Post 4000: A Thank You to Creators, Publishers and our Loyal Readers

Ye Ed. Art: Nick Miller

This post marks our 4000th blog post since deciding to create a separate 'news feed' for our main site www.downthetubes.net.

(This blog 'feeds' into our main site and forum, presenting news from a number of contributors via Google's Blogger, in a way that simply enabled me to bring on board some fantastic writers about British comics that didn't involve complicated Content Manage Systems and other bells and whistles I don't have the technical skills - or time - to implement).

downthethetubes has been dedicated to covering British comics since 1999, back when there were few comic sites covering anything except US superheroes and their like. As you'll see from the "Blogroll" we feature, that has changed somewhat, with dedicated fans such as Steve Holland bringing us Bear Alley and Lew Stringer giving us six wonderful years of his now-on-hiatus Blimey! It's Another Blog About Comics.

Down the years, we've had contributions from many a British comics fan to the cause of promoting British comics and creators, but I'd just like to thank Jeremy Briggs in particular for his dedication and input behind the scenes on this site, quietly correcting my mangled, often perhaps too hastily written posts.

His contribution to this blog has helped build it into a blog that now gets some 40,000 visits a month.

There's still more that could be done and we (of course!) welcome contributions from others, and folk such as Matthew Badham, Norman Boyd, Ian Wheeler, Richard Sheaf, Steve Winders and others have all provided us with news items I may have quite otherwise missed if not for their support.

A big thank you has to go out to the independent creators and British comic publishers for their support of our efforts, sending us information that has all helped in our attempts to promote British comics.

I'd also like to thank those of you who have, on occasion, donated sums toward our operating costs to pay for the hosting of our main site and forum and our current sponsor, digital comics publisher Panel Nine, who saved us from going on hiatus ourselves last year.

Finally, the biggest thank you goes to you, to the most important part of this site and blog - our readers.

We publish downthetubes for the love of it more than anything else. We're grateful there are so many of you out there as dedicated to British comics as we are. Long may it continue...

See you in the funny papers,

John Freeman
4th February 2013

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