What is going on? Five of my favorite webcomics have announced they are ending in 2015: Eerie Cuties, Girls with Slingshots, Magick Chicks, Multiplex, and Shortpacked. This is about a third of the webcomics I read on a regular basis.
Well, these things come and go. And I can attest that coming up with new comics on a regular basis can be a chore and I only do two per week. Imagine doing it every day practically and knowing there’s something else you want to do.
Of those I read Shortpacked and Girls with Slingshots. Of those two Shortpacked had made the ending announcement a long, long time ago. Dave Willis doesn’t like to drag his comics out forever.
GWS was a bit more abrupt. I think Danielle Corsetto has plans for other webcomics.
Dammit! I like GwS!
I look back over my shoulder at all of the dead webcomics I used to read (and several that are still going concerns that probably should have lay down and died a long time ago (lookin’ at you, Sluggy Freelance!)) and realize I’ve been a webcomic aficionado for over 15 years. I really miss some of them…
David Willis also has two or three other comics running, Dumbing of Age (IIRC, a reboot of Roomies!) and another one centering on two of the characters from It’s Walky!, a previous comic of his which was a predecessor to Shortpacked! (It’s Walky!, incidentally, was the follow-on to Roomies!, which ended its run quite a while ago). I wouldn’t be surprised if Willis just wanted to reduce his workload a bit, or if he plans to create yet another follow-on comic to replace it. If so, expect one or two pre-existing characters to find their way to the new comic.
Well, Eerie Cuties and Magick Chicks exist in the same universe and plot threads occasionally spin off from one to the other, so it’s not a huge surprise that they might end simultaneously.
Plus, updates for them have been very erratic for some time. Hopefully both get the ending that they deserve rather than just petering out.
I’m just surprised that five long-running webcomics have all announced their ending in a single month. Especially when that’s five out of the relatively small sample of webcomics I read on a regular basis.
I’m wondering if perhaps the announcements are feeding off each other. When one person announced they were ending a webcomic, it may have planted the idea in other people’s minds.
Not really. Joyce and Walky! is, for all intents and purposes ended. He used to talk about some wrapup, which I don’t think he has actually done, but hasn’t done anything with it, or even talked about doing it, even the pay side, in forever. And he explicitly called Shortpacked!'s ending the end of the Walkyverse. DoA is currently the only comic Willis is doing, and he likes it that way.
The Pixy Trix comics, on the other hand, are definitely ending (or, rather, going on a hiatus of indefinite, and possibly infinite, length) in order to reduce the artists’ workloads, since everybody involved (except Cassandra) is involved in at least 3 other comics, and several of them are doing work-for-hire (Giz doing stuff for Archie comics, I remember offhand…I can’t remember what Shouri and Cassandra are doing outside of the Pixy Trix stuff, but I know they both did announce other stuff).
(Danielle has also referred to the ending of GWS as an indefinite hiatus, and given a rundown of her post-GWS plans. Which don’t, as of now, include a new comic, whether that be the return of GWS or something new.)
Correcting myself, slightly on a couple points
… Regularly. He’s presumably still going to do Slipshine comics (most likely in the Dumbiverse, but POSSIBLY in the Walkyverse) whenever some combination of his inspiration, Slipshine’s requests, and reader demand hit the right point.
I know Shouri has other comics that aren’t officially Pixy Trix (though Fragile is put with the Pixy Trix comics in their link-bar), but I’m 99% sure she’s announced doing something on top of those and what she’s doing with the PT gang.
I read over 50 webcomics whenever they update, which ranges from daily to maybe once every couple of months. I never get around to deleting the old bookmarks when they stop though, so I have probably at least 200 bookmarks. I just keep finding new ones to read, mostly through links on the pages of the ones I’m already reading.
These guys are always getting burned out on their current projects and starting something new, and they guest-post comics for each other all the time. I suspect we’ll eventually see something interesting from the ones who are taking a break now.
I still haven’t found time to read the archives of Something Positive, which I’ve been meaning to do for a couple of years now. Someday I’ll get started on that, but I bet it’ll take me weeks to catch up to where I started reading.
Several webcomics I like have gone kaput in the last few weeks.
And I don’t seem to be finding new ones.
Why oh why Lord couldn’t it have been xkcd. Never humorous. Always as hip and relevant as someone mentioning it’s Monday, on Monday.
Yeah, I hate it when people create art I don’t like.
I don’t. But, people link to it all the time and I used to click expecting something funny. Instead, it just seems like a statement of something obvious. A lot of comics are a humorous observation about something we all experience, but his (?) comics don’t strike me as particularly clever. I haven’t read everything he’s done either, obviously.
Duh… dur… where did I say I hate it when people create art I don’t like? Dur…
It’s the internet. It’s not like xkcd is taking up space from some other potential webcomic. If you don’t like it, fine, don’t read it.
But why wish it was being cancelled? Does it bother you to know that it exists somewhere out there and that other people are reading it?
Yes, it’s a clinically diagnosed obsession that keeps me up at night. :rolleyes:
Knowing you have a problem is the first step in overcoming it.