The incomparable Chris Onstad explains why on his blog:
One thing that’s always made me a bit sad is how Internet presentation seems to devalue content. So much art, writing, and news is suddenly available to us that each piece seems nearly a throwaway, lost in the gullet of our now-insatiable appetite for information. Here in the future, everyone is famous for 15kb. Fifteen reTweets. Fifteen LOLs. Should I work fifteen hours on something that will take fifteen seconds to read? The answer is yes, of course, because I love what I do, but after nearly a decade one wonders if one couldn’t do more for people with that time. Create greater and lengthier entertainment. I’d like to focus more on prose; despite the heavy foot I seem to have planted in the comics world, perhaps I can balance both by shifting the weight a bit. Some might count themselves kings of infinite space when bounded in the nutshell of six panels, but personally I’m finding it a bit cramped.
Best of luck to him—when I interviewed him two years ago he seemed even then to be gravitating toward prose. And while we’re on the subject: Obligatory link to the story where Onstad and Patrick Alan Coleman cooked balls together.
Did anyone explain to him that he shouldn’t stop because WE LIKE COMICS?
He should know as well as anyone that the best comics stay with us about as long as all but the very best prose…
This is too bad. Achewood is a great, great comic – a personal favorite.
Fuck you two, let the guy switch things up – don’t insist on shackling him to his past for the sake of your own transient nostalgia.
Nostalgia or no, we appreciate the balls link.
ALL OF THAT STUFF ABOUT THE INTERNET BEING AN INSATIABLE CONSUMING GOD MACHINE IS TOTALLY PROVING ME RIGHT.
YOUR FRUIT BASKET IS ON ORDER, MR. ONSTAD.
pro tip, funny guy: leave the real writing to the real writers.
Time to pour out some Ketel One for Ray dogg.
@ 1 – 7, you are ALL boners.
Comics on hiatus sucks. Scale it back to one a week, or just do the unpredictable schedule thing, but come on. I’m talking to you Overcompensating and especially you, Perry Bible Fellowship. Pictures For Sad Children, you started making comics randomly again, so you’re cool.
As for “finding it a bit cramped”, this is one of the things that has always irked me a bit about many webcomics. They have an unrestricted canvas but they almost always fall into a formula layout anyway. I wouldn’t mind seeing more liberties taken with format to better serve the joke/story/idea at hand (Dinosaur Comics being the exception, since the homogeneity of its format is a part of its weird charm).