It’s interesting, some people really liked the comics being included and others not at all. We decided to try going all text for a few issues (#3 also had no comics) for a few reasons. First, it’s harder to edit comics than text, and while it’s important to let people do their own thing and trust contributors’ visions, we do want to exercise a degree of quality control. That said, I absolutely stand by the comics we have printed – they were all really good! Also, we offer a flat contributor fee, and 2000 words generally takes less time to produce than a two page comic. Conversely, 2000 words is enough space for most people to say something of substance while for many cartoonists two pages isn’t much. Again, though, I’m proud of the comics we published – we were the first to publish Sarah Horrocks in print, first to publish Evie Cahir in North America, etc – so it’s something we might go back to in the future.
EDIT: Oh, one more important point I forgot – there are lots of places to post two page comics online, and the Internet is generally a good venue for short comics. Both are less true for 2000 word pieces of comics criticism. But again I’m just making the case, we might change things up in the future.