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Schedule Slip
Ack. Okay, the next page will be up on Tuesday night. Don't think of it as "slow", think of it as "dramatic tension"!
— Andrea L. Peterson, No Rest For The Wicked

I swear I am going to update even if I have to update with my freaking teeth. Aaaaargh.
— Amber Williams, Dan And Mabs Furry Adventures

One of the biggest problems with webcomics is that many are haphazardly written and posted, especially the majority of them which are written part-time. Unless an author is careful to maintain a Strip Buffer, scheduling conflicts can result in strips being released late, from hours or days to months or (in a few notorious cases) years.

Extreme cases of schedule slip may result in an Orphaned Series. Filler Strips are often used to cover for short (or even long) breaks in a series which is otherwise moving on schedule. On the bright side, this can help alleviate Archive Panic caused by date of first publication. The fact that so many webcomics adopted a "MWF Schedule" for their updates (meaning Monday-Wednesday-Friday) and then quickly fell into chronic slips led to the schedule being jokingly redubbed the "Maybe-Whenever-Forget it schedule".

Whether the lack of an obligation to make every deadline molds webcomics into a fundamentally different direction than commercial ones is left as an exercise for the reader. One reason Penny Arcade is still highly respected as a gamer comic is, among other things, avoiding delays after becoming a professional business.

Examples

Anime and Manga
  • The scanlations of manga in general often have this problem, since the contributors are doing the work for free and have little incentive other than a simple desire to get it out there to actually translate on time.
  • The second season of Suzumiya Haruhi: Announced back in 2007, said to be released fall 2007/spring 2008, eventually released summer 2009.
    • Don't forget the light novels. The first was released in June 2003 and the ninth and latest one was April 2007. As of this writing, more than two years have passed and still not so much as a confirmation on the release date of the tenth (and possibly final) book.
  • The manga of Neon Genesis Evangelion has been running since just before the anime started, but has yet to finish, averaging around one 6-stage volume a year, and sometimes with years in between stages.
  • Fist Of The Blue Sky, the Prequel to Fist Of The North Star can only enjoy sporadic and unannounced releases since 2005 due to Harada, its illustrator, becoming blind in one eye from a condition suffered by one in a million. Having lost depth perception, all his panels have to be re-drawn and inked by an assistant; the fact that his insisted style is realistic and intricately detailed does not help to alleviate the problem.
  • D.Gray-man has experienced several stops in production due to the author falling ill. After a hiatus in 2009, the series returned with a fifty page chapter... and another hiatus. However, starting in November, the series will begin being published monthly as opposed to weekly.
  • The manga of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind was originally started in 1982 solely to get funding for the film (as they would not back an anime movie not based on a manga when Miyazaki was still an unknown). It was 7 volumes long (about a year and half for a weekly series or two and a half for a monthly, and the volumes were shorter than most) did not finish until 1994, as Miyazaki was sill directing other projects and the movie was only reflected in the first one and a half volumes.
  • Kentaro Miura's irregular schedule is legendary. Most recently he ended one hiatus to start another one just two months later when he (link NSFW) became addicted to watching videos of The Idolmaster on Nico Nico Douga.
  • Hunter X Hunter, from the author of Yu Yu Hakusho, was featured regularly in Shonen Jump for several years. Nowadays the series is on hiatus much more than it is not, with roughly one tankōbon coming out every one and a half years. Delays have been attributed to illness as well the author and his wife spending time with their new child.
  • Mahou Sensei Negima scanlations often fall victim to this;the occasional Wall Of Text, as well as it's tendency to use a lot of Gratuitous Foreign Language (which is both well done and plot important) which must also be translated means that it's not uncommon for a scanlation to come out almost a week after the chapter is actually released. Or 2-3 weeks in the case of Ch. 277 (came out in Japan 1/27/2010, translated version came out 2/4).

Comic Books
  • Platinum Grit is a bimonthly comic, the first issue released in 1994. They gave up on bimonthly a while ago - issue twenty came out in 2009. Or you can just say it's twelve years behind schedule.
  • The print comic Battle Chasers was intended to be Joe Madureira's big break, and fans were extremely eager for it. Unfortunately, Joe also bragged in a magazine article about all the fun stuff he and his staff could do in their offices that were not in the slightest bit connected to getting a comic on shelves; the series was eventually abandoned altogether, along with the majority of Madureira's career. Battle Chasers has practically become a phrase meaning "comic that cannot meet its schedule" in the comics industry.
  • In The Nineties Image Comics was known primarily for four things: Schedule Slips, Rob Liefeld's inability to draw figures even remotely approximating human anatomy, nearly every team having a Wolverine duplicate, and Schedule Slips. Did I mention Schedule Slips?
  • In the now-cancelled Star Wars Rebellion comic series, the very first arc was plagued by a number of schedule slips. Issue four was released in late July, ending on a cliffhanger going into the final issue of the story arc. The conclusion to the arc was released in December of that year.
  • This has been going on almost since the comic book miniseries took off. Camelot 3000, a 12 issue monthly series, started in December 1982 and ended in April 1985, with nine months between the last two issues.
    • And then God invented the "Buy the Delux hard-cover and Archive Binge the whole thing in one night" and there were much rejoicing.
  • Planetary by Warren Ellis and John Cassady released 27 issues in TEN YEARS. The script of the final issue was apparently written over two years before it was published.
  • Fans of Sasmira have been waiting for the release of the second episode since 1997. And by the look of it they aren't done waiting yet.

Live Action TV

Newspaper Comics
  • Dilbert - Though never happening with the comic itself, this trope is invoked with the 'Dilbert Newsletter' readers can sign up for, which author Scott Adams describes as 'coming out approximately whenever I feel like it'.

Web Comics
  • This has happened to Zebra Girl so often that author Joe England changed the comic's header from reading "Updated Fridays" to "Updated Unpredictably".
  • Similarly, Something Positive's header used to read "Updated Five days a week Seven days a week A lot!"
    • Sort of. It said that because he sometimes updated more than once a day.
  • Originally, the Homestar Runner website was updated with new material twice a week; the creators gradually dropped back to every Sunday, then to once a week as their schedule dictated, to "if we're putting up anything new we'll let you know three days in advance". This eventually lead to an unannounced hiatus of several months in late spring/early summer 2006 (possibly new baby related, like a similar break in 2007), after which they went back on a mostly-weekly schedule.
    • That being said, they generally aim at one toon per week / 2 weeks, released around monday.
    • As of 2/3/10, they haven't updated in over two months. They didn't even do a Christmas toon, but they did add more links to their store.
  • Chopping Block has had several of these throughout its run, many of which last several months. At the end of one such hiatus, there was a short set of strips involving Satan looking for Butch (the star of the comic). Another schedule slip caused that to become an Aborted Arc. The most recent one: February 21, 2008 to January 2nd, 2009 - eleven months.
  • One of the major criticisms of Megatokyo is its erratic update schedule. On a good week there might be two of three scheduled comics produced. This is particularly grating to critics who claim that the "simpler" artistic style - light pencil drawings - suggest a sacrifice in artistic quality for the sake of regularity... which means it fails on both accounts. Naturally, there's a lot of detail in those pencils, so it can be argued either way.
    • Also worth noting is that Fred Gallagher, artist of Megatokyo, decided to quit his job and make the comic itself his profession. (Way before Dresden Codak did it.) However, unlike Dresden Codak, the update schedule didn't remain the way it was after Fred started devoting all his attention to it... it got worse.
    • Since the birth of Gallagher's son, updates have become even more infrequent and unpredictable, with the average as of the end of 2008 hovering somewhere around one comic per week. The creator even changed the schedule to a two-per-week Tuesday/Friday schedule, and he can't even keep that up.
  • El Goonish Shive went from updating every day, to every week day, to Monday-Wednesday-Friday to Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday to at least 2 days per week with a filler as well. There are also several occasions where months passed between updates, due to problems in Dan Shive's private life. The latest slip was from September 2007 to January 2008, while Dan Shive was learning to color his strips with his new art style. Recently, the strip had gone back to a regular Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule, only to later revert to filler and a new schedule, which, in turn, collapsed, another abortive attempt at Monday-Wednesday-Friday was made, Dan's tablet PC (which he uses to draw) died, and we're back in limbo.
  • Captain SNES went for about a year without any substantial updates, except for a few filler strips, before resuming.
    • Some statistics, for no real reason. First year: 163 story comics. Second year: 197 story comics. Third year: 90 story comics. Fourth year: 40 story comics. Fifth year: 45 story comics. Sixth year: 9 story comics. Seventh year so far: 21, with the anniversary in one month. Particularly frustrating since it has one of the most complex plots of any sprite comic around. Bob And George (which ironically largely averted this trope) is at least purely comedic and gag-based despite its ludicrously complex plot.
  • MSF High has suffered from this a good few times, and has actually orphaned the previous version, HSCM, twice.
  • Painful in Avalon, where the strip, meant to run on a three-year schedule corresponding to schoolyears, suffered numerous delays in the final year, forcing the author to backdate new strips, until giving up and writing a "strip" saying in text what happened between the most recent strip and graduation.
  • Order Of The Stick is notorious for missing its three-times-a-week schedule. The author reportedly has a chronic illness. At present, it's just "updates without warning", hoping to average out to three times a week. This is (somewhat) made up for by the fact that updates are frequently double length.
    • Back on schedule now and updating three times a week, often on predictable days! Nobody knows how long it'll last, though...
      • Spoke too soon. It's down to one single length comic per week.
      • But it's back again—oh now there's a hiatus—no it back again—you get it.
    • To put things in perspective, here is the number of strips posted online each full year of the comic's run:
      • 2004: 111 strips
      • 2005: 123 strips (this is the year the author made the comic his full-time job)
      • 2006: 136 strips
      • 2007: 122 strips (with a three week hiatus beginning in late August)
      • 2008: 101 strips
      • 2009: 78 strips (with a three week hiatus beginning in early August)
  • Both The Wotch and its spinoff Cheer! have a highly erratic schedule that can drop out for months at a time without notice, and even in normal times easily miss half their updates on a poor week.
    • Lately, Robin's not been doing too hot on getting the pages colored, either...
  • College Roomies From Hell had a strong seven-day schedule for several years, then dropped off to five per week, then three, and now the last schedule has become unreliable as well.
    • It's been more reliable in the past few months.
  • Cheerfully acknowledged and lampshaded in this strip of VG Cats.
  • This is the whole schtick of Gone with the Blastwave. You're lucky to get more than a single comic per year.
  • Clay Yount's Cosmobear, despite still proclaiming that it updates on Fridays, has been more known for going on hiatuses either announced or unannounced, then posting one or two pages before falling silent again. The last update was in late 2007, and the news box is still promising an update "next Friday".
  • Clay Yount's other webcomic, Rob and Elliot, was originally running twice a week, then knocked back to once a week one the launch of Cosmobear. Despite the latter not having updated in over two years, it still stays at once a week and has grown increasingly sporadic about whether it updates each week or not.
  • Goblins has run a bit late pretty much since the creator refined his art style back in Book One, but four days late was considered unheard-of and newsworthy when most of the party came to Brassmoon. Two years and eleven months later, the Brassmoon story arc finally came to a close. Updates a week late were practically the norm for most of that time, until Thunt made the comic his full-time job.
    • In March 2009, in response to emails requesting him to just post what he has instead of trying to make it perfect, Thunt published a series of blank panels.
  • Dresden Codak is exceptionally bad at this. The update schedule was completely random until the author promised weekly updates as part of making the comic his full-time job... upon which the update schedule continued to be completely random. Following the announcement, the next comic took six weeks to arrive, and since then the strip has been updated about once every twenty days. The fact that the author was recently in an accident that has left him unable to draw and broke his computer, erasing the sketches he had in progress, put the series on temporary hiatus. Few noticed.
  • Dragon Tails. The original run of 2000 comics never had a late one. Then the author ended it, then restarted it, and ever since the update schedule has become entirely random and unpredictable.
  • Ozy And Millie used to update every weekday, Monday through Friday, with minimal interruption. Towards the end, the comic updated irregularly; the author attributed this to waning interest. The series has now semi-officially ended: the main storyline has met a satisfying conclusion, but occasionally D.C. Simpson updates the site with a new drawing, and she has left open the possibility of more stories in the future.
  • Erfworld claims to update three times a week on their comic page, but actually updates three times a month. It's an egregious example because it started out being hosted on the same website as Order Of The Stick and was originally brought in to compensate for its Schedule Slips.
    • Averted - Erfworld went back on schedule when they got their own site putting other unnamed Giant in the Playground webcomics to shame.
    • Averted again—a Wed/Sa schedule was apparently too much for the authors to handle, so they switched to a "every five days" schedule. Even better, they reinstated text updates, also on a "every five days" (but a different five days) schedule, so basically the site updates every other day.
  • No Pink Ponies still claims to update 4 times a week, but there hasn't been a new strip since mid-January (2008). The author announced in mid-April that he was "bogged down by multiple other jobs", which were to be done by the end of May (''Marry Me'' only finished in late June).
    • NPP is now going again, with the author promising to post a strip a day to make up for the break. The revival so far (Sept 2008) has consisted of 9 regular strips plus one "Sunday" strip, a news post from the author promising not to take a planned month's break, then an 8 week (and counting) hiatus...
  • Stickman And Cube updates "whenever the author damn well feels like it", and that's how I'm... er... he's planning to keep it. Er, Or So I Heard. From someone who isn't me.
  • Casey And Andy had several very long hiatuses during it's run, although it has now ended for good.
  • One member of a similar contest to the Daily Grind mentioned below (the Lazy Grind) which had previously had a really bad history of schedule slips was Elf Only Inn. When it finally slipped after a rather good showing, the Lazy Grind runners were a bit slow to mark it off on the page, while some people mused in the shoutbox on the Lazy Grind page that, now that there had been a single slip, the comic creator (Sortelli) would probably not update for months. The shoutbox was removed and replaced by a temper tantrum by one of the Lazy Grind staff. In the end, Sortelli proceeded to not update Elf Only Inn for months immediately after his slip, and continues to post an average of one comic every three months or so.
    • To make matters worse, apparently the Grind itself has had a bit of a schedule slip. Kell Hound apparently won the contest when its last fellow competitor missed an update... back in April of '08. (Example added in August of the same year.)
      • Update, April 21, 2009: Lazy Grind front page still not updated with winner. Elf Only Inn two weeks from celebrating a year of unannounced hiatus.
  • Metal Gear Solid fan comic The Cobra Days started out as a Monday/Wednesday/Friday comic with occasional misses, slipped to three or four comics a month... then one or two... August 2008 saw the posting of the fourth new comic of the year. Apparently the author is currently in college.
  • Lampshaded here at Chaospet.
  • Bryan Clevinger generally generally does a solid job with Eight Bit Theater, but interruptions and delays pop up not infrequently. Hurricanes would hinder the Sprite Comic a couple times every year (Clevinger was based in Florida for the first decade of the strip's history) and there's usually a handful of personal crises that push back publication for a short time. Then there are the occasional multiple update interludes that Clevinger uses to preview Atomic Robo, the comic book he writes as part of his day job, or other comics. His Other webcomic however, is hit by this hard. First it was updating once a week, but quickly spiraled into "once very few months, if you are lucky." Supposedly this is because the artist has terrible luck and either loses all of his work or has severe financial problems. He seems to have learned from this however, as his other other webcomic is openly stated to have a one-month buffer, and will update on mondays and fridays, no exceptions.
  • The webcomic adaptation of Erika's New Perfume just sort of updates when it will, though it generally updates every eight days. There have been slips in this though, which wouldn't be too bad except it's only 9 strips in. Still, it so far seems more reliable than most.
  • No Rest For The Wicked fell into an unannounced hiatus of several months during 2008, though it's back now.
    • Although it seems to be slipping again.
  • The Saga of Earthsong started out at two days a week before running into occasional hiatuses. It now painfully creeps ahead at about one page a week, made only the more excruciating because two years into the comic's storyline, a publishing deal led the author to decide to *completely* reboot the entire comic...publishing at an even slower pace then it originally started. So despite cutting a tremendous amount of filler and excess exposition, the update schedule means the comic has actually taken *longer* to get to the exact same point in the storyline that it was at when the story was rebooted.
  • Pretty much every comic on Wirepop slips into this, most of them never recovering. The schedule slip is all the more frustrating because it's a pay site, yet the paying subscriber gets the same varying commitments to a series as they'd get anywhere else for free. The site displays an update schedule on the front page, but its safe to say most of them will not update on the day given, if at all.
    • Fantasy Realms started off as a free comic, turned into a Wirepop launch series, gave a few months of regular updates, then fell into a black hole. It departed the site and has rarely updated despite multiple promises of new regular updates. A few notable mentions:
    • Similarly, Directions of Destiny ran three chapters, moved to Wirepop and started a reboot, then left Wirepop and stopped updating for two years before finally updating a few times in 2008.
    • In fact, the only comic that was there when the site launched that is still regularly updating and has done so without a single unannounced hiatus is Dan Hess' Realms of Ishikaze.
    • There was also a short series named Xamra that did at least complete its storyline, but not until after it had been rebooted into a completely different series and it still suffered from this the entire time it ran.
  • Eversummer Eve started out asa free comic, eventually moved new updates and its entire archive to Wirepop, updated once a week on a regular schedule, then fell into a hole without warning. The comic finally quietly departed Wirepop in early 2008 and the author has stated that updates will be irregular at best due to attempts to focus on more lucrative endeavors. The comic has not updated since the move.
  • Scandal Sheet! seems to alternate between periods where Troy Smith swears he's turned over a new leaf, has a Strip Buffer going, and sticks hard to a thrice-weekly schedule for a few months...then declines...leading to month-long (or longer) gaps in the archives - and then he's back, "No really, I mean it this time!" This would be far less frustrating if Smith didn't like to write enormous, extended story arcs that take months of real time to complete even with regular updates.
    • Although lately it seems the comic is more-or-less dead, with the last installment being dated Feb 16th 2009 and nothing since (despite posts from Troy claiming an imminent comic in April, then May, then late June, with very little heard from him since)
  • Adventures In Ninja Cookery (not to be confused with The Adventures Of Doctor Mcninja) never had an official schedule, but the author said he would try for once a week. The most recent update at the time of this writing took over fifty days to be released.
  • Pokémon-X insists on dating the comics on the days they should've come out (M-W-F update schedule)...which means that as of March 20th, 2009, the next comic to go up will be dated December 1, 2008. Yeah.
  • The Life Of Nob T Mouse had a major bout of this when the series went on an unannounced hiatus between the the final part of the Nasties! storyline in 1999 and the first episode of Pie Noon' in 2007, i.e. eight years'' later.
    • This will hopefully not happen anymore however, since the comic reportedly now has a Strip Buffer.
  • Will Never Never ever ever continue?
    • Not likely. It's main page has been declaring a temporary hiatus since July 10th of 2008.
  • Achewood has been falling into this for a while, with multiple days between each update and the author repeatedly pushing back his own deadlines.
  • Instant Classic and Genrezvous Point alternate between 10 strips per week (seven IC, three GP) and posting nothing for months at a time. To be fair, the artist is a filmmaker and his bursts of "inactivity" are usually when he's working on a project.
    • As of November 2009, Carroll seems to have jumped back on the comics bandwagon for good, though only time will tell.
  • American Gothic Daily. It isn't.
  • My Afternoon: A Dramatization doesn't even bother pretending to have a schedule — the 2009 update (yes, the) comes with a note calculating the mean time between updates as 484 days.
  • Pokey the Penguin, to the point it's almost orphaned (by this date).
  • WTF Comics has, at times, gone for months without an update.
  • Gone To Ground is notoriously bad at updating on a schedule, mostly because of its extremely detailed art style. On the other hand, the author is a good sport about it, with a banner on the site cheerfully proclaiming "updated bi-monthly."
  • Beyond Reality updates so erratically, schedule slip may no longer be applicable. Currently (early October 2009), it has not updated since July 20, and "regular" schedule is about once a week to once a month.
  • Unwinder's Tall Comics at one point promised updates every Saturday, but the gaps between comics are usually several weeks.
  • Foxfire chronicles is lucky to have two updates a month. As of this February 2009 edit; the last update to Foxfire Chronicles was January 6th 2010.
  • Alice was last updated on July 7th 2006. There has been talk about perhaps restarting it, but it's not looking good since the update of a revival was in June 2009.

Other
  • The Best Page In The Universe! Initially, Maddox would update his site on a weekly to monthly basis. Now, it's almost a running joke, with updates coming biannually at best. As of January 2010, there has only been one update for the whole year of 2009. Maddox himself is well aware of this, often teasing his readers with comments like, "Now that my book has been published, I can get back to regualry not updating my site".
  • Super. Mario. Bros. Z. The creator intiially made a new episode every 2 1/2 months or so. Then he wound up taking a year and a half to release Episode 7. It took another year or so for Episode 8 to come out.
    • And there was that incident where a troll harassed him to the point where he temporarily canceled the series. The troll went on to brag about it... to his dismay.
  • The Nostalgia Critic doesn't actually have a schedule, per se, but he still responded to fan complaints about his increasingly erratic updates at the end of his "Top 11 Disney Villains" video. As he puts it, he isn't lazy; rather, he (or rather his computer) is possessed. As evidence, he cites the fact that it was inexplicably playing the audio track from Ghostbusters. All told, he makes a pretty good case.
  • The "weekly" MuggleNet Caption Contest has run for months a few times.
  • Eric Conveys an Emotion has had 2 news updates and 1 content update in three years.
  • There she is! step 2 took 2 years to come out, then step 3 took 3 years, where it ened as the next step only took a few months to come out, and the last step was even shorter as it only took 2 months to come out.
  • Alice And Kev, the Sims 3 Reality Webcomic Thing, was updated regularly until the proprietor admitted a Creator Breakdown and abolished his schedule... at which time, posts ceased entirely. After about a month or two, he continued updating up to the blog concluded its story.
  • Valve, the developers of Half Life, Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead are particularly infamous for continued delays on their release dates - so much so that their fandom has coined the term 'Valve Time' to refer to the manner in which they can single-handedly dilate time around themselves. This is probably mostly thanks to Valve's loose internal corporate structure, where no-one has a single, set-in-stone role to play in the company.
  • The finale of There Will Be Brawl will be out at some point...just not when it was planned to.
  • Team Four Star's Dragonball Z The Abridged Series normally has no set schedule but has flirted with this trope in the past. The team announced that episodes 7 through 9 would all be uploaded before the end of 2008, but only episode 7 was released during the last week of the year, with episode 8 coming a month later and episode 9 a month after that. Later, it was announced that episode 10 would be split into separate videos to be uploaded over the course of a week. Episode 10 Part 2 (of 3) was uploaded about two weeks after Part 1, and the prior announcement made by Team Four Star was "mysteriously" deleted in the interim. Since then, the team has made no promises regarding release dates, presumably having learned their lesson from these instances.
  • Merlin's Revenge. Just Merlin's Revenge. The first game was released around 2000, and the sequel a couple of years later. The members were told that the release date for Merlin's Revenge 3 would be Christmas 2005. This got pushed back a couple of years, to the point of fanbase revolt. In 2007, the developer took an indefinite break from the series, and we still don't have the fourth game. Also, throught 2006 there were strictly weekly updates, but they too vanished in mid-2007.

Exceptions

  • Schlock Mercenary has updated daily since June 2000 without missing a strip- even when the server exploded. The art quality has increased exponentially as well. An April Fool's Day gag had a block of text reading "No comic today" which, after a minute or two, faded into the day's comic.
  • Nukees has held to three updates a week for a decade straight. Looks much the same, though.
  • Irregular Webcomic is an inversion. It started on an irregular schedule, hence the name... but quickly settled into daily updates.
  • Arthur, King of Time and Space has updated seven days a week, without missing a strip, since May 21st, 2004. There are trade-offs involved; the art style varies wildly depending on how much the deadline is looming when the artist starts work.
  • The Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge is an ongoing contest to see whose webcomic can go the longest without missing an update (required updates are Mondays through Fridays). Out of 56 original contestants, 10 are left. (Arthur, King of Time and Space was eliminated in June 2008, but not for missing an update; it was for having two single-panel strips too close together.)
  • Commissioned started with a three-times-a-week schedule, but slowly evolved to the now strip-per-day schedule. With art evolution. And multiple storylines.
  • Brat-Halla has yet to miss an update.
  • And let's give a big hand to Bill Holbrook, who currently writes three separate comics (Safe Havens, On The Fast Track, and Kevin and Kell) and has yet to miss an update. The first two are both print comics, complete with editors, which probably help keep him disciplined, but the third has been purely on the web since 1995, and upped from five-a-week to daily around 2000. Needless to say, though, Bill is a professional cartoonist of the first order, and was back when he launched Kevin and Kell.
  • Sluggy Freelance has had an update for pretty much every single day since it began in 1997, although cartoonist Pete Abrams did have some help thanks to other cartoonists, especially on Saturdays...
  • User Friendly has updated daily for ten years straight. He actually calculated how many comics he'd made at that point, too.
  • Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic has been running since May 2006 and has yet to miss one of its daily updates.
  • Last Resort, despite having a significantly slower once-a-week schedule to compensate, is notorious for keeping buffers several-months long in order to cover updates during college semesters (when considerably less time can be spent on the comic for obvious reasons).
    • However, it has slipped significantly in early 2009...
  • Say what you want about Ctrl Alt Del, it hasn't missed an update in years. That said, Chef Brian was invented entirely due to an almost-schedule-slip.
    • CAD Sillies, on the other hand... Lets just say that asking when they're updated is a touchy subject on the forums.
  • 1/0 never missed a day in its 1,000 comic run, and Tailsteak tells the characters that he does not take breaks.
  • For the last three years Better Days has only ever missed one of the Monday/Friday updates due to a server crash, probably due to its own buffer. It also possibly has to do with the fact that most of the pornographic art folios that the writer sells are based on the Better Days universe, thus making it more lucrative to keep regular.
  • Lampshaded in this Loserz strip, among others.
  • Girl Genius updates precisely at midnight, three days a week, without fail. The art doesn't seem to suffer much for it, either. It probably helps that the Foglios had been professional artists for 20 years before taking their comic to the web.
  • The Tao of Geek: Not an exceptional webcomic, but it's put out a strip a day six days a week for several years, and that's saying something.
  • Questionable Content and Scary Go Round are renowned for updating every weekday without fail, and maintaining a consistent level of quality in art and writing.
  • Also The Devil's Panties which updates every day.
  • Tom Siddell built up a three-month Strip Buffer prior to launching Gunnerkrigg Court and has maintained it to this day. Even after switching from a twice-a-week schedule to a three-times-a-week schedule (in early 2007), the comic still hasn't missed an update.
  • The original run of Dragon Tails had 2000 consecutive daily comics before the author ended the strip. Perhaps ironic, given that since its reboot, it has suffered a great deal from this trope.
  • Least I Could Do and Looking For Group, made by Ryan Sohmer and Lar deSouza, miss their updates by an hour tops, and if they do, the artist makes a thread on the forums to apologise.
    • They also upped LICD to daily from six times a week, recently.
    • Sohmer seems to think of webcomic-makers without his skill of in-timeness pretty negatively, as seen in the Author Tract here.

  • Man-Man updates three times a week since 2003, and this editor has never seen a missed update.
    • In February 2009, the comic finished. As far as this editor knows, it never missed an update.
  • xkcd updates every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, usually within seconds (!) of midnight. As far as this troper knows, it always has.
    • Sometimes it updates more often, usually during a story arc (Yes, xkcd does have occasional story arcs)
  • Dominic Deegan keeps a rigorous seven-days-a-week schedule, even after switching from four panels to eight at one point and introducing colored Sunday strips. That said, the only time this is broken is when creator Mookie announces his plans to attend an anime convention or two. And even then, he announces his plans - and any alterations to his updating schedule - several weeks in advance.
    • With the start of 2009, Mookie has adopted a Monday-through-Friday schedule instead, likewise kept updated on time.
  • In its entire seven-plus year run (a little more than 2500 days) of daily strips, Bob And George had only had two real scheduling lapses. One was when David Anez announced a hiatus to relaunch the comic early in its run, which lasted only nineteen days. The other was a gag where the comic was intentionally not updated for one day, and the characters immediately complained about it in the next strip. Any other schedule slips (usually caused by server issues), would result in a double update next time, meaning you still got a total of seven strips out of a week.
    • And with the server problems he constantly had over the years, Dave sometimes had to do those triple updates just so that he could make up for a meltdown.
    • It should be noted that the way the strip turned out was itself the result of a schedule slip to launching his original comic plan, but the MegaMan filler strips ended up being more popular so transposed the titular characters into them.
  • Penny Arcade is put out on a schedule. They might be a few minutes late, or a few minutes early, and Tycho might not get his newspost up at the same time as the strip, but they will update Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, barring everything except total computer failure while they're away from home (as happened recently, and they still managed to get it up the next day).
    • It bears mentioning that when they suffered total computer failure when they were at home, not only did the strip go up on time it made fun of the cartoonists themselves for not keeping backups.
      • They recently began to run a series of guest strips in order to keep up their schedule—because Krahulik caught swine flu and was physically unable to lift a pen.
  • Misfile keeps true to the "updated every weekday" statement.
    • The only thing that can stop Chris from posting a comic is his wife having a kid.
  • Narbonic. Six days a week, one weekend special, every week, six years, with rare, rare exceptions.
  • The Abominable Charles Christopher updates once a week, every week, Wednesdays, and has never missed an update.
  • Cyanide And Happiness updates every single day. This probably because it's a Dead Baby Comedy Stick Figure Comic. Written by four different guys.
  • Jayden and Crusader has updated every monday at precisely midnight GMT since September 08, and used to update every Monday and Friday since May. One slip up occured when the artist missed the update by 8 hours in December.
    • This comic suffered a slip of 2 days on 30th of March 09, when a problem with the comic uploader delayed the comic, ruining what was a pretty good run. Most ironic was that this was a comic that the creator had put up in his buffer 3 weeks ago, proving that a strip buffer does not always help
  • The Zombie Hunters updates weekly, and has done so for several years. Also includes occasional Thursday updates. While this strip updates slower than the others mentioned here, it is notable in that only Phil Foglio's strip Girl Genius can compare in terms of strip size and quality of artwork- and Foglio himself has over 20 years' experience advantage over the artist of The Zombie Hunters.
  • Ryan Smith successfully completed the entire nine-year run of Funny Farm (another Daily Grind contender), taking the story from gag-based beginnings to densely-plotted conclusion while keeping to the published M-F or 7-day schedule throughout.
  • As far as most of us recall, Keychain Of Creation hasn't significantly missed any updates.
  • And where does Sabrina Online fall in all of this? While the output level varies, Eric W. Schwartz has kept to the same published schedule since September 1996: at least one new strip, on the first of each month. Without fail.
    • Yes. At least one four panel, black and white, low-detail strip a month. ... Probably only a very technical adherence to not schedule slipping.
  • Slightly Damned updates once a week. If you do the maths, there's actually one point two comics per week since it started in March 2004, the result of several donation drives that were rewarded with extra updates (once the author put up three pages in one day), and otherwise sticking to the schedule: it may be several days late, but bygummit, it's going to get done! And considering the size and quality of the average webcomic strip, that's particularly impressive.
    • And when there might be a slip, Chu's polite enough to let you know what's up: she announced at the end of July 2009 that the comic will be updated sporadically, if at all, during the month of August due to some life changing events.
  • Darths And Droids stays on schedule no matter what. Probably because the author set things up so it auto-updates and just takes the appropriate comic from the buffer. Hence, he could (and did) go on vacation for a few weeks and not have any problems.
  • Blip has been going since the beginning of 2008, and started with a daily schedule. True, there have been a few slips here and there, but Sage has not missed a single update since March 30th (as of October 2009). Granted, many have been filler doodles, but still...
  • Skin Deep has changed schedules several times and has been doing a good job of keeping to the new once-a-week schedule, despite a few hiatuses. (Such as holidays and the artist getting married)
  • In terms of Web Original shows, the Nostalgia Critic, Atop The Fourth Wall and Zero Punctuation always have a new episode up on Tuesday night, Monday evening and Wednsday afternoon, respectively.

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