Votey
Voteys are additional panels created for (almost) every comic on SMBC.
The votey is shown by clicking the red button below the comic, which, before the button was added, was an extra panel given to readers who voted for SMBC in the topwebcomics poll.
When the SMBC website was created in March 2005, the comic included a link to vote on a poll on buzzcomix.net, with the reward being a page of the Baby Moloch comic.[1] In April, links to vote at webcomicslist.com and topwebcomics.com were added, with the latter being removed by October, and both removed by November. In February 2006, an episode of Chason was used as the incentive to vote on buzzcomix. After that, the incentive was generally the next day's comic, though this was not always available.[2]
In November 2006, the link to the topwebcomics poll returned, with the incentive being to get to see a rejected idea or early sketch of an SMBC comic.[3] This idea is what would evolve into the modern votey. The text describing the reward was soon changed to "Vote to see what happened AFTER today's comic.", which remained until June 24, 2008, when the website was redesigned and the votey was set to show when hovering over a red button.
On June 10, 2008, Zach did a votey in color, and considered continuing to do it that way, but did not.
Retroactive voteys[edit]
In 2015 and 20161, Zach went back through his archives from 2002 to 2008 and retroactively drew hundreds of voteys for comics that lacked them, often poking fun at the quality of the comics. The earliest known comic with a retroactive votey is 2002-09-05, the first comic, and the latest is 2008-06-20.
Name[edit]
In the news post of June 25, 2008, Zach describes the extra panel as the "after comic ... (or votey comic, or whoopsy comic...)", with "after" being the term used to in the file names and the website's html code.
Mistakes[edit]
Especially in recent years, voteys are often mixed up, and a comic is given the votey from a previous or future comic or none at all.
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