When a webcomic does something as dramatic as suddenly killing off the main characters and rebooting then the judging starts immediately as readers ponder whether to keep the comic in their bookmarks. I got the impression Tim Buckley did this because he was dying to bring his strip back to gag-a-day, and if that's the case he really needs to hit the ball out of the park with his humour over the next month or I think he'll haemorrhage a lot of readers.
If Buckley is burnt out IMO it would better to have a break entirely, maybe release nothing but Sillies for a month or two, and be open and honest that the comic restarts again proper in February.