Comics Kingdom Redesigned Website Goes Online

Comments ²⁰

1. Brett Mount

   I’m not one who hates change, and generally likes change just for change’s sake, but the new design and performance is atrocious.

   Did literally anyone at KFS try to load it before making it public facing?

2. Ignatz

   Ah. I was wondering what was wrong. I thought I couldn’t get in at all, but I just realized it was just taking forever to load. It’s been five minutes so far. It’s now waiting for something called “m.addthis.com.”

   What is it about websites that companies are compelled to fix them when they aren’t broken?

3. Ignatz

   Why did they do this? I used to just load all my comics and scroll down and read them. Now I have to click “Load More” four times to get them all, and each load takes a full minute. And the comics are too small, and flanked – god knows why – by these weird diagonal lines that serve no purpose, but are distracting as hell.

   They thought this was good?

4. joe keller

   terrible update: sloooow, no longer goes to favorites straight away, only gives 3 favorites at a time, did i say slow?, lost one of my favorites from my list, showed prince val on a week day, vast amount of white space – – on a tablet that is an issue, spent over 30 minutes on what would have been a 5 minute visit, my sub is up april 30, fix or i’m gone, this is a breakfast time thing, and i do not have time for this waste.

5. Bob Greeney

   I’m all for change when it includes improvements. This ‘upgrade’ has not improved anything that I can see so far. Actually, it’s been 10 minutes and I have yet to view my comics. I can conclude it must be one of two things (or both): this new design was never tested before letting it escape (it wasn’t released), or this is what was intended and whoever designed and built this thing should be fired.

6. Ignatz

   It was never tested. From Twitter:

   “Hi, we apologize for the issues you’re facing with the site. Our teams are working hard to address the issues we are facing with the website and we will continue to update you here on social as we sort this out and deliver you the new and improved CK. Thank you for your patience.”

7. Bob Greeney

   I noticed that the puzzles that were included in my favorites are no longer there. When I went to figure out how to add them back in (Edit Favorites), my entire favorites list was deleted. Now I have to try to rebuild my favorites, but I have little confidence this will actually work.

8. Carl Laws

   Thank God! I thought it was _me_ and my crank-powered laptop that was having loading problems. A CK site upgrade has been rumored since last April, but they obviously didn’t use any of that time for testing.

   I’ve been reading CK ‘toons for (at least) a couple of years now, but at each strip’s own website, not via the CK site. Since, like you, D.D., I don’t like changes like this either, I think I’l keep on keepin’ on.

   FWIW, if you’re a follower of “Bizarro”, you should’ve seen this coming. Since Dan P. changed his own site, viewing the daily sends you to CK rather than loading locally. In the time it takes to load, you could knit an ugly Christmas sweater.

9. joe keller

   day 2 of the misery: cannot use user name anymore, must use email, no auto login, yuk, been a user for so long cannot recall, was dailyink then, i want my favorites ALL OF THEM at once to appear after a smooth auto login — as it has been since the stone age!, whoever wrote your code is an neophite, l have very fast internet, read that blast, not even newspapers load this slow, have you even considered what your customers want, one reads the comics over coffee, breakfast and gets on to their commute, this is a subscription service with unique comics that competes with “free” services, go comics for one, its not a chat room.

10. joe keller

    day 3: solved the auto login, deleted all history ,etc. from browser, restarted browser, longin with remember checked, still slow, am on the road, getting up and doing this site on motel internet not even ok, slow, understand why cannot get all favorites at one time: the code/site lacks the juice, all that prince v art the size of a postage stamp, stinks

11. Edna Cohen

    I’ve had it with ComicsKingdom,GoComics is only going to get my money from now on. This update has made things much worse.

12. joe keller

    day 4: auto login did not last 24 hrs, sunday comics a real trip as they are rearranged, not as they would appear in paper, frankly, caught myself not reading then, rearranging an artist work, now faster and more readable to go to a newspaper site, unbeliveable. 30

13. Denese Young

    It’s nice to know I’m not alone in my loathing. My internet connection is via my phone and my favorites don’t load as a page,, just individual comics that I have to click on to view. This is VERY frustrating.

14. Phil Walsh

    Day 1 in the morning was an exercise in futility and I was sure I’d never see some of my favorites, new and vintage, again. But by Thursday afternoon response time was very much improved and, while I don’t care for some of the changes, there are a couple I like. I like the one-click access to previous days and I like the increased size, panel-aligned zoom. I’m hopeful very soon they fix the automatic displaying of non-updated comics. It clutters things up and is frustrating when combined with that “load more” geegaw. I also miss seeing the original dates of the vintage comics. I’d love to understand the rationale behind this latest change if anyone knows.

15. Rogers George

    Yup, the rigamarole at sign-on and all those “Load More” buttons are a definite nuisance. It doesn’t show up correctly in my email, either. Please fix! How about an option to return to the old interface?

16. Hank Gillette

    GoComics has the ability to see previous individual comics, but they also have the ability to see all of your favorites for any date. ComicsKingdom has lost this ability, which is awful for me, since I tend to get days behind and then catch up all at once.

17. Cyril Weiss

    RE: COMICS KINGDOM do they test these things? Incompetence. I’ll only go to one comics site from here on out.

18. Thomas Flaherty

    Comics Kingdom still not working. I’m done with it.

19. Lane Poole

    What happened to the babyblues and familycircus websites? The comicskingdom website is absolutely horrible on a phone. The purple banner takes up about a third of the screen and is impossible to scroll off the screen. I can no longer zoom with my fingers. When I touch the plus to zoom , the zoom is too much and the purple banner and footer now take up half the screen. Please go back to the old website. It is infinitely better. Ths website is unusable on a phone. I cannot understand what possessed you to destroy your website. I look forward to the time you realize your mistake and return to the old design. If you see Grammar errors in this it is because it is difficult to properly type on a phone. I am a software developer and would never have created something this bad.

20. D. D. Degg  (admin)

    Yes, I noticed that recently many of the King Features comic strips with their own dot com sites are being redirected to the new Comics Kingdom. It certainly makes sense for the syndicate owned sites (Mary Worth, The Phantom, Sally Forth) to do so; and a number of creator owned strips with individual sites (Rhymes With Orange, Sherman’s Lagoon, On the Fastrack) have joined the promotional effort.
    There are, as I type, some holdouts (Mutts, Bizarro, Funky).
    Strangely the company owned Popeye remains a nonconformist; though The Sailor Man is a major licensing product, and that may explain his site remaining free of the redirecting deed.
    Don’t know, but it may just be a temporary advertising action. I kind of hope it is – where else would I go to read Karen Moy’s (far too infrequent) posts about Mary?