When web-comics makers die

I wonder what'll happen when the makers of fine webcomics die. Do some of them will their property to someone else? Do the comics simply die, one day totally unfinished? Or will web comics evolve and be copied over and over like the cast of DC and Marvel? Will we one day stand around the table and tell our grand-children about when we used the read the original adventures of Gabe and Tycho, and not the new adventures of Cyber-Gabe 2.0 and Chibi-Tycho as written by Humdrum Bill and his robotic monkey, Spunky McDoodle? Will Piffany IV patch up Nodwick XXXVIII in "The New Adventures of Nodwick and Friends" (the standard DC naming convention being if you can't think up something original, steal an old name and add Roman numerals to the end)?

More to the point: Why the hell do I think of these things?