This just came in as a Patreon post. I'm not going to copy the whole text to encourage people to subscribe to read it but here's the relevant bit:

So I'm taking December off. The last regular QC comic of 2024 will be this Friday. It will resume in January. This is not the end of QC. I promise.

He says there will be some posts on the website and Patreon but he is taking the month off from writing or drawing comics.

A new location for the QC Map! for those who don't know, jeph uses a lot of real world locations for inspiration for the comic. yes Northampton, MA is a real place, and i'm overlaying the comic places with real places using context and other hints.

I was having trouble placing marigold's new home without any notion of how far it would be from the rest of the crew.

butt he latest comic (#5444) has shown that it is close enough for hanners to take marigold home after a morning yoga class. so it cant be a long drive which narrowed the search area. I looked for locations in a small radius that had homes worth over 900k and boom! North Amherst, near puffers pond.

My thought is that they had yoga class in Amherst, and hanners actually made the trek across the bridge which honestly is a true test of friendship.

Updated Map: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1Er9VAj3h0cI4gqhgIBEgqpA8tFRp_Hs&usp=sharing

I am working on a better URL, maybe embedding it on its own page. we shall see!

Anyone else getting this? It’s been happening every time I try to access the website this morning. If I try to go to individual comics, I get a 404 error. Wanted to check if it was just me.

The negative reception of the wedding arc made me think. What exactly was everyone expecting? And why?

The only difference of this arc compared to any other, was that we were expecting it to happen for a few (real, not in-universe) years. Maybe I missed something, but that's it. No big announcement from Jeph that it'll rock our socks off. No post saying "My Netflix movie deal fell through, so I'll be integrating its plot into the regular webcomic". But everyone still seems disappointed and keeps complaining. Not just the "main" subreddit (that's what they do) even this one.

I have a theory.

I've been following QC for around a decade, maybe more. The first time I started deep in the archives (skipped the first years) and read everything until the present day, then forgot about it for a few years, binged everything in between, then just became a regular reader. Minus the break, that's probably 90% of all readers.

QC is a slice of life comic. It's a soap opera comedy. There are "story arcs", but they aren't well-defined. It's more like your life has arcs. Something happens, it takes over your life to some degree, then it fizzles out or gets sidelined by something else. It's not like a movie or a play with three acts. There's rarely a big villain that needs to be fought, or a huge problem that has to be overcome, with a big showdown at the end, then the credits roll etc.

But it kinda feels like there was at some point? The underground robot fighting ring, with corpse witch? The bakery love triangle? Marten and Claire getting together? May getting a new body? The space station? Cubetown? Did that even end?

My theory: The QC that you binged and the QC that you read in "real time" are two very different experiences.

The QC you binged was full of stories and characters. You spent hours reading hundreds (or thousands) of strips at a time. Things changed. Couples broke up and got together. New characters were introduced and interacted with the others. There were exciting new arcs that went on for a dozens of minutes of reading time! And then... idk, something happened, anyway there was this other arc that was completely different, but I'm sure the first one got resolved and that was it. So much stuff, and you never know what will happen next! And the art style just keeps getting better so quickly! Sometimes it's like this guy just keeps changing the style every couple of minutes!

But then you caught up. And present-day QC (whenever that was)... good art, but kinda slow? There's suddenly days between strips, not strips for days. You have time to think. Sometimes it's weeks where it doesn't even get a chuckle out of you. And there's plenty of time to dissect every frame on reddit. Where is this going? Well we mapped out 20 different directions this might go next week, and Jeph should be ashamed for every single one of them. And where is that character you saw last week (while still binging)? That was just 2000 strips ago! When will this be the comic you fell in love with again?

I'm not saying there isn't anything wrong with the wedding arc. What I'm saying is that you've been waiting to have an experience with QC that simply cannot happen again unless you take a break from it for at least two years or so and then come back. But somehow expecting this event for a few years got your hopes up that this could be as exciting as binging.

But maybe I'm wrong. What are your favorite arcs from before you caught up and since? How would you say did binging / having to wait affect that?

I frequent both subs, and this is one of the things I've seen a lot of agreement on. I kind of wish we had actually gotten a proper send off. One final hurrah in the comic so to speak. Like... This whole thing felt very meh? It focused almost exclusively on a brand new character who was just... kinda snooty? And didn't seem like someone Tai would get along with despite being one of her two bridesmaids. Cosette and Steve broke up off-screen, we see him hooking up with Tai's other bridesmaid....

Like we got almost no focus on the core characters despite Marten and Claire departing in all likelihood very soon. No best man speech from Marten, no pre-wedding jitters or talks. No vows, No Dora's parents meeting Veronica (when we know her dad was like a huge fan?)

Like, I have my criticisms of this comic, but this just felt like a massive swing and a miss. The ball didn't even come close to the bat.

This wedding was slowly built up over like what, four IRL years?

I'm just sad, man.