Appreciated links to us

Here's a little round of 'Us in the media' only about sites that have recently linked to us. I appreciate every link to our little initiative, especially if just out of appreciation for all the hard work we put in. So I'm taking this bit of time (during my short vacation, so feel special !) to put in a special mention for those sites who have honored us recently. It's also a small 'fuck you' to the sites who haven't linked to us - we're not gonna give you any love if you're not gonna give us any.
So here goes.

First off, Het Stripschap will soon be adding us to their list of links. It's a majorly appropriate location, and it's their own initiative after I contacted them for more information on how to get the booklet (see previous post) delivered to them. Thanks !

Secondly (I'm trying to put them into order of personal preference here) my favourite bar, Cul de Sac, added a link to our site in their newly redesigned homepage. Of course, I did kind of post a teasing request in their forum, but hey, they're under no obligation whatsoever (despite the large amounts of money I spend there, and the fact that I'm one of the old regular customers) so that was just.. cool. Really cool. For those of you who may have missed earlier mentionings of this awesome bar, it's located here in my home city, Tilburg, and even though their focus is mainly on (great) music, the place is crowded with local comic celebrities, including myself. People like Gummbah, Jean-Paul Arends, Patrice v/d Linden, Ivo van Leeuwen, and several other reasonably well-known people are often found there getting shitfaced. It's a spectacle and if you're ever in the neighbourhood, you should come check the place out. Besides comic artists hanging out there, they've in the past put some of my own drawings on exhibition, they've hosted the Eefje Wentelteefje Roadshow, and De Bedenkelijk Kijkende Grondeekhoorn-evening, so they can deny their link to the comics world as much as they want but they're not gonna get away with it.
(In honor of the link, I've decided to start a new category on Probeersel.com's link page, Comic artists-friendly bars, so if anyone wants to suggest other such bars, feel free to submit them to us.)

Thirdly, a really extensive comics links list, the Belfry Webcomics index, included a link to The Grim DotCom just a few days ago and already it's upping our statistics quite heavily. I'm impressed with the result, which I really didn't expect. Then again, I did request the link, and added as information that it included all of the following: Adult Situations, Adult Language, Nudity (hey, there has been some here and there), Graphic Violence, and Explicit (NC-17). That's bound to get people interested, apparently. Useful tip for other artists looking to increase their popularity, perhaps !

Fourthly, and this goes a while back already, but there's a site called TriggerHappy which has had an (older) picture of our own Bandirah on there for a while now, with a direct link to his info on Probeersel.com. They're also showing up reasonably stubbornly in our statistics so their generated traffic is more than appreciated. Apparently the story is that Bandirah had to sleep with the webmaster there to get this done (or something, he was vague about the details) so here's another piece of excellent advice to starting cartoonists: stock up on vaseline.

Last but not least, we've been on the links page of Martin's Misdirection for ages (ever since I reviewed the site, I think, since shortly after I received a kind email from James Burks thanking us and mentioning that he linked to us) and it's never left our statistics either. That link has been a reasonably steady source of audience for years. Thanks man !

Now, there are quite a lot more sites that link to us, but I really wanted to shout out to these five, and proceed to mention a few sites that have posted some kind words about us in addition to the link:
- André Gerrits
- Tino Nauwelaerts
- Pim Steinmann
- Grim DotCom-fan Xan

And of course anyone else I may have forgotten here. Thanks ! Linking to us helps us reach a wider audience, so in a way, you're contributing to our community and helping our hard-working comic artists a bit further on their way to fame. So that one day soon, they may get a great contract from a publisher and you'll have to pay to read their comics from there on. Wait, forget I said that last bit.