Paleo E-books: The Legion of Net.Heroes
This is the second in my “Paleo E-books” series looking at Internet writing communities that were producing electronic literature well before “e-books” were first popularized in the late 1990s. In this entry, I will look at the Legion of Net.Heroes (and, to a lesser extent, rec.arts.comics.creative).
Like Superguy, the LNH is a shared universe centering on comic book superhero parody. However, perhaps owing to its different origin, the approach it takes is very different.
The Legion of Net.Heroes
The LNH had its genesis in April, 1992, in one of the free-wheeling discussions that took place on Usenet newsgroups (forums) at the height of its popularity. Usenet has become less active now that its place has largely been usurped by phpBBSes, blogs, and other forums, but back in the ‘90s it was the go-to place for on-line discussion of all kinds of topics—including comic books.
One day, a poster to the rec.arts.comics newsgroup corrected someone else’s spelling, declaring himself “Spelling Boy of the LSH” (Legion of Super-Heroes, a DC title about a hero team by that name). From that post, and the whimsy of other newsgroup regulars, a thread of general silliness was born as various posters created heroic (or villainous) identities patterned after themselves—members (or enemies) of a “Legion of Net.Heroes”.
Although that first thread was more random silliness than story, the seed had been planted, and it ended up germinating into a somewhat more serious system of Internet-based superhero stories—first on rec.arts.comics.misc, then moving to the newly-created alt.comics.lnh after r.a.c.m. posters complained about the story threads getting in the way of their serious discussions. Two years later, after spawning a number of separate LNH-related and non-LNH-related writing universes, the LNH and these universes would move to rec.arts.comics.creative where they continue to this day.
The Nature of the Looniverse
The LNH and Superguy have some similarities, but a number of interesting differences. I suspect these differences arise from the different way the groups were formed. The LNH grew out of a discussion between hard-core comic book fans, while Superguy (like its SFSTORY predecessor) drew members from the various, unrelated mailing lists on the BITNET network—some of whom might never have even read comic books.
The most obvious difference is that Superguy takes place in a somewhat realistic setting, modeled after the real world. However, the LNH is a more broad parody universe, in which characters are often aware of the fourth wall, dramatic conventions, and their places within the stories. It also tends to feature more direct use of comic book conventions, such as “cover pages” or “splash pages” that are described textually rather than drawn.
The LNH is set in a stylized “Looniverse”, loosely modeled after the real world but with “Internetized” names for everything—”New York” becomes “Net.York” and so on. Characters often embody some aspect of the Internet in addition to comic book tropes (for example, the first LNH villain called himself “Dr. Killfile,” after the function some Usenet reading applications have of deleting selected articles before displaying the ones the reader wants to see). Cross-dimensional journeys can sometimes take characters into some other newsgroup altogether.
I have not directly written any LNH stories (though I did have one of my Superguy series cross over with them as part of a “Grand Tour”), but I have read a number of them in the archives. As with Superguy, LNH has the same tendency to range from broad humor to serious (or at least, as serious as they can get in a “Looniverse”), and the same range in quality from nearly-incoherent to pretty good.
As they are written on the more free-form Usenet rather than a mailing list, the LNH has always seemed to me to have a more anarchic nature than Superguy in terms of series continuity relative to other series, but that could just be my outsider’s perspective. But it does seem safe to suggest that in its heyday, the LNH probably had a broader reader and writership than Superguy—a Usenet newsgroup was a lot more visible than a mailing list, especially back before use of the Web became widespread.
Other Universes
There are several different “universes” within rec.arts.comics.creative now, apart from LNH. Some of them started out on alt.comics.lnh along with the LNH, since there was no other place to post that kind of story on Usenet at the time; others sprang up once the newsgroup was formed.
Stories in different universes are usually indicated by tags at the beginning of the post’s subject line, such as [LNH], [ASH], or even [SG] for some Superguy crossposts. The different universes will have their own conventions; some are humorous, some serious, some even meant specifically for “mature” audiences (the “Acraphobe” (sic) imprint, spoofing DC’s “Vertigo” comics). They may also have their own websites or FAQs independent of LNH’s (here’s a page listing several).
As with Superguy, LNH and rec.arts.comics.creative have had some attrition as original writers found their free time taken up by other things. But there are still enough people contributing new things to keep the group alive, and more are always welcome.
Official Sites and Archives
The LNH has an official site at lnhq.info, which includes a wiki and links to archives. There is also an older information page at eyrie.org, where the archives of LNH and other fiction universes are hosted. As with Superguy, the LNH welcomes new writers as long as they are willing to spend time learning about the universe before jumping in—and these sites are where they can do just that.
The LNH’s archives are not as easily-accessible as Superguy’s; there’s no “autocollector” to pull out specific issues. They are kept organized into several categories in the LNH FTP directory on eyrie.org, rather than chronologically. And since they were posted to Usenet, all or most of the posts can be seen in their original contexts by searching on the Google Groups Usenet archive.
As with Superguy, LNH hails from the unadorned, non-graphical, ASCII-terminal era before the World Wide Web—monospace text files that hard-wrap at the end of the line. As mentioned in the Superguy post, you can use these perl scripts to unwrap them for e-book conversion (if you know how to run perl scripts). If anyone has an easier-to-use solution for people who aren’t computer geeks, it would be welcome.
The LNH/rec.arts.comics.creative is the only shared-universe Usenet group that I know of that has survived to the present day, but it was not the only one active way back when. In another installment, I will look at other Usenet writing groups from back in the day that have since mostly faded away.
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