1081: If you're arguing over the Internet, you've already lost.

Alt-text: Really, the comforting side in most conspiracy theory arguments is the one claiming that anyone who's in power has any plan at all.

Oh, those wacky conspiracy theorists. Aren't they all just so dumb? I mean, they believe some weird pages with inconsistent text style more than our beloved Wikipedia and then they call everybody who doesn't agree with them "sheep".What is wrong with them?

In all seriousness, this is just another instance of Randall's "intellectual elitism" - anybody who believes something that I know isn't true is wrong and therefore stupid - and this is only aplified by a Randall stand-in being the one who "wins" the argument against a hairy loser. This actually makes me wonder how different this strip would be if the two stickmen's hairstyles were swapped. After all, since hair is only used in xkcd to differentiate between characters, it shouldn't matter who has what hairstyle. Right?

I feel confident in marking this review with the "no joke" tag, since the waterslide gag reads like Chris-chan's patented Random Access Humor (if you don't know what I'm talking about here, consider yourself lucky and don't, I repeat, don't search for any of that). When is Randall finally going to understand that non sequiturs are not funny on their own? Also, doesn't the hair in Panel 2 remind you of Doug from Scrubs?

Now that I think about it, there are many xkcd comics, in which the characters are doing this, which makes me wonder if it's a common thing to do for Randall. I believe that if you argue with every idiot you meet online, you probably aren't as smart as you think you are.

1011: OHMYGODHE'SBREEDING

Alt-text: I've been trying for a couple years now but I haven't been able to come up with a name dumber than 'Renesmee'.

I'll be brief this time, because there's not that much that I want to address. This is another shotgun humor strip, though I think it should rather be called "an Imperial Army humor strip", because when you shoot a shotgun, you actually hit the target.

It is clear what gave Randall the inspiration to puke up this godawful abomination; the Munores must be expecting a baby girl, and putting aside that we know exactly how Randall is going to name his daughter, he though it would be hilarious to put down a list of stupid ideas for a name. And, true to his spirit, it is full of references, jokes that weren't funny five years ago and some of Randall's patented creepiness. No, you don't get to brag about how none of the names you came up with are worse than the terrible name from Twilight, when your list includes Ovari and Eggsperm! And that is all I have to say.

1000: Why?

Alt-text: Thank you for making me feel less alone.

Today is a big day for Mr. Randall Munroe. His influential webcomic has just hit the big 1000, and he's celebrating it big style - by drawing a big number 1000 comprised of stick figures that represent the past strips, plus a lame "programmers only know 1024" joke.

...

Alright, I'll try to keep this short, so that the others can state their own opinions. To be honest, I was kinda hoping that Randall would come with something big for his 1000th comic. You know, large format, colors, all the recurring characters (all two of them), maybe a return to the very first strip... But instead, we get this. I have never seen an anniversary webcomic strip this self-congratulatory. Sure, many webcomics love to celebrate regular anniversaries (see every 100th episode of Order of the Stick, a vastly superior stick comic), but this is the first time such a comic basically says "Ooh, look at me, I can shit out a crappy drawing three times a week for six years straight, aren't I a cool guy?"

Acosta02 said in the comments for the last article: "XKCD number 1000 can literally only be interpreted as a self-parody, right down to the title text." I wish I could say that I agree, but the way I see it, there is a very real possibility that Randall meant this comic completely seriously.

P.S.: I'm only including the "Mr. Hat" label here because I found him included in the second zero (he's on its 2 o'clock). I didn't find Beret Guy, but I'm sure he's there somewhere, so I'm including him, too.

997: "Randall" is just a few letters away from "random"

Alt-Text: You can't stab Karl Kasell. He sounds all slow and stentorian, but he moves like a snake.

Oh great, another shotgun humor strip, this time about possible headlines for when Peter Sagal does something "newsworthy" (I'll get to that in a minute) in 2012. Okay, no. First, why would Randall need to specify the year 2012? Is the show going away? Or does he believe the "2012 End Of The World" bullshit? Also, Who the hell stockpiles headlines in advance? If something actually happens, any reporter could come up with a headline, especially with such an easy target. Hell, even Randall could come up with enough of them to fill a shitty comic in only two days.

Okay, in Randall's case it was different, because he didn't have to match his stupid headlines to actual stories, and, to be honest, that actually sounds like the point of this strip, "to be prepared for the unforeseen", but in the end it just works against him. First, none of the headlines are funny (okay, the ACCIDENTALLY one cracks me up, but that's because I'm a basement-dweller who finds memes funny), and second, at least one of them directly contradicts the strip's premise, unless of course you think that a celebrity deleting his Facebook account is newsworthy.

In short, this is a very bland comic, with a few awful parts. When will Randall understand that qunatity over quality only works if you have at least some quality? Well, seeing that he's managed to shell out almost 1000 strips on a thrice-weekly basis, probably never.

But I can dream, dammit!

----

Edit: Notorious commenter Michael notes that stockpiling headlines, along with whole stories, is a real practice, employed, for instance, in presidential elections, in order to have all bases covered. However, as another commenter says, I don't think it is done in anticipation of improbable events.

Comic 993: Randall offers his services as a retailer

Title: Brand Identity (Formerly Brand Awareness) alt: Legally-mandated information would be printed on the back or discreetly along the bottom. In small letters under the nutrition information it would say "Like our products? Visit our website!" There would be no URL.

Hey everyone, this is the Society of Russell Crowe Film Supporters (SoRCFS) back again with a review.

So....I really have no idea what the hell Randall is going for here. For that matter, not a lot of people on the forums do, either. A lot of the posts I've read across the first couple of pages have gone something like this:

"PretentiousGuy wrote: Mkay it's not really that funny but I laughed at the alt text. But hey, here's [some example of a white label product]

It really is beyond me how they've managed to turn out 4 pages of posts mostly like this (or, failing that, just the second part).

Is there much to say about this comic? No, not really. The only thing I really laughed at was the fact that Randall has apparently put his everything on one supermarket shelf. This including milk, which is generally supposed to be refrigerated. Also, second row down, a bit left of center: cervical caps. Because, you know, you absolutely have to put those in. It's totally not bad taste/irrelevant to the joke/more pointless seXKCD.

I'm going to do that thing where I criticize trivial parts of the comic composition now. If you really don't feel like reading this kind of stuff, then just know my general attitude towards this comic is that it's bland, and otherwise just plain out boring.

It took me a while to figure out that the comic was in color for a reason. Maybe it's just because I'm stupid, maybe because using white to contrast color here is a piss-poor decision. I mean, sure, I noticed the white label things right away (I'm not that stupid, apparently). But I cared a lot less because there were so many things to look at that the white label's uniqueness didn't hit me at first. If I was trying to tell this (admittedly bad) joke myself, I would sacrifice the bunches of objects for greater clarity. Here's some things I'd consider to achieve this goal:

1. White stands out better against dark colors. Avoid light shades of grey.
2. My audience reads left to right.
3. I should try to place important things based on the rule of thirds or in the center.

That said, here's a five ten minute mockup of what I said above:

Clearer? I'd like to think so. Does it improve the joke any? No. Hopefully it does make it a bit clearer, though.

Eh, I'm done for now. There' not much to say and I feel like I'm forcing myself to blabber on pointlessly. Whatever.

Watch Man of Steel in 2013,

SoRCFS

Comic 990: Randall went shopping.

Original xkcd 990:

title: Plastic Bags; alt-text: "The high I feel when I actually remember to bring my reusable bags to the store--and take them inside rather than leaving them in the parked car--can last for days."

Instead of reviewing I just attached a bunch of appropriate labels that express, in part, what is wrong with this comic.

Comic 980: "Money." It's what Randall wants.

UPDATE: xkcd forumite JiminP was kind enough to host a full-size version of the image. Clicking the thumbnail below will take you there.


Title: Money; alt-text: There, I showed you it.

Good [morning/evening/whatever time of day you're reading this], everyone. The Somewhat Organic Robots Campaigning For Sobriety (SORCFS) is back to write yet another review.

But before that, I should rant at you a bit about Garfield. Why am I starting with Garfield? Because I am, that's why.

As I've alluded to in previous posts, I'm actually a pretty big fan of newspaper comics. Some of them, anyway. Hell, throw me any story told in sequential art and I'll probably read it. Webcomics, comics books ("graphic novels" if you're a snob and in denial), newspaper strips, whatever. And as someone who's tried my hand at many variations of the art myself, I can tell you personally that it's not something easy to do. So I try to not judge too harshly when it comes down to what qualifies as "good" to me. At the end of the day, there are only two or three things that really matter to me when I try to say if a comic is objectively "good" or not. And the biggest thing to me is one simple question: why does the author draw his (or her) story?

To me, the "right" answer to the first question should really be that the author enjoys doing it (even if they work at Marvel or some other big company. They should be there because they enjoy their job. Hating editors and current storylines is permissible, I guess). For example: love me, hate me, curse me out in the comments for deigning to mention it, but I think Dominic Deegan is actually a decent comic.Okay, so the storylines are shaky and the characters aren't the best fictional people ever. I'll give you that. But you know what? I can tell that Mookie, the author enjoys drawing it. That, to me, is the most important thing in the cartooning profession.

Which brings me to Garfield. You know why I don't love Garfield? Because Jim Davis (AKA the guy who draws him) doesn't. Jim Davis freely admits that he created Garfield to be a "good, marketable character." And so Garfield has shambled along since the late 1970s being a perfectly boring character in a perfectly boring strip. But hey, the merchandise sells. To contrast this with some of my favorite strips: Calvin and Hobbes author Bill Watterson slowly turned against merchandising because it seemed "against the spirit of the strip." And Berkeley Breathed bowed out of drawing his newspaper strips because he felt like he'd prefer end his characters' story on a lighter note.

If you haven't already guessed, I'd feel justified calling Xkcd (I refuse to capitalize it properly) the Garfield of the webcomics world. High-profile, boring art, sells well. I'm not the only one who realizes this--according to the forums, the poster of today's comic was up in the stores before the actual comic was. That tells me a lot about the motivations of one Randall Munroe. And, if you ask me, it's a cardinal sin of cartooning.

Yes, I recognize that he needs money to survive. But that doesn't make Xkcd a good comic.

Okay, now that I'm done calling out the comic in general, here's some specific complaints about comic 980:

• It's a chart comic without a joke. Need I say more?


• Randall missed his normal deadline by something like 10 hours. Which, if he actually had a syndicated strip or something, would make him worthless as a cartoonist. Hell, it'd even be that way with his now-regular delay of a few hours past 12. I could have sworn that the "about" page of Xkcd used to say it updated at 12PM EST... (ed. note - I could've sworn that, too...odd.)


• In a few years this will be inaccurate or otherwise irrelevant. It's boring now and it'll be boring & wrong later.


• GOOMHR-Bait: Okay, maybe this really applies to any given Xkcd strip. but I'm betting that merely mentioning the fact that something is wrong fiscally with the country and world will set off this huge discussion by fans in the forum who think they're smart because they were already aware of this fact and can quote wikipedia. Here's to betting that at least one will claim there's a simple solution.


• typos: Well, apparently. I can't find them yet and they're sure to disappear, but the forumites are noticing. (ed. note - I didn't look at the entire image myself, but I did notice a discrepancy between EU's GDP and Europe's GDP. The forums say there are a lot more like it.)


• Size. This is too big and unfocused to be actually interesting in terms of content. To crib a post from the generally vitriolic but accurate Xkcd forum poster SirMustapha:
  Reaction of xkcd fan:"Wow! This must have taken so much time, it's no wonder the comic is late!"
  Reaction of xkcd hater: "This comic is so completely worthless, it's amazing that Randall should spend so much time in it!"
  Reaction of both: tl;dr"

Alright I'm done here. To sum things up: 980 is a big boring chart that seems like it was created mostly for the purpose of money. As a comics purist, I find this to be a bad motivation. As an artist, I fing the comic to be poorly executed. I therefore feel like I am correct to repeat the title of this blog: Xkcd sucks.

Stay Sober,
~SORCFS

Comic 979: Randall Attempts Poetry...and Fails

Title: Wisdom of the Ancients; alt-text: All long help threads should have a sticky globally-editable post at the top saying 'DEAR PEOPLE FROM THE FUTURE: Here's what we've figured out so far ...'

Okay, there are several things that make this strip suck. The first one should be obvious to all of you, but I'll say it anyway.

This comic is UGLY.

I'm not even talking about ugly in the traditional "xkcd is stick art" sense. I mean that having a "poem" (if you want to call it that) as the first panel and a guy yelling at a computer as the second panel just looks BAD. But the problem is, I can't think of a way to improve the formatting, at least not as the comic stands now. There's too much text to be used as a caption, which means that formatting it this way is truly the best Randall could do with what he gave himself.

But this leads into the second problem with today's comic. The image is nothing but post-punchline dialogue. Randall said all he needed to say in his little poem, and the second panel probably should've been condensed to alt-text. Unfortunately, that means that this comic, at its core, is simply text. And it's not just any text; it's a POEM. A bad poem, but a poem nonetheless (note the "artistic" separation of the single sentence). It should properly read, "Never have I felt so close to another soul, and yet so helplessly alone, as when I Google an error and there's one result: A thread by someone with the same problem and no answer last posted to in 2003." The touches of purple prose and the format of the presentation bump this simple sentence into poetry status (despite the lack of rhyme or meter). Those interested in the humanities would call this free verse.

Get that? This comic, minus the PPD, is a poem. It's a journey into Randall's self-proclaimed most hated of studies: the humanities. xkcd, a comic of "romance, sarcasm, math, and language," has sunk so low as to use POETRY (and nothing else) as today's update.^* That's...shocking, to say the least. I don't know what to make of it.

Okay, onto the third and final problem of today's strip. In addition to being a poem with PPD, this comic is using referential humor (a nice way of saying it's GOOMHR-bait). If readers laugh, it's that "ah heh heh, I've totally been there" laugh that's not really prompted by true humor, but simply a situation that the reader happens to recognize. It's like people laughing at "the cake is a lie." That's a game reference, not a joke, and this comic is doing the exact same thing. We're supposed to like it because we've all experienced this (I actually have, but that doesn't make the comic any funnier). But that's no substitute to actual humor.


^* I actually don't have a problem with humanities or poetry. They might not have long-term career value, but they're not as worthless as Randall so ardently proclaims. My issue with this is not that poetry is being used, but that it's being used by RANDALL MUNROE in place of an actual comic.

Comic 978: Randall Makes Up Words for the Internet

First of all, let me clear up a few things. I missed the last two updates simply because I was uninspired and no one sent in any guest posts. I will not review those two strips now, because it's old news and if I didn't care about them when they were new, no one's going to care about them when they're old.

Now, this may cause some concern among you about the stability of this blog. To help ease those fears, let me make you several guarantees that will never change as long as I'm in charge here.

1. I will never find fault where there is none, and I will never write a review that is anything other than (what I believe to be) a legitimate criticism of the comic in question. We all know what happened to the other blog, and I promise you that will not happen here.


2. Unfortunately, if I have to stand behind my words, that means that there are going to be days when I have nothing to say. On those days, I will not waste your time. I will not post nonsense. You will either get a guest review or no review at all.


3. Unless it is absolutely atrocious, I will always post any guest reviews that get emailed to me. This blog was originally intended to be a collaboration, not a one man show, and I'll take all the help I can get.


4. Finally, I will never abandon this blog without an explanation. I may miss a post here and there, as you've recently seen. However, if I step down from running this blog, I will explain why and leave someone willing and capable in charge (if the community so chooses).

Well, that's a weight off my chest. On to why xkcd sucks!


Title: Citogenesis; alt-text: I just read a pop-science book by a respected author. One chapter, and much of the thesis, was based around wildly inaccurate data which traced back to ... Wikipedia. To encourage people to be on their toes, I'm not going to say what book or author.

I initially tagged this as "straw man," thinking that Randall was just making up a problem and assigning it a name, but a brief jaunt through the forums indicate that this has happened before. However, it's also clear that this is a small, isolated issue, and not the universal "Where Citations Come From" problem that Randall implies it is.

The truth is, Wikipedia is often an excellent resource for research. Obviously you should never cite it directly, but the fact that it's open to editing and that the more important articles get more attention mean that on a whole, Wikipedia is self-correcting. In other words, the information on Wikipedia is MORE likely to be accurate than any other source, simply because it remains current and errors can be removed.

It's also worth noting that this problem goes beyond Wikipedia (one poster mentioned Norse genealogies as an example). Randall uses the Wikipedia example because that's where he lives, but doing so presents the issue in a bubble and misdirects blame. The problem isn't Wikipedia; the problem is confirmation bias that cause people to call it good as soon as one thing backs up what they want to believe. That's a known psychological fallacy - well, known to people who have any interest in the "soft sciences," anyway.


P.S. Does anyone else find it hypocritical that Randall uses his webcomic to cry about bad citations, then offers us an alt-text with a claim but no citation at all? "To encourage people to be on their toes" is a retarded reason to withhold information (if said information actually exists, which several forumites doubt).

P.P.S. It's worth noting that there are two consecutive "was"es in the first panel right now. I expect this is an error that will get corrected, but if it was put in there intentionally (some people on the forums are using it as an example of an "erroneous edit"), that's stupid. You only don't see those things if they're separated as they are in the comic. On a Wikipedia page, the error would be obvious.

Comic 975: The Non-Event Horizon

Well, the masses are empowering me to be a lazy bum and not write my own reviews. Works for me, I guess. This one was submitted by one "anon."


Title: Occulting Telescope; alt-text: Type II Kardashev civilizations eventually completely enclose their planetary system in a Dyson sphere because space is way too big to look at all the time.

Simply put, this strip is just plain stupid. There's nothing insightful or witty about the presented situation. So there's a guy who wants to block stars from being seen with a telescope. Why doesn't he just put a lid on the telescope? No, instead he invents an elaborate system where the telescope inserts small discs between the lens and the stars. How quirky and idiosyncratic!

Now that we are here, why not have a microscope that prevents seeing bacteria? Or a rocket that does not move? Oh, how hilarious that would have been!

This cartoon is like a shaggy dog story except it finishes before getting past the first step and there's no joke. Randall didn't even bother to think how the discs could really block the stars. In fact, it's almost like he didn't understand at all how telescopes work. Unfunny, uninspiring. Clumsy writing, too. "I thought the Point was to image extrasolar planets." […] "He has a Point…". And there's no joke.

The idea suggested in the alt-text, that a planetary civilization might be so advanced that it has blocked others from seeing them, could've been a more amusing scenario. But no, Randall chose to depict the less interesting idea and mention the better one in passing. Although no doubt he would have messed that too.

--

P.S. from Gamer_2k4

Explain xkcd actually came in handy this time around. It doesn't actually help the fact that the comic is completely retarded, though. As the alt-text demonstrates, the punch line "stars freak me out" is interchangeable with many, many setups. The fact that Randall chose a slow, unnecessarily complicated one just shows what a hack he is (not to mention that "I'm scared of stars" is a really, really lousy joke).

Maybe, with a little comedic timing, this could work. Maybe if it was told in person instead of in a webcomic, the slow buildup to the punchline could have some merit. But, Randall isn't a stand-up comic (thank God). He uses drawings for his humor. And he uses them poorly.

Comic 974: Randall's Rants, Part 2

Ughhh...I kept hoping and hoping that someone would send me a guest review, but no dice. The main problem here is that I don't really have a lot to say about this comic (and yes, I know every time I say that, it turns into an eight paragraph rant). But, in the interest of posting and update before the next strip comes out, here goes.


Title: The General Problem; alt-text: I find that when someone's taking time to do something right in the present, they're a perfectionist with no ability to prioritize, whereas when someone took time to do something right in the past, they're a master artisan of great foresight.

I'm just going to focus on the alt-text this time, because it feels like Randall is just using the comic as a vehicle for his rants again (the last time, of course, being Comic 971. And, once again, the comic actually misses the point that he's making in the alt-text. If you want to garner sympathy for "people taking the time to do something right," don't use the example of some idiot overthinking condiment passing. It takes half a second to slide a salt shaker across the table. Unless the person is inventing a teleporter, literally nothing he could make would be faster. Besides, they have a "condiment passer" device already. It's called a Lazy Susan.

But the bigger problem here is the alt-text. I could be way off, but it really feels to me like Randall's been told this all his life ("you have no ability to prioritize!") and he's trying to argue that all the "greats" were the same way. Of course he labels himself as a perfectionist (which we all know isn't true), and he somehow fails to see the difference between himself and those master artisans.

Of course, it's a simple distinction to make. They made society better in some way. They made contributions. They produced things of value. Randall hasn't done any of those things.

Comic 963: Graphing the Cavemen

Today's guest review comes from a fellow named T-Jack. Enjoy.


Title: X11; alt-text: Thomas Jefferson thought that every law and every constitution should be torn down and rewritten from scratch every nineteen years--which means X is overdue.

As you may have noticed in the short time I've been a guest reviewer on this blog, I usually try to build my reviews in such a way that they end with a general idea of why the strip in question sucks (or, rarely, doesn't suck) and set forth a sort of a guideline on how to make better comics. I don't have to do that here, though, because any reader will immediately know what the major message of this review will be: Graph comics aren't funny! They have never been and they never will be hilarious, funny, amusing or even fucking chuckleworthy. Unfortunately, there is still much more wrong with the comic, so let's get started.

Basically, what Randall is saying here is that the longer he can go without having to configure X.Org Server, the better he feels about himself, the joke (why bother with the quote marks?) apparently being that the configuration file is so mind-numbingly difficult that it saps happiness out of any poor schmuck who dares to work with it.

...

That's not funny. It wasn't funny the first time this joke has been told (it went roughly like this: "Ug hate banging rocks together to make fire. It make Ug want to kill himself.") and it's not funny now, no matter what the context. It's just nerd pandering.

Randall also shows his ignorance in the alt-text, where he characterizes X, which is a GUI development software, with laws and constitutions. Do I even need to explain how stupid that is? Software is neither a law nor a constitution and doesn't go away when you "tear it down and rewrite it". Instead you end up with two versions of a program, both of which are going to be used by people around the world. It won't get rid of your problem, Randall.

So what's the lesson today? I'll tell you: No graph jokes, no old jokes and especially no graph jokes ABOUT old jokes. That's all.
by T-Jack

Comic 961: In Memoriam

Title: Eternal Flame; alt-text: There's always the hope that if you sit and watch for long enough, the beachball will vanish and the thing it interrupted will return.

I held off on reviewing this because I thought that maybe, MAYBE, Randall would do his tribute on Thursday and post another update on Friday. Silly me.

Still, what's to say about this? Not much. It's well done. It's simple. There are no wasted words, no forced punchlines, no irrelevant setups, no art failures, no nerd pandering, and the timeliness is spot on. It reminds me of classic xkcd, before Randall started trying too hard.

It's a good comic.

Comic 960: FedXkcd

Title: Subliminal; alt-text: Once you see it, you can't help seeing it every time. Until your body finishes metabolizing the mushrooms.

You know what, let's start this thing off on a good note. Randall shows instead of telling! The guy sees crazy stuff, and Randall shows us the same thing! Oh. And then he has to tell us what we're seeing. Well, scratch that, I guess.

The main problem with today's strip is that it has no substance. This is essentially equivalent to someone saying, "What do you think that cloud looks like?" and someone else responding with something wacky. If Randall had started there, he would have realized that that's no joke. Problem is, he didn't start there.

No, this joke likely came from Randall discovering the FedEx arrow for the first time and thinking, "I bet I can make a comic about this!" (You can tell by the way he tries to hide it with the line, "I thought everyone knew about it.") Further evidence for this theory comes from the fact that the setup, focus, and punchline of the joke are all distinct from each other (and I'm giving him a lot of credit by not counting the "medication" line as post-punchline dialogue).

Think about it. Subliminal messaging (in this case, the FedEx arrow) is one distinct concept. Seeing shapes and images where they don't exist ("pareidolia" for those of you interested in the so-called "soft" sciences) is one distinct concept. Blaming medication for something is one distinct concept (seriously, think of how many jokes that punchline could finish). Ever seen the "Cartoon Wars" episodes of South Park, where Family Guy jokes are constructed by manatees matching up several random "idea balls"? That's what this is. This is a manatee joke.

Comic 957: The Perfect Storm

Title: Development; alt-text: Funding was quickly restored to the NHA and the APA was taken back off hurricane forecast duty.

I was waiting, hoping, and praying that some guest review would, against all odds, find its way into my email inbox today. It was not meant to be, probably because THIS COMIC SUCKS.

A lot.

Really, Randall? Another hurricane comic? I'm tagging this as "dated reference" because Rina HASN'T HAPPENED YET, so the only reason for a hurricane reference was because there was a big deal about Irene earlier this year. Why else would this be about hurricanes? WHY?

This is an important question, because the joke here is a play on the word "development." Are hurricanes REALLY the only things that develop, Randall? Wait, hold on, I bet I can think something else right now. SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT! You know, software? Computers? THAT THING YOUR COMIC IS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT??

I don't even know if there's a joke to be made with the "software" setup. I expect there is, but right now I don't care enough to try. Someone make a "sucks less" submission for that or something. I DO know that Randall might as well have used it anyway, because there's SURE AS HECK NO JOKE TO BE FOUND IN "HURRICANE DEVELOPMENT."

Geez.

I'm using a lot of caps because I'm tired and friggin' ticked off that Randall couldn't see fit to lob me a softball today. I liked your escalator strip, Randy! I praised it! WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME?

I mean, look at this! I'm ranting at the fact that there's nothing to rant about! This strip has absolutely nothing of substance. It's not even a new strip! It's reused, SIMPLIFIED art from Comic 944! It's like his recent Craigslist comic where he took the same idea, made the art WORSE, and replaced the text!

Screw you, Randall. Put some effort into your strip. You have thousands of fans who hang on your every update. Do it for them! Have some pride in what you do! I look at this strip and I see the product of one of life's failures: someone who couldn't hold a real job for more than a year, who is quickly forgetting whatever math and science he may have learned in college, and whose only source of income is overpriced t-shirts. Face it, Randall. You're not a webcomic author. You're the carnie of the internet.

Congratulations.

Comic 956: Did I Say "Giving Tree"? I Meant RAPING Tree!

Title Reference.


Title: Sharing; alt-text: In the new edition of The Giving Tree, the tree uses social tools to share with it's friend all the best places to buy things.

Hey guys did you know that there are these things called e-books with an established licensing plan and payment model, and if you don't pay for the e-book, you don't get to read it? This is news to Randall!

Look. I have no business condemning piracy. My personal justification for downloading the big stuff (Photoshop and the like) is that if I had to pay for it, I wouldn't buy it. Therefore, I'm not depriving the company of a sale. I do pay for smaller things like music, though. However, I DEFINITELY don't feel that I'm owed those things just for the sake of "sharing." The companies put work into their products, so they decide what to charge. If I don't want to pay that price, I risk not being able to get the product. It's simple.

But the thing is, this statement is so inane and obvious that I can't imagine Randall making a comic about it that takes it at face value. Either he's lazier than we thought, or he's trying to show how "ridiculous" the notion of e-book DRM is. It feels like he's saying, "You don't want to give me the book for free? Well TOO BAD; I never wanted your stupid book anyway!"

O...kay? THAT'S your comic strip, Randy? And you thought that this concept was so brilliant that you had to craft some retarded "tree with a USB port" context to tell us about it? Look. Maybe you didn't read the original story (and how could you? It has DRM!), but it's not called "The Sharing Tree." It's called "The GIVING Tree." The story isn't about how the world would be a better place if everyone shared everything. It's about a tree that gives pieces of itself for the sake of someone else. It's literally becoming less in order to provide the boy with more. Maybe you don't realize it, but file sharing isn't anything like that.

Some may say, "What about the art, Gamer? That's pretty good, right? For xkcd?" Well, yes, normally, I'd count that as the good that I try to find in every bad xkcd. But it's just so frustrating to see Randall whip out passable art at random! Is the joke aided buy having a textured and shaded tree? No? So WHY INCLUDE THAT? Or rather, why include it HERE when you refuse to put effort into strips that could actually benefit from more detailed art? If xkcd was never anything but stick figures, I could understand that. If Randall put some artistic effort into every strip, I could appreciate that. But instead of either of those, he takes a third route that shouldn't even exist and just ups his effort at random. Why?

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Also, some of you are probably wondering where yesterday's "Sucks Less" update is. The truth is, only 953 could have been improved easily (which was the whole point of the feature). 954 was good (in my mind), and no one sent me any suggestions for 955. SinbadEV, my normal go-to guy, could only improve 953 with violence, so instead, I'll leave you with an improvement that someone spontaneously left on the other xkcd hate blog. I think. It was a long time ago, and I'm sure as heck not going to dig through THOSE comments. Yeesh.

Comic 951: Money Funnies

Title: Working; alt-text: And if you drive a typical car more than a mile out of your way for each penny you save on the per-gallon price, it doesn't matter how worthless your time is to you--the gas to get you there and back costs more than you save.

Okay, I'm going to begin by drawing attention to the stupidest part about this strip: the guy's response to Sarah's question.

"Because a penny saved is a penny earned."

You're not saving pennies! You're not saving anything! This quote is so completely inappropriate as a response that it would make perfect sense if the girl was the one saying it! The only justification I can possibly think of for the quote is if you take it absolutely literally; that is, that every penny you save is directly equivalent to pennies earned while working, and every time you make money you should consider it to be some sort of salary. Obviously that's stupid, but it's also the point Randy's trying to make, so who knows.

The worst part is that I actually disagree with what Sarah (yes, that is her name, get used to me calling her that) is saying. If I fill up my car with 15 gallons of gas at $3.62 instead of $3.57, you know how much I'm saving? 75 cents. Three freaking quarters. Heck, I go to gas stations that I know have my gum, and if their gas is the cheapest, that's a bonus. And yes, that means I agree with Randall. Ouch.

But the thing is, I know people who do this. My mom and grandparents do this. And to be fair to them, they're just trying to be thrifty. That's not a bad thing, even if you compare it to "working less than minimum wage." Not everything is a freaking job, Randall. You should know this better than anyone, given that you only "work" about an hour a week. Should we stop donating money to charities? Should we not volunteer? After all, that's like LOSING money! That's even worse than this gas thing!

Don't kid yourself, Randall; you only did this as GOOMHR-bait. Stop being such a utilitarian douchebag.


P.S. Jon alluded to this in his bingo post yesterday, but it does seem like the forums are getting a bit more cynical (or at least more critical). I like this trend.

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.

Comic 941: Perceived Depth

Title: Depth Perception; alt-text: I've looked at clouds from both sides now.

Well, credit to Randall for putting in a good deal of effort this time. The ideas presented are pretty decent ones, the cloud art is exceptional, the glasses diagrams are reasonably well done, and he illustrates the text, instead of just relying on walls and walls of words. Of that, I approve, Randall. Good show.

Now, it's possible that the first and last panels were actual photographs run through a filter. But, the fact that there's doubt (in my mind, anyway) is indeed high praise for the king of the stick figures. I believe he legitimately drew those in colored pencil, and dang if it doesn't look good. Of course, the next question is, if Randall is such an excellent artist, why the heck does he draw stick figure comics? It's just lazy, IMO, but I suppose it's the model that works for him.

Regardless. For the most part, this is a good collection of information. I question some parts of it (which I'll get to later), but overall, it seems alright. However, as you may have noticed, there's no joke. None at all. Now, that's a good deal better than Randall trying to make a joke and failing (which is usually the case), but still, it shouldn't be a comic update. It should go in Randall's (presently imaginary) picto-blag.

For the uninitiated, the picto-blag is a hypothetical section of the xkcd site proposed by Carl "Ugly" Wheeler (the original owner of the original xkcdsucks). It was a proposition that all updates that contain interesting information that Randall's clearly put a good deal of thought and effort into should be consolidated in one blog, rather than taking the place of xkcd. Randall could talk about the concept (because I'm admittedly a little hazy on it) and use these illustrations to go along with it. After all, Randall's not necessarily a dumb guy; he's just not very good at making webcomics.

So much for the picto-blag. However, there are several issues with the strip itself; some are simple disagreements I have with it, and some are odd assumptions (or at least wording) on Randall's part. First of all, yes, it's very hard to get a feel for the true scale of clouds. The difficulty is that there's no "outside-the-box" way to think about them. They're big masses of water vapor, and that's that. Water vapor is water vapor, and it looks the same close up as it does far away.

However, stars are a completely different matter. I tried searching Google Images for some pictures of a clear night sky, but photos simply don't do it justice. If you're out in the middle of nowhere, on a clear night, and you look straight up, the sheer scale of the cosmos envelops you. It's not a painting on a domed ceiling; it's the very definition of infinity, drawing you in until you're lost in its wonder. Why? Because you KNOW that those bright points are planets and suns and perhaps even galaxies. They're not just formless water vapor. There's deep significance to every single point of light, and they're all unimaginably distant. You don't "snap back" until you look at ground. You can't.

The second problem with the strip is the last panel and how it goes against what's being described. Obviously, an improved sense of scale can't be conveyed with a drawing (assuming the technique Randall's describing actually works). But if you're going to try, don't show a guy walking among the clouds! By placing him among them, you ruin the notion of "mountains drifting by." At that point; the clouds aren't mountains; they're suds in an especially soapy bubble bath.

Add to that the fact that no matter how far away the cameras are from each other, they'll never show you what the tops of clouds look like. In other words, the alt-text is meaningless, at least in the context of this strip. The only way to see clouds from both sides is to get above them. Have you done that, Randall? If so, congratulations; you've been in a plane. Welcome to transportation. But of course, that's largely irrelevant to this strip.

Well, look at all that text. Who know that a comic that didn't make me angry could nevertheless cause me to write a 700 word essay? It just goes to show that comics like this can really make you think, and again, credit to Randall for that. Obviously, I had a couple of nitpicks (that's my job, after all), but for the most part, this strip is far and away the best Randall's done in a while. I'm impressed.


P.S. It's worth noting that you DO get a sense of the true scale of clouds when you're flying above and through them, because now the backdrop is the (tiny) landscape below you. Even if you couldn't see that, the fact that clouds are all around you and towering over you even though you're at 35,000 feet is enough to give you pause. If you want to get a feel for how massive clouds truly are, don't hang a smartphone from your glasses. Fly.

Comic 939: Brick Joke

Or, Alt-Text: The Works of a Man Who Sucks at Movie Titles. A man who can't see a joke when it's right in front of his face, COMING FROM HIS OWN THOUGHTS.


Title: Arrow; alt-text: 'The Return of the Boomerang' would make a great movie title.

No, Randall. No, it wouldn't make a great movie title. BUT IT WOULD MAKE A GREAT FREAKING TITLE FOR THIS COMIC, YOU HACK! Look! You have this idea, and in the right context - THIS context - it would work for something! You have a TRIPLE meaning here and you just threw it into the alt-text! What's wrong with you?

1) The comic is about a returning boomerang.
2) The comic is a return to the boomerang comics.
3) "Return of the..." is a common title that you'd be parodying.

Wow.

There's no avoiding it: This comic is awful. It's what Jon Levi would call a Brick Joke; way the heck back in Comic 475, a guy threw a boomerang and it never came back. Where did it go? Well, ladies and gentlemen, here it is. Isn't Randall smart?

Well, no, no he isn't. The original boomerang strips were so bad that they triggered one of Carl's angriest rants. This one is no better. I'm not even going to give him credit for keeping the word count down, because UNNECESSARY DIALOGUE SHOULD NOT BE AN ISSUE FOR A SEASONED CARTOONIST. The last strip put him in some serious debt that he's not going to be out of for a while anyway, so screw that.

So what's the joke here? Simple: There is no joke. There is a reference to an older strip, and referential humor is not humor at all. Remember how everyone was all "The cake is a lie!" when Portal came out? Remember how it wasn't funny? Remember why? It's because simply quoting or otherwise referencing something and not adding into it means you're doing jack in the way of humor. Randall's no stranger to doing jack in the way of humor (counting this post, we've reviewed 27 strips, and 11 of those have had the no joke tag), but somehow, that hasn't ceased ticking me off yet.

There's really not much more to say than that. A guy shoots an arrow and a boomerang comes back. He acts surprised. Why? Was he expecting an arrow to return instead? Did the arrow turn into a boomerang midway through its flight? Did it just drop out of the sky? WE'LL NEVER KNOW. All we know is that a guy shoots an arrow (not a joke) and catches a boomerang (not a joke). That makes it WORSE than the original boomerang strips, which were already all kinds of bad. At least there, the punchlines (something wacky returning, or nothing at all returning) were set up by a guy throwing a boomerang and expecting it back by the last panel. This doesn't even have a setup.

Look. Randall. Referencing old strips that weren't funny will not make you funny. It's a sign of laziness. It's a sign of a poor (non-existent?) sense of humor. It's a sign that you're a freaking hack.

Stop writing drawing posting this garbage.


P.S. Prolific commenter UndercoverCuddlefish notes on the other hate blog:

honestly what makes a brick joke entertaining is the sense of looking back and realizing that the comedian planned for the punchline well in advance

there is a sort of enjoyable release associated with being outwitted by the comedian as the punchline to the brick joke arrives mere moments after you completely forget about the setup

this shit is not even close to comparable

He goes on to make some more decent points, so take a look at the link. I should get him to write guest reviews.