For those of you that didn’t live through it, a seasonally-inappropriate storm dumped snow on a wide swath of North America from the Atlantic Ocean to the far side of the Appalachian Mountains. Wet, heavy snow. Wet, heavy snow which weighed down trees that hadn’t dropped their leaves yet, breaking limbs and trunks and taking out power lines for literally millions of people. I lost power from about 6:30pm Saturday evening until about 5:00am Sunday morning and I’m in the lucky part of my town — nearly half of the residents are still without electricity and major thoroughfares are blocked by broken century-old trees.

My portion of New Jersey was relatively lucky. Sizeable chunks of Massachusetts got 30cm, with reports of one corner getting more than 80 freaking centimeters. Not quite the epicenter of this snow-induced electrolack is the bustling exurb of Easthampton/Northampton, home to Rich Stevens, KC Green, Jeph Jacques, Andrew Hussie, Jeff Rowland, and the shipping hubs of Dumbrella and Topatoco. Those that are able to eke out power and networking are bravely trying to update, but as of this writing, QC is down at the host so even if Jacques could fire up Photoshop, he’d have no place to update¹.

As of this writing, the goal for restoring power to Northampton proper (which likely doesn’t cover all of the homes of people outside the town) is 9:00pm on Thursday. Given that there are literally millions of people without electricity, it’s hard to be mad at the various utility companies. Please try to stay calm if one of your favorite strips doesn’t update as often as you like, and if your webcomics-related merch order is slow, be understanding.

Maybe some good news might be in order?

• Emily Carroll has been mentioned on this page numerous times since she burst on the scene with her spooky, moody comics. Just in time she’s dropped another one for you: Margot’s Room. Take your time, click carefully, and maybe make sure it’s nice and bright where you are? Shivers and scares ahead.
• Calling back to last week, I mentioned in passing on Friday how much I enjoyed the annotations that David Morgan-Mar² includes in Irregular Webcomic, and also that his guest strips seemed to be coming to an end. I did not know how meaningful both of these items would become.

  Less than 24 hours later, Morgan-Mar announced the end of Irregular Webcomic as she has been known. The creativity he’s shared with us was waning, and he wanted to get away from comic-making, so weekly updates on Sundays.

  Another 24 hours brought the news that IW would focus on the annotations, making the philosophoscientific musery fans (like myself) very happy, but sad knowing that we’d never see Steve wrestle anything to death, or Adam and Jamie blow stuff up again, or any of the other seventeen (!) themes. Mixed in with that was a slow realization that the grand story arc that started 1400 strips earlier (!) had wrapped up all the loose ends back where it all started, with a Mr Bean-looking bloke in a white t-shirt discovering comics on the internet.

  And once again, 24 hours later, we go back to where it really all started, as reader suggestions have prompted Morgan-Mar to start running IW from the beginning with even more annotations on Mondays through Saturdays. Just under nine years, and 3198 strips (minus some guest contributions), Irregular Webcomic has changed, maybe for good. Well done, Mr Morgan-Mar, and though I’ll never stop missing the LEGO strips, they may drop in unexpectedly again when we least anticipate.

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¹ On the plus side, Jacques’s Tumblr is still up and before the snow hit he’d been continuing the long tradition of webcomickers that draw inspiration from the most bloated, ridiculous, overblown (and I mean those as positive things) sci-fi novel of them all. Behold: Paul Atreides, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, Chani, and Lady Jessica. Reports that Jeph’s name is a killing word could not be confirmed at press time.

² PhD, LEGO®™©^etc.