Short post goodbye

You may have noticed a distinct lack of updates for the last month. I cannot speak for everybody (though I will in just a few sentences), but I myself feel like there's nothing new to be said about xkcd. I have talked about all the qualities that make it consistently horrible in my past reviews, so this blog, and the comic itself as well, are stagnating. Plus (and here we go), I don't think people even care about xkcd sucking anymore. It's been over five years and 1100+ strips, we're gonna have to live with the fact that it's here to stay.

So here's what I have come here today to say: I am officially retiring from being an xkcd reviewer. I don't know what's going to happen with the blog after this. Maybe Gamer will finally start receiving guest posts, or maybe some of the other reviewers will become more active. Or maybe the blog will wither down and die. Only future will tell.

There is, however, one final thing I want to talk about. It's not about xkcd itself, but it is related. For the last few months, Mr. Munroe has been producing a weekly feature on his site, called "What If?", which focuses on answering questions about various hypothetical scenarios, like "What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?" or "How much Force power can Yoda output?" You know, the standard geek discussion stuff. To this date, there have been 15 segments, including one "Short Answer Roundup".

And believe it or not, I actually like what I see here. The overthinking of various scenarios is what I believe xkcd was supposed to be about all along, and focusing on reader-submitted questions provides the much needed limit to the art. The scenarios outlined in the answers are equal parts interesting and informative. Even elements obviously taken from the comic work much better here. The simple stick-figure art style fits the illustrative diagrams and the stupid jokes actually liven up the presentation and are much more tolerable when they're not "the main focus of the evening". In short, I believe that Randall should stop churning out his tri-weekly xkcd comics and instead focus more on his new creation.

Well, that's just about it from me. Xkcd sucks, What If? rocks, the end. See you in another fandom, guys. It's been fun.