A few days ago, I looked up suddenly from whatever I was doing after my mind had wandered, inexplicably, into faint memories of an interactive webcomic I read maybe 10 years ago about an irate demon girl stuck in a dead town with an abysmally low population and no way out, plagued by the thousands of supernatural remnants that haunt the town. I remembered basic animation, a fun system of player interactivity where you tried to sleuth clues out of the townspeople, a floating dog (???) and sincere care and worry for a repressed nerdboy. I asked myself, wait, did that actually exist? Did I make that up? I did not make that up. It took a long time to find, since I could not recall the name of it at first and it was last updating literally ten years ago (holy shit) but there it is, as quirky and lovable and early internet as I remember. The animation/'gameplay' are very limited, but it seemed like MAGIC when I was 13 and couldn't figure out how to navigate a forum or plug in a USB drive. It looks like the project of someone trying to figure out how to do more complex things with their computer, which turned into a story on them. Now, it's honestly funnier than I remembered (the entire matrimonial plant gag Barlow is went through went totally over my head) and possibly more fun. I still care, somehow, about these characters--especially poor, paranoid Alex and Crystal, god bless her disillusioned heart. Something surprised me when I started poking around the site, though. Namely the fact that it has not changed whatsoever in ten years. I remember that the comic had suddenly stopped updating when I began reading it a long time ago, and so, because I knew it would bug me to start reading mystery 8, which was uncompleted at the time, I read the 7 complete mysteries and then stopped. I checked in every once in a while to see if mystery 8 had updated, because I really wanted more, but it never did. And it still hasn't. At first I was just disappointed that it had become a true dead project (there was hope when it had been less than a year since the last update) but then I took a closer look. Updates hadn't slowly petered out when the author, Jason Blue, lost interest--they stopped cold turkey, breaking off an absurdly rigid updating schedule with finality. This man died, didn't he? It's always so hard to tell with internet creators, especially since this happened so long ago and people are apt to not use their real name (not that I would have any surety that I found the right 'Jason Blue' if I went looking.) Poking around the site (WHICH LITERALLY HAS NOT CHANGED, AT ALL, ONE INCH, SINCE 2006, I CANNOT EMPHASIZE THIS ENOUGH, except for discussion posts that fans have posted longing for more and trying to solve the eighth mystery, bless their hearts) reveals nothing--it was long enough ago that there isn't a page festooned with links or easily guiding fans to the author's other works. I myself cannot find a blog or some other work of his anywhere, but maybe I haven't been looking in the right places. Was anyone reading this back in the day? Does everyone remember statements from the author about why it ended or if he moved on to something else? Or any links to blogs? I loved this comic and would love to see what else Jason Blue did, but I think what he did was die. I am really pretty sure he's dead. But if so, why has the site stayed up so long? Don't websites usually die if not maintained? If someone's keeping it up, why not change it or put an 'officially dead' message up after 10 years? And how cute is Annabelle? Seriously, how cute is Annabelle. Let's get some love in here for the zombabes.
