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[Link] The Bench [Date] 6/8/00 [Comments] 
Remember when I told you about a little side project to Penny Arcade called "The Bench?" Well, those of you that liked Penny Arcade probably know that The Bench has been fully developed into an independent organism by its original authors. Now it has its own domain name, and all comics are submitted by the readers. There is even a highly automated system for accepting submissions. The basic concept remains the same: A guy and a squirrel and a bench, develop it however you want. It's a pretty rarified concept; how many submissions could there be? How about two thousand so far and still growing rapidly? The sheer enormity of this collection is its surprising drawback, because you have to view it a page at a time, which takes a while. There's a wide variety in the quality of the work. There's a lot of crap, fawning references to the Penny Arcade universe or gags dependent on already-stale current events, but there's also a good number of pieces of timeless genius, or at least creative uses of paintshop. With a T1 or better connection this huge archive can be an entertaining project to complete. Update 4/19/01Recently vanished off the net for lack of a human host (somebody to maintain the huge archive of strips, accept new submissions, and pay for the immense disk space and traffic required), I am not sure when this will be coming back. The Bench was a much beloved institution; I can't believe that there isn't somebody among its collective fans who won't pick it up!
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