Erfworld 1 also had word-only pages, the Klogs.
What people seem to take for granted is that the text updates are supposed to be 'bonus' - Rob and Xin only do one comic update a week, but fill in the text updates for people who need their Erfworld fix more frequently. It's quite possible to read Book 2 completely ignoring the non-picture updates without losing any sense of the current plot, especially since they typically show something that's happening away from the 'camera'. Sure, there's lots of foreshadowing and hints about upcoming plot in them, but you can't have your cakewhich is a lieand eat it too.