There are many reasons why comics go on hiatus. One reason can lie with cartoonist apathy, which can happen with older comics that have run for a while and in some cases may be approaching an ending. Often the cartoonist has grown tired of the same old characters and the same old situations and wants to move on. There’s little but loyalty to readers and determination to end something that keeps the cartoonist from just throw up his hands in disgust and walk away… sometimes quitting comics entirely, and in other cases starting up a new comic with fresh new ideas that weren’t possible with the old strip. It was this that led Casey and Andy’s cartoonist Andy Weir to pull the plug on his comic’s last storyline and start work on Cheshire Crossing.

However, C&A’s fans refused to let their comic die, and started an e-mail campaign to get Weir to restart work on the final C&A storyline. After a year and a half, their efforts panned out, and Weir started updating C&A on a weekly basis. And it’s been a long road indeed; C&A started out as a gag-a-day strip, and has deep roots in that tradition. Still, as C&A grew in length, the lure of shorter storylines grabbed a hold of Weir and dragged him into the hazy world of continuity and character growth. And whether it poked fun at science, religion, or the characters themselves, most readers could find something that would be of interest. Indeed, the comic is quite rereadable, and can be a most enjoyable read.

Unfortunately, not all comics can thus be resuscitated as C&A was; some comics falter due to legal reasons and others because the creative team behind the comic broke apart for a variety of reasons. (The Tangents webcomic partly fell apart because my own ideas of the comic’s direction and presentation conflicted with my co-writer’s ideas. Looking back, I should have listened more to my co-writer.) Perhaps part of what helped in C&A’s resurrection was the length of time spent away; absence makes the heart grow fonder, or at the very least dims the less enjoyable memories. Whatever Weir’s reason for revisiting his first comic, I’m quite glad he did. C&A deserves the ending Weir had planned… to go out with a bang (much like it began), rather than the silent whimper of permanent hiatus.

Addendum Report: C&A has wrapped up. Unfortunately, I feel that ending was perhaps less of a bang and more of a whimper than I’d have expected. Part of this lies with how the ending skimped on Satan and Andy’s relationship, which was left somewhat in the air. Weir didn’t even give fans one last pic of Satan to remember her by, which (considering how significant a character she became in the comic) leaves me feeling like the ending was rushed. And in some ways it was, in an effort to wrap everything up by comic 666. But if you’re fans of the rest of the cast, you’ll definitely want to catch up on what happens with them.