Is XKCD on indefite hiatus?

Cafe Society
1

The current strip at XKCD is the Eternal Flame one: There’s always the hope that if you wait long enough, the beach ball will go away and whatever it interrupted will resume. This is not a new strip: It’s also what was up yesterday, and presumably the day before (though I couldn’t get to the site then). And it’s not like Munroe to miss updates.

Reading between the lines, my guess is that his fiance, who had been battling cancer, died, and this is his tribute to her. Is this the case?

2

I assumed it was for Steve Jobs?

3

The spinning beach ball is what you get when you’re waiting for a page to load on a Mac - the comments indicate (and it is my personal belief) that it is an homage to Steve Jobs.

4

Hmm. I thought the FedEx comic was updated Wednesday, and since the beach ball is specific to Macs, I just assumed it was for Steve Jobs as well. He probably just put it up early so it didn’t seem asynchronous.

5

Per Wikipedia, they got married last month. So, hopefully not!

6

PC World seems confident it’s a tribute to Steve Jobs.

7

The XKCD forum also indicates this. Instead of an eternal flame as a memorial to Steve Jobs, it’s an eternal spinny Mac cursor.

8

Randall threw the Jobs memorial comic up on Wednesday night, knocking the normal Wed comic off the top of the list, and I assume he’s going to keep it up until the Monday update. Normally there would have been a new comic this morning.

9

Oh, so I just missed the real Wednesday update, then. Off to XKCD to rectify this!

10

Now that I look at it, I’m not absolutely sure…I seem to remember the FedEx one being up for more than just one day. He may have put the memorial up sometime Thursday afternoon rather than Wednesday night. Or he completely replaced the Wednesday one with the memorial, cutting out of the previous list altogether. I kind of wish he’d date these things…

11

The first thread about it on the XKCD forum was Thursday at 11:41 am. They have a forum that discusses each new cartoon. I bet someone would have started a thread about it Wednesday had it been up.

12

He put the strip up the night Jobs died and kept it through Friday. It is clearly in honor of Steve Jobs. I bet on Monday there will be a new one.