After 12 years and more than 1,200 strips, the photo webcomic A Softer World is coming to an end

Creators Emily Horne and Joey Comeau have announced the series will conclude on June 1, coinciding with the conclusion of a Kickstarter campaign to fund a "best of" collection called Anatomy of Melancholy: The Best of A Softer World. 

"For twelve years we’ve been making sad, weird, harsh and sometimes ridiculous comics. Our whole adult lives, it feels like. And now we’re going to stop," Comeau wrote on the Kickstarter page. "We love doing the comic, love what we’ve created, but we don’t want to do the same thing forever. So, we’re going to stop now while we STILL love doing the comic. Before something dies inside of us and all that’s left is the work. And, as Emily pointed out – 'It’s better to burn out than to get old and weird and pathetic.'"

A Softer World could be described easiest as a narrative photo-comic, but over time -- and in specific instances -- became something much more: a kind of visualized poetry, with Horne providing the photography and Comeau the text, that worked like a resonating vocal duet straigh.



So far Anatomy of Melancholy has surpasses its Kickstarter goals three-fold, but with more three weeks left, they could end up going much further. The buy-in for a physical hardcover of the book is $35, but PDF copies can be had for as low as $10.