Like Nancy Drew?

Oh wait, no one reads those anymore...

Yeeeees. Of course.

...But yes! Have we any indication of how far the story has progressed as a whole? Like the half-way mark or something?

My kneejerk reflex was to immediately click 'reply' and defend myself from such criticism, but then I reread my post and, yeah, I'm not going to disagree with you, that paragraph utilized pretty crappy logic.

Nonetheless there's a point buried somewhere in my tirade that I was trying (albeit apparently failing) to make, I just went a bit overboard with my language. I guess my perception is, insofar as we're not webcomic writer/artists and we can't definitively say due to our experiences or intimate personal knowledge that Burlew is being lazy, the accusations that Burlew must be lazy (when alternative explanations do exist) seems rather unjustified and harsh to me. If there's several different explanations for late updates, the cynics tend to assume the worst possible explanation as accurate and then go into an attack frenzy. (Not so much Mirai, moreso other individuals at the OOT boards who've flipped out when so much as five days have gone without updates.) Those kinds of assumptions are irrational and the anger that stems from them (for a free service!) is just ludicrous.

Is it possible, perhaps even probable, that Burlew's taken a few days off due to sheer laziness? I'd wager a bet he has, but I suspect (just based on the kind of guy he seems to be and the overall quality of his work, which leads me to give him the benefit of the doubt) that 80 to 90% of the slow / late updates are due to Burlew struggling with any combination of illness, personal issues that would seriously inhibit his performance, or (most common by far) stereotypical cases of writer's block. And what actually impresses me about Burlew is when he's hit by writer's block or a depressing few days or an illness, he'll take the time off and regroup when he can push out his superior product. He doesn't do what 90% of other webcomic writers/artists will do, which involves forcing garbage on those off-days in order to keep the updates consistent and the masses of fans placated. Thus, the overall quality of OOTS remains consistent, and OOTS remains a webcomic I'll enjoy reading archives of for years to come.

Which brings me to one final comment: whoever implied OOTS won't last for posterity? Maybe, maybe not...but I'd give OOTS far better odds of surviving the passage of time and remaining relevant than the vast majority of other webcomics out there, even other 'popular' brands like LICD, Dominic Deegan, and Ctrl-Alt-Del.

I have a saying. You might have a perfectly legit reason(s) for not meeting a schedule. But in the end that doesn't change the fact you aren't meeting the schedule. You are still unreliable.

Oh and, I doubt any webcomic will age well. So far no comic thats actually been completed has remained in the interweb community. If any I'd say Dr. McNinja stands the best chance, which I should remind you updates regularly, and isn't a bunch of stick figures

...I did. I read every Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew when I was a kid because that's all there was to read in my classrooms.

<hangs head in shame>

That depends on how large a fanbase you need to consider something a classic. It Never Rains remains dear to the hearts of that site's active community of like four people. Kid Radd probably has quite a bit more.

Meanwhile, a new theory: Maybe Burlew really doesn't give a shit what people think about him, and can afford to be seen as lazy and unreliable. Speaking only from my limited experience of creative works, I like to think that I only care what people think of the work, not myself, so far as I care what people think at all.

Because this wasn't started about "Whenever" update schedule of the comic in question to begin with...?

Kidd Radd...?

Bobandgeorge...

I see your point... Damn people are fickle about their entertainment.

its not so much they are bad, or completely forgotten, but few works ever stand the test of time and become more renowned once they are gone. To put it another way. Take your favorite completed webcomic. Now ask someone who didn't get into webcomics until a year or two after it ended. I'm betting that person doesn't even know it exists.

Webcomics only grow in popularity as they receive updates, once those updates stop influx of new readers drops to near zero. True for most forms of entertainment, its just that webcomics suffer from it in the extreme.

Unless they transfer to other forms such as Rich is doing.