This feels related to the post about The Silver Jews not being a band anymore, even though a completely different set of factors contributed to its happening: Kevin Huizenga will no longer be putting out his comic "Or Else." This has more to do with the feasibility of the comics pamphlet in a graphic novel world, but that format gave Kevin the chance to do whatever he wanted. Which, in the cases of issues 2 through 4, meant completely self-contained experimental books, priced cheap. He'll still be putting out minicomics, and his Fantagraphics/Ignatz thing Ganges (which is eight dollars per rigidly formatted issue), but the loss of a vehicle for him to do weird stuff is pretty sad. Or Else 4 in particular was pretty influential for how free-wheeling it was on its way to its end. Kevin is a great cartoonist, who has more range than you would expect from just looking at his more acclaimed work.

I imagine that his "Rumbling" story that began serialization in issue 5 will see publication when its finished.

What's funny is that while this bothers me, because Kevin uses Or Else to do whatever he wants, I still wish that Anders Nilsen would stop fucking around with the serialization of Big Questions and just put out a completed book, as each issue of that series becomes ever more expensive. That comic is done, and just being put out on this Chris Ware-informed release schedule of once-a-year, rather than in installments of whenever an issue's worth of comics is completed.

And again, I appreciate the value of the single-issue comic, and hope that, when Rumbling (or whatever Kevin's "graphic novel" ends up being) comes out, it is in a cheap format.