Because webcomics are usually free, and an unpaid labour of love, sometimes real life intervenes and a real gem drops off the map. These three have gone into what appears to be permanent hiatus. Sometimes they end on a cliff hanger or mid story arc, but as the months go by it becomes clear they’re not coming back.
The first is ‘Rules of Make Believe’, which as well as having frankly beautiful panels, it had a very interesting ongoing plot about a mysterious video game and the beginings of a wacky screwball romantic comedy. Then, just as a carefully set up series of hilarious errors was about to come into fruition, more important things like a baby intervened with the authour. Net result, dead webcomic, sad fans.
‘Orneryboy’, a gift from a Canadian artist, was a touchingly sweet gothic relationship comic. Ornery and his fiancee lived in a little gothic, Adams family style house with a zombie and a kitty and got up to all the normal things couples do: arguements about day to day life, looking after the pets, BDSM fun and zombie invasions. Then trouble loomed on the horizon in the form of a record store girl with Betty page bangs… and the authour lapsed into what seems to be moody artistic depression.
And then there’s ‘Elf Only Inn’, which is a bit of a tease. It started as one of the best jokes about chatroom roleplayers I’ve ever seen, died, was reborn as an equally funny parody of MMORPGs with the same players, reflecting the shift in mediums for roleplay perfectly (including the petty interguild squabbles and some new faces). And then it died again in May. Nevermind, like all of the cooling corpses that rest out in the depths of the internet some day it may rise again. Or at least last forever in the archives.