Comic Genesis

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Comic Genesis

Type of Company	Private
Founded	2000
Headquarters	Cresbard, South Dakota Temple City, California
Key people	Chris Crosby
Industry	Webcomics
Products	Comic Books
Employees	0(7 volunteers)
Website	http://comicgenesis.com

Comic Genesis (formerly Keenspace) is a free hosting provider for webcomics. It is a service of Keenspot, which covers hosting costs.

1 Services
2 Free Comic Book Day
3 History
4 Misconceptions
5 External links
- 5.1 Communities

[edit] Services

In exchange for the placement of advertisements, Comic Genesis provides automatic updating tools, a free .comicgenesis.com domain, free domain hosting after a third-party registration, a free message board for hosted comics, and community/support in the form of an active forum. It is also supported by a group of volunteer administrators (known as the "Space Wranglers").

Comic Genesis is widely regarded as an excellent starting ground for prospective webcomic artists, as there is no requirement to join other than having a comic to put up. This negates some of the risks of venturing into webcomics, such as hosting costs and domain registration. Many well-known webcomics started from it.

Due the extreme popularity of the site, it once suffered from frequent and often extreme down times due to bandwidth issues. While this is still often used as a criticism of the site's service, the site itself actually very rarely has any downtime recently.

[edit] Free Comic Book Day

ComicGenesis, formerly known as Keenspace have had several free comicbook days which are in print and available in most comicbook stores on Free Comic Book Day. Free comicbook day sponsor list here

[edit] History

Keenspace sampler cover, by Ewan Baird

Since its founding in July 2000 as Keenspace, Comic Genesis has undergone many technological and design upgrades. It supports the use of flash content and many image formats. It also provides nearly unlimited creative control to its users, allowing custom web templates and minimal restrictions on web content.

Official logo before the name change to Comic Genesis

In 2003, the service came under fire from its advertisement provider, Burstnet, for allowing the popular comic Ghastly's Ghastly Comic to display its advertisements while featuring a comic of Jesus having sexual intercourse with his wife. Currently, sex-themed comics on Comic Genesis do not display advertisements. In March 2005, Keenspot, concerned about brand confusion between Keenspot and Keenspace, announced a name change, for Keenspace, to Toonspace. In response to user dissatisfaction, however, Keenspot co-founder Chris Crosby opened a "New Name Deathmatch" poll on June 2, 2005 to find an alternative. The winner was Comic Genesis, and on July 19, 2005, after an announcement at ComicCon, the name change became official.

[edit] Misconceptions

Comic Genesis, along with many free hosting providers, is subject to many misconceptions.

Comic Genesis is not a breeding ground for next generation Keenspot comics. When it began, it partially existed for that reason, but Keenspot openly denies that being hosted on Comic Genesis will enhance a comic's chances of being "spotted" (a term used for being invited to join Keenspot) -- instead it is claimed that they can more easily access the web statistics. While a bulk of the comics invited to join Keenspot do come from Comic Genesis, this is because so many webcomics are hosted there.
Comic Genesis no longer hosts comics that breach copyright laws. Comics that use unoriginal characters and sprites are in violation of copyright laws, and will likely have their hosting terminated. One exception are "parody" comics, which are permitted under American fair use laws and are therefore allowed on the Comic Genesis servers. However, credit to the original must be provided.
Comic Genesis serves as a webcomic host, and does not provide services of other free web providers. It is not an image hosting service for direct image linking, a file locker, a remote backup storage facility, or a web FTP "dump site" used for storing and sharing online content.