Popular webcomic creator, DJ Hoffman (Yirmumah) has just finished an online dustup with the proprieter of the Sketchbattle website. Sketchbattle is a site where webcomic creators go toe to toe, posting original strips which are then voted on by the readers. The winner continues to move on to the next round until they lose, or at least, that’s what Coffman believed.

Turns out that the contests may be fixed - at the very least, the battle between Coffman and his last opponent was, as openly admitted by Sketchbattle admin Sambro. In an IM conversation posted on the Yirmumah forum, Sambro admitted to fixing the vote counts because he felt bad that the webcomic with the smaller audience might not have a chance to defeat the bigger strip.

While this may or may not be true, it certainly does cast doubt on the outcome of any other Sketchbattles, past or future, and really does a disservice to the comic that won. Either way, I’m pretty dissapointed in the SB management. I’d visit the site now and again to look and vote, and really, this has killed my interest in the whole thing. The concept is still a strong one, it’s just too bad that it had to be ruined like this. Hopefully someone else will retool the idea and start their own impartial battle site in the future.

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