Comic 942: Boomerang Comics, sans Boomerang

Oh man, you guys, remember when Randall made those boomerang comics? Remember how wacky and wild it was that those CRAZY boomerangs never did what you expected them to? Ha ha ha, oh man, good times.

Oh wait. Remember how those were actually complete garbage? Randall doesn't, because he's exploring the concept again.


Title: Juggling; alt-text: Later: 'Why is there a book hovering over the trash can?'

The best thing I can say about this is that Randall shows instead of telling. There are no words to speak of, and that's a HUGE improvement for him. Unfortunately, that's really all this strip has going for it. The strip is nonsensical with no point at best, and at worst it's a lazy attempt by an untalented hack of a cartoonist to cash in on the apparent success of his retarded boomerang strips.

Just look at this. A guy reads a book about juggling, throws balls into the air, and they STAY there. That's the joke. The post punchline? The book also hovers when he tries to throw it away. Wow. THIS is what passes for "romance, sarcasm, math, and language" these days?

It's interesting to note that, according to the xkcd forumites, this strip was part of the "five minute comics" page Randall posted last Friday before realizing, "Hey wait, I have an actual joke that I can write about instead." Too bad he didn't. Regardless, do you know what this means? It means that this was truly sketched out in five minutes, and Randall decided that that was all the effort it took. I joke a lot about how he doesn't spend any time on his strips, but apparently that's the truth after all. This literally had so little effort put into it that Randall felt he had to bundle it in a single update with a bunch of other half-hearted strips, because it couldn't stand on its own. I guess now it can stand on its own.

Or not.


P.S. Apparently Randy has never read the "How to Juggle" book, because if he had, he'd know that you don't juggle by throwing several balls into the air at the same time. You toss up one, then when it's coming down you toss up another so that you can catch it in the hand the second ball was in. Repeat with the third ball and the other hand. A double-handed throw of all the balls would just be stupid.