PHWOnline

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PHWOnline (Formerly PHWComics) is a website dedicated to making comics for the Half-Life 2 community, utilizing a popular modification called Garry's Mod for the PC game Half-Life 2.

[edit] History

PHWComics

PHWComics started out with Michael K. Clements, the creator of the site, making a simple sex pose in the popular Garry's Mod source modification. That one sex pose quickly turned into the first Public Health Warning. Michael proceeded to make several more comics, and created a website to host these comics on. Thus, PHWComics was born.

Wanting to make the site better, he went on to form a team of elite comic makers to post their works on PHWComics. Michael invited lajsiiwan, creator of "Roger, Todd and the Island," and Steinmann, creator of "Geremy Tibbles." The team quickly expanded, inviting Clover, MonkeyMan, Sammo, and Waxx, creators of "Jeff," "Return of the Shepard," "Jumbo the Clown," and "Ravenholm Armory" respectively.

Unfortunately, lajsiiwan had to leave the team due to personal reasons soon after, and MonkeyMan mysteriously disappeared. After the creation of BrashFink's hugely popular comic "Apostasy", Michael invited him to the team - but BrashFink declined his offer. As hype grew over "Apostasy", Michael approached the creator once more, and this time, BrashFink happily agreed. Time went on, and John-Matrix and Major. Dump were later invited to the team, due to their works seen on the PHWComics forums. The final member to this generation's team was Lode, creator of "Afro Zombie."

Unfortunately, as yet more time past, Lode also left the PHWComics team, due to losing interest in the practice of producing comics. Sammo was kicked off the team for not producing enough content. John-Matrix also left the team for a brief period, but promptly returned, it seemed. Major. Dump was then forced to give up his staff title on the ascertion that he was not doing enough to further the website, even though he is assisting James Brandt (BrashFink) on Apostasy, doing the entire posing process as a whole, while helping out with additional script and story work. Major. Dump is now a Moderator on the forum, and his work with Apostasy remains unchanged. On September 10th, 2006, Clover announced that forum member Pryen would be posing Jeff and introduced him as a staff member in the title of his latest news post. The latest changes to happen within PHWComics is the new addition of Mjolnir82991 to the staff team, who brought his ever-popular "Kenny the Cop" series to the Comics archive. The second change being the departure of Waxx, one of the sites very first staff members, for differences between himself and the site creator, Michael.

Recently, the famous comic creator Jeff Eastman, known by the community as Clover, has resigned from comic-making[1], although he stated that he would lend his series "Jeff" to another comic creator that he appreciated. Though now it seems he has come back due to him telling everyone that he was drawn back and made another recent Jeff comic.

As of January 30, a few more comic makers have been introduced to the Comic Team. These members are: Near Elite, Spaztique, Shalroq, Happydevil, and AJ Rimmer.

The Site

PHWComics, as a whole, began to move away from the single object of comic making, or 'comicking', around the time Lode joined. They soon expanded into several new sites, including PHWRadio and PHWMovies. These two sites have both, respectively, became hits around the community, with PHWRadio offering a weekly Radio Entertainment show, hosted and presented by Robert 'Steinmann' Stoneman, and PHWMovies, producing multiple big machinmania movies within Garry's Mod, such as "SlapDash 1 & 2", and the eargly anticipated "War of the Servers". These movies are generally co-produced and directed by both Michael and Steinmann, with additional help provided by James 'Monkey-Junkie' McVinnie, the PHWMovies team, site and forum staff, and even eager community members willing to help.

In time, the site's name was eventually renamed to PHWOnline; highlighting their move away from just comics, and to a general entertainment community as a whole.

A new site design has since been created by PHW's very own graphic designer, Filipe 'StinkyJoe' Dobreira. The site's PHP backbone was since done by Josh, aka JPhantom, a new staff addition for site help - replacing the previous system administrator, 'Morpheous'.

The Forum

The PHWOnline forum has undergone many changes in its time, much like the site itself. While the forum's are controlled by the site staff members, they are also very much looked after by the dedicated team of forum Moderators. The current moderator lineup for the site is; Joseph 'Slick' Shea, Jelle 'Tomiro' van den Broek, Richele Gregory 'Zeem' van Waveren, and Richard 'MajorDump' Boisvert.

Previous Moderators for the PHWForum include the mysterious Jackson 'MonkeyMan' Wiese - after he suddenly and unnexpectidly reappeared from an 8 month absence, in which many of the members had actually considered him as deceased.

The PHWOnline forums also offer a unique insight into PHWStaff life with the special Mayor of PHW event. This usually includes a group of members putting themselves forward as candidates for the Mayor position. After each of them campaigned for the title, the community will choose their favourites over a pre-determined voting period, with, at the end, the member with the most votes being announced as the winner, and having the honour of becoming the PHWMayor for an entire month. So far, there have been just 2 elected Mayors; Shazbot and Dav0r.

In late January, two titles have made a comeback. These are the 'Approved Comic Maker' or ACM, (Good comic makers) and the 'Approved Custom Designer', or ACD for short. (Good skinners, modelers, etc)

Other forum titles available include 'Respected Member', 'PHWPlus' and even 'Banned' - for reasons you can presumably tell.