Comic-based blog for Boston Red Sox fans
The Soxaholix
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Type of site
| Webcomic
/
Blog
|
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Owner
| Hart Brachen (h.b.)
|
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Created by
| Hart Brachen (h.b.)
|
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URL
| http://www.soxaholix.com
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Registration
| No
|
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Launched
| March 30, 2004
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Current status
| Concluded, as of December 18, 2016
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The Soxaholix
is a
comic
-based
blog
published by pseudonymous Hart Brachen (similar to
heartbroken
) for
Boston Red Sox
fans to discuss the team and other sports-related news. Occasionally during the television season the blog also discusses the television
drama
Lost
. The site began just prior to the 2004 baseball season. The author references many different sources of classic literature, modern literature, television shows, popular culture, and internet culture through the characters' dialogue. The setting for the comic revolves around a group of office co-workers in Boston and each daily strip focuses on the conversation of two of the characters in a back-and-forth manner similar to the comic
Get your war on
.
Readership averaged 1,600 visitors per day in 2005 with sometimes as many as 12,000 readers in a single day.
[1]
The site has been recognized by a number of prominent online award committees and sports websites for incisive wit and mix of high-brow as well as low-brow humor, including a 2005 article in
The Wall Street Journal
. It was also mentioned in the March 2, 2007
All Things Considered
story concerning baseball fandom on
NPR
.
[2]
History
[
edit
]
Hart Brachen, a pseudonym to cover the author's true identity, grew up in
New Hampshire
and attended college in
Boston
. He then attended graduate school at a university in
the South
.
[1]
Always a Red Sox fan, the author found the comic style of
Get your war on
appealing and chose to use the method to describe his thoughts about the Red Sox, especially given their heart-breaking end at the hands of the
New York Yankees
in the
2003 postseason
.
[1]
One of the first entries included a discussion of blogger
Ana Marie Cox
and a link to her blog,
Wonkette
. She linked to the entry from her popular website and
The Soxaholix
received a large amount of attention very quickly. Readership remains high and the website garners more attention when the team is doing well, such as during and after the
2004 World Series
. The author was interviewed for a
Wall Street Journal
article shortly after the Red Sox lost to the
Chicago White Sox
in the
2005 postseason
.
[1]
The characters are not real people. Readers comment on the strips, following the lows and highs of the season. Readers and commenters are divided between real and not real, with no clear line of demarcation.
With the sustained success of the Boston Red Sox since 2004, a strip based upon failure, sadness and schadenfreude might have been expected to wither away. Not so. Despite considering a "retirement" or hiatus from the strip after the successful 2013 season, the author continues to post pithy entries nearly every weekday. (With rare exceptions- marked by life-changing events or outrageous fortune?weekend strips are rare). During the 2013 season, in the interest of his (or her) sanity, the author also announced that henceforth there would be no strip on a Friday when the Red Sox were under .500 in wins and losses.
In November 2014, Brachen announced that he was bringing The Soxaholix to an end. Among his own comments on retiring The Soxaholix, he invited the fans to contribute ideas on how to keep the community alive since the strip concluded.he is a man of his word, and the thing is deader than a cuttlefish. °
Format
[
edit
]
Style
[
edit
]
The
TypePad
blog entries are written in a comic-strip style using only one or two positions for each character's appearance. The dialogue is written in plain
HTML
above the character's "talk bubble" instead of incorporated into the images; this allows for alternate browsing such as cell phones and
RSS
syndication. The strip is created in
BBEdit
and
Fireworks MX
on an
Apple
iMac
. The original blog used clipart directly from
Microsoft Office
, but the current artwork is obtained from completely original sources.
[3]
Awards and recognition
[
edit
]
- Blogdom's Best: Boston Red Sox - named the best Red Sox-related blog by
Deadspin
.
[4]
- 2005
Webby
Worthy Selection - awarded to sites and teams demonstrating a standard of excellence and outstanding caliber of work.
[5]
- 2005
South by Southwest
(SXSW) Festival Finalist - "Best Blog".
[6]
- 2005
Bloggie Awards
Finalist - "Best Non-Weblog Content of a Weblog Site".
[7]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
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Franchise
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Ballparks
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Culture
| Fenway environs
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Groups
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Individuals
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Music
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Entertainment
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Lore
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Rivalries
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Administration
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World Series championships (9)
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American League pennants (14)
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Division championships (10)
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Wild card berths (8)
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Minor league affiliates
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Broadcasting
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Seasons (124)
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1900s
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1910s
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1920s
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1930s
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1940s
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1950s
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1960s
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1970s
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1980s
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1990s
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2000s
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2010s
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2020s
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