Steve Troop has restarted his comicstrip Melonpool from scratch and, very unusually, took down eight years of archived strips (though you can still buy them as books). The event is much discussed at Websnark.
Besides being weighed down by the complexity of the continuity, Troop was concerned that potential readers were driven off by the sheer length of the archives. (Melonpool is probably the longest-running of all webtoons.) This gives me a chuckle. I don’t even try to keep current on the strips I follow; my bookmarks point to some date in the archives. When I want to read the funnies I usually go to the oldest (currently October 2003), mainly so that when reading crossovers I’ll be up to date on both sides. So the depth of the archives generally isn’t an issue for me.
David Willis is incrementally replacing his archives, from the beginning of It’s Walky, with better artwork and tighter scripting. This is probably a good thing. As it was, I found the story rather hard to follow, and was on the verge of giving up on it; one of these days I’ll attempt the four-year backtrack.
I think you’ll find a few differences between what I’m doing and what DC is doing with their Infinite Crisis series. Stay tuned!
Will do. Thanks for dropping by!
Melonpool was dormant from April 28 to October 9 this year. If not for my habit of re-reading my own drivel, I might never have noticed it was back.
The redoing of Walky‘s archives ran out of steam after 37 strips.
Crossovers in webcomics were once common, but I haven’t seen one in ages – maybe not since this post!
Melonpool restarted again in 2014.
The oldest webcomic I can now find is Nukees (1997).