com is working, and updating, fine for me. I’m looking at the Friday 11 Sep 2009 “Pearls Before Swine” as I type this. And I’m sure it’s today’s strip – when I click on the magnifying glass to zoom (expand) the strip, I can read the copyright date, and it’s today – 9/11/2009.
Did you make the changes Comic Geek and patrick suggested earlier in the thread, and then forget to back them out again once comics.com came up?
Everything was fine on Monday Sept 7. Can’t even remember if there were new strips on Friday but now it’s Sat. Sept 12, and all the strips are stuck back on Thursday. You can’t even post a comment. When I asked God to give me patience I wasn’t expecting this!
Oh I forgot to add, I did not change my PC settings too complicated I just waited out the first difficulty and as I said everything was fine on Monday Sept 7, even could go back and see the strips I missed. But today, same O, same O.
Nothing working on comics.com again. And I totally agree with the other folks that have mentioned how awful and slow the site is at the best of times. I have no idea why they moved away from the charging model – it has been a total disaster.
However, thanks to the chap that 9 Chickweed Lane archive (http://image66amarillo.com/9cwl/) – it’s great!!
At around 8:00pm EDT on Friday the site updated for me. I not only did not make the changes to my registry (didn’t understand how to edit), I tried with Pearls to see the strip by inserting the date and got a 404. Another odd thing I noticed was that on Monday when it finally snapped out of its DNS funk one of the regular strips I read (can’t remember which at the moment) was actually updated INTO THE FUTURE! and was available through the 10th on the 7th.
Mornin’,
Well, here it is 2/15/10 and this site still is more often screwed up than it’s not. I use the “Seattle Post Intelligencer” for most all of my comics and it is great. But for ‘Brevity’ and ‘Rose is Rose’ I have to use Comics.com but what a slow moving and/or inoperative drag!
Well, hope we can all hang in there.
Mike