One bit of this got me in particular. (this is explicitly thinking of those webcomics that had stories and story arcs, not the ones that were primarily gag strips with loose stories from time to time.)
It’s not like this isn’t a story with some ideas in it. It’s definitely trying with both hands to pull together a bunch of different ideas, ideas that maybe had some purpose once, when the story started but as the story persists, the longer it goes without being able to resolve or conclude those story bits, the Author just keeps stapling together things they like.
Casting my mind back, a lot of the webcomics that I read back then seemed to have the problem that, at one point, the author had a realization that their reach has exceeded their grasp. Usually either from not having a clear idea of where they wanted to go with it in the first place, or from having altogether too many ideas about where it should go. A webcomic was often a first attempt at writing something serial and longform, and they tended to suffer for that over time.
The reaction to that realization is what interests me though. We might categorize the megatokyo response as "continuing to prop up a rickety structure until it's a shambling parody of its original ideas", which usually caused the readers to drift away over time as the qualities that initially attracted them ceased to be present.
Then there's the slow (or abrupt) abandonment, in which rather than the readers drifting away, the author ceases to be involved. This can of course be related to real world commitments; a webcomic you started in high school or college may not be feasible to keep up over time. But there's also the factor that, for such a long running format, after a while you might not be the same person who started the thing. Working on it might feel like a burden rather than the creative endeavor it once was.
Most interesting to me though is the protean response. Rather than trying to keep the spark alive or snuffing it out, the work changed with the author. I've seen this range from redrawing/rewriting earlier parts to completely rebooting it, taking the ideas that worked and lessons learned to make something similar but new.
It's interesting to compare the webcomic format with, for instance, the newspaper gag strip which often has one or two people working on it for years but usually have limited scope, or with American big two comics, where the story is prominent but the creative team rotates every so often. It's quite similar to the manga industry in a way, with a single creator working on a single series for a number of years, hiatuses and all. Except the webcomic author isn't getting paid. (Wasn't getting paid? I know webtoon and maybe others are trying to set up some sort of formalized webcomic creation economy thing. Skeeves me out every time I hear the way it works from people in it.)
