ComicBot — Your favorite webcomics in your Facebook Messenger inbox

Hi, and thanks for hunting! I love webcomics and checking for new issues has been part of my daily routines for many years. I created ComicBot to make it easy to stay up to date with your favorite webcomics and get them delivered to you, wherever you are - without the need of setting up an RSS reader. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them all :)

@shimmb Thanks for the question - and sorry for the late reply! I thought about that a lot, and it's very important to me to work with the artists to support them. ComicBot differentiates between Comics that explicitly allow republishing and those who don't. For those that don't, you'll always get a link to newest comic instead of the image, which actually drives traffic towards the artist site. For the others, ComicBot always includes a backlink to the artist site with every comic sent. In that case, it's not too different from an RSS reader.

@pmcpinto at the moment, browsing the comics only works via the mobile Facebook Messenger app :/ if you are using facebook.com or messenger.com to access ComicBot, try asking for 'comics' to see what's on offer :)

@silvio_do It doesn't work for me on the mobile app either. I just get a blank pop-up when trying to browse comics.

@allanberger ComicBot is currently also available on Telegram via @theComicBot. I'm thinking about integrating other platforms, especially Slack, but at the moment it's not a priority. Would love to hear what platforms would be the most interesting to fellow hunters though :)

@msch Thanks for the question :) After some iterations of the conversation design, I came to the conclusion that ComicBot is not about having a conversation. It's a really simple service, and being able to talk to that service does not provide any value. On the contrary, giving users the possibility to send text messages, requires them to know what to write. Taking away that possibility allows the user to focus on what is possible, instead of wondering what might be possible - and being frustrated when the bot doesn't understand the message. So while it's still early, for ComicBot, disabling the text input lead to fewer users trying out a multitude of messages exploring what they can actually do, and to more users that go directly to browsing and subscribing to comics, i.e. using ComicBot the way it's meant to be used. In that sense, I think it has paid off :)

@skagarroum Thanks for the question! It's my number one priority to work together with artists to support them and make their work more widely known and easier accessible. Some allow republishing under the Creative Commons License. For others, I have agreements with the artists to publish the comic. For the rest, ComicBot is not sending the actual strip, but a reminder with a link to the latest strip.

@__tosh Sure :) The bot is written in Node and heavily relies on the firebase database as a persistence layer. I built ComicBot as a set of microservices - processing incoming messages, sending out replies, scraping the comics or delivering new strips to subscribers. Firebase real time database offers the ability to subscribe to events in your database - which in my opinion lends itself very nicely to this set of services, as they don't have to be aware of each other, but just write and listen to what's happening in the database.

@frauklau Thanks for your interest - supporting the artists is a top priority for me! I include a link to the artist's website with every comic sent to promote their work. I think ComicBot is a great way to get new readers and make it easier to follow your comic. I'd love to work together more closely with the artists though, for instance to allow them to promote their merchandise to interested readers. That being said, there is no commercial intention. ComicBot is made by a comic fan, for comic fans and the main intention is to spread the work of artists and bring some joy straight into your messenger inbox :)

ty @phips28 it should work by now :)