R.I.P. Modern Tales, by the way...

[Bustertheclown]

End of an era? I recently wanted to look at one of my favorite comics of all time, Ballad, and when I clicked on the bookmark, it brought me to the epitaph page of Modern Tales. I guess there's no archives left at all, which makes me extra sad. A lot of good comics have been lost in the aether with the site's demise. Ballad's near-total disappearance from the internet is especially stinging to me.

[McDuffies]

Aw man. I knew that GraphicSmash went under some time ago, didn't know that Modern Tales was going with it.
I think this may perhaps symbolize the final end of the ear of big hub sites and complete domination of smaller sites owned by one or a few creators.
I'm bummed about absence of GS's Flick. There are some episodes on author's WebcomicNation site, but as far as I remember, that's only a small part of the archive. And you can imagine for hard it is to google a comic with such name.

[Terotrous]

Well, you should try contacting the author. They probably still have their work, they could upload it somewhere else.

[Bustertheclown]

deadmouse seems to have disappeared from the internet, to be replaced in google searches by the ubiquitous EDM personality, deadmau5. He used to have a website, but that's gone, too. That's the thing about working under a pseudonym. Makes it hard to track a person down when they want to disappear. This particular fellow has always come off as pretty slippery and mysterious, as it is. I think my better hope is going to be in seeing whether someone, somewhere, had just downloaded all the pages for their own personal digital collection. There seems to be a link on Amazon.co.uk to a French published version of the comic, but that seems like a bit of a tenuous lead.

Anyway, I think you're right, McDuffies. The landscape has certainly changed for webcomics. Hub sites might have been necessary or convenient years ago, but they've grown obsolete.

[McDuffies]

deadmouse seems to have disappeared from the internet, to be replaced in google searches by the ubiquitous EDM personality, deadmau5. He used to have a website, but that's gone, too. That's the thing about working under a pseudonym. Makes it hard to track a person down when they want to disappear. This particular fellow has always come off as pretty slippery and mysterious, as it is. I think my better hope is going to be in seeing whether someone, somewhere, had just downloaded all the pages for their own personal digital collection. There seems to be a link on Amazon.co.uk to a French published version of the comic, but that seems like a bit of a tenuous lead.

Anyway, I think you're right, McDuffies. The landscape has certainly changed for webcomics. Hub sites might have been necessary or convenient years ago, but they've grown obsolete.

If by hub you mean a site that points to comics hosted in various places, which is how I mostly use the term, then they are actually working pretty fine, it's hosts that are dying. Hosting seems to be even easier to get a hold on and there's a great variety of updating software so people don't go to dedicated webcomic hosts no more, but eventually every comic joins some hub site for cross-promotional purpose. I see sites that feature up to ten comics all the time, and nice thing is that those sites are usually thematically or stylistically linked.
Big hosts that still exist are the lo-fi variery like us or SJ, the kind of sites that are handy for people who just want to dip their toe in.

Well, you should try contacting the author. They probably still have their work, they could upload it somewhere else.

Too... lazy...