Popular comics community scans_daily has been suspended by livejournal.

Scans_daily, a popular comics community has which has been around for roughly five years, was suspended yesterday. The community was a place to post scans. No more than half the comic was allowed to be posted, and the purpose was to promote and discuss comics. Creators would frequent it, Warren Ellis and Gail Simone being the most prominent.

The community is notable for being friendly to slash (gay pairings in fiction) and female comic fans. The tone was often satirical, and some saw it as negative. It was supposed to be a place for any comic fan to find people to talk too, hence the motto “Scans_daily- it’s never just you.” The other motto was “Scans_daily: Have you had your crack today?”

The suspension appears to have started because of spoilers to Peter David’s X Factor #40 being posted. Peter David, having never heard of Scans_daily (which is fairly odd, since he had a huge fanbase there for his work on Young Justice) contacted Marvel’s legal department. However, he claims the scans were removed before Marvel did anything, and suspects Photobucket being responsible for the community’s suspension.

This is all expanded on his blog: here

He has gotten over 200 comments in reply so far. The moderators of the community do not support angry comments at Peter and Kathy David and have reprimanded members.

Moderater schmevil informed members of the situation on her livejournal. Ironically, she also reports in comments that the community was working on changing the rules right before the incident happened, and were going to announce these changes next week, which included lowering the acceptable page limit.

A subsequent post is available here.

The community has set up back ups in the form of noscans_daily
which is a place for comic discussions without scans.

Also, a “Scans_daily 2.0″ was made as a back up community

There is a possibility the moderators will be able to convince Livejournal to restore the origional community, though odds are uncertain.

Gail Simone extended her sympathies and support to scans_daily on her forum at comic book resources:

The truth is, there are only a handful of comics websites that aren’t run (and sometimes very heavily edited) by vested interests, like a publisher, where a sizable number of comics readers can go and share their enthusiasm about a title with a large enough audience to actually make a difference. There was a lot of dedication there, a lot of fascinating material. Yes, there was snark. Yes, some issues were panned. Who cares? The site was very heavily weighted towards books the posters really enjoyed, and served as a sample taste for many new readers. I myself have ended up buying several Marvel books in particular that I otherwise wouldn’t have even stopped to look at.

[...]

I propose a potential solution. I think, if S-D rebuilds, and I hope they do, I suggest that they make it part of the rules that if a creator or publisher objects to a particular post as being too spoiler-y, that the poster be given the choice to either modify or delete the offending posts. I would be very surprised if more than a tiny handful of creators took advantage of such a resource, but it would certainly show goodwill and I’m sure many skeptical creators would appreciate it. They might be brought more into the process. It’s not Draconian, it’s merely good faith cooperation. A creator might ask for a page to be removed. Surely that’s better than having the site nuked over a single post?

I have spoken with some S-D mods and the thing that I felt is undeniable is that they DO respect the creators and sincerely believe that what they are doing isn’t hurtful. That they self-imposed their own ethical guidelines and rigorously enforce them speaks volumes.

These people are not the enemy. They’re the good guys, and the alternative is SO much worse. You think what S-D is bad?

Watch and see what pops up in its place.

I hope that S-D regroups and continues to promote good comics. They will have my support, such as it is, when they do so.

The source of the quote is here.

Objective reporting to the side, I personally agree with Ms. Simone. I don’t know if I would have ever gotten into comics without scans_daily as an aid. It got me to buy many a comic, including, ironically, Peter David’s Young Justice and Supergirl. I also found it a fun and vibrant community to hang out in, and had lots of good times. Not to mention all the amazing people I’ve met here.

I hope scans_daily is restored, and regroups, and I shake my head at the people kicking it when it’s down. I’m of the belief scans_daily helped the comics industry far more than it ever hurt it. And the comics industry needs all the help it can get.