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 973: Return of the "Straw Man" Tag

Prolific "sucks less" contributor SinbadEV left this guest post in my inbox. That's good, because I sure as heck didn't want to review 973.


Title: MTV Generation; alt-text: If you identified with the kids from The Breakfast Club when it came out, you're now much closer to the age of Principal Vernon.

So I have recently been running this blog where I post edits of XKCD comics in a "xkcd sucks less" kinda way. I like a lot of XKCD comics and, while I often feel they could be improved or feel the need to to draw attention to a flaw, I usually see a silver lining.

But this comic is just painful. The only way I can see to make it not suck, right now, would be to erase all of the text...


... which for me at least, oddly enough, makes the comic hilarious. I'll grant this might be due to my knowledge of the original.

In order to really understand what's wrong with this comic we first need to find the joke. In case you missed it in the midden heap of terribleness I'll do this for you:

"You are so old that the 'kids these days' you resent are now parents."

I may have stretched a little there but I'm sure I can be forgiven given the material I was working with.

What makes me the most mad here is that I don't know of anyone who has referred to anyone as being part of the "MTV Generation" in the last fifteen years. If people from the MTV Generation are now in their 40s then people who talked about the MTV Generation as being a thing are at least in their 50s and people who talked about them derisively are in their 60s or early 70s. Maybe the stick figure wearing the hat is 65, I suppose... maybe we can call him "Old Man Hat Guy" and the joke is that "Old People Don't Keep Up With Pop Psychology". Even assuming that Randall meant this, it would have been a lot better to say "You ARE the MTV Generation, Dad". This all leads to the final conclusion that the execution of the joke hinges on "MTV Generation" being something people still say... and it just isn't.

Even if the joke had been worth telling and he had come up with a way for it not to hinge on a strawman, the execution is still painful. I'm not talking about the stick figures here. I'm talking about the script.

"See, That's the problem with the MTV Generation - No attention span."
"You know, that phrase referred to the 12-19 demographic that formed the core MTV audience in the mid-1980s."
"Uh huh? So?"
"That generation's now in their 40s."
"That can't be right."
"Face it: Your problem with the MTV Generation is their kids."

Who talks like that? Maybe if in panel two she was holding a phone so it was clear she was quoting Wikipedia or something. Here's the script with the joke as bad as it was presented but just the dialog improved.

"See, that's the problem with the MTV Generation. No Attention Span."
"That phrase refers to teens who grew up in the 80's."
"So?"
"They're in their 40s now."
"That can't be..."
"Face it. The problem with the MTV Generation is their kids."

See? The problem with this comic is Everything!

Then the alt-text makes it worse by pointing out that "You are 'the man' you once resented" which is the opposite of what the comic seems to be saying.

Also, who the heck talks in colons and hyphens? What does a colon sound like?

Comic 972: Introducing the "Stolen Joke" Tag!

Got another review from "sorcfs" again (the acronym's meaning keeps changing with every submission!), so here you guys go. He said everything I felt when I read the strip, and he's done it in a much more timely manner than I would have. Enjoy.


Title: November; alt-text: November marks the birthday of Charles Schulz, pioneer of tongue awareness.

Hey everyone, this is the Society Of Ridiculously Cruel Flatworm Stompers (SORCFS) returning to write another review.

Ridiculous acronyms aside, this comic had two problems. The first is fairly common among xkcd strips, so it only gets short shrift from me.

Basically, a stick figure comic is a terrible vehicle for expressing the joke here. As a comics connoisseur, I do have to give props to Randall for proper use of beat panels (read: the two in the middle) to slow the reader's perceived passage of time. But that's not why this joke should be funny. Part (and by part I mean all) of the humor derives from the terror that slowly consumes the not-hat-guy as he becomes increasingly aware of his tongue. The terror which would be best be expressed by, you know, expressions. Expressions which Randall's stick figures don't have.

Seriously. I have no clues as to what the guy is feeling. He's just there, frozen. I can imagine that Mr. Not-Hat is sitting there stoned or wishing he had coffee [or both]. And that takes away from what I'm supposed to laugh at.

Wait wait wait. I'm being pretentious. Just because I like to say I know my comics doesn't mean I should know what Randall should have done with this joke.

Unless...it's already been done before?

This brings us to the second problem. This has been done before.

Read this, please. Look familiar?

That's a "Peanuts" ("Charlie Brown" to the unwashed masses) strip from an absurdly long time ago. It's a personal favorite of mine, actually, which has now been somewhat ruined by xkcd. (Not the first time this has happened) My personal feelings about this aside, the original is superior in pretty much every way--unlike xkcd, Schulz's dialogue feels natural and the wordiness of the strip helps build up Linus' sort of nervous and panicky state. And remember what I was saying about the terror selling the comic? yeah, look at Lucy in those last few panels. That growing horror is really where the joke is.

I can just bet that this kind of discussion will transpire on the oh-so-pretentious xkcd forums:

fans: OMG I read comics too GOOMHR
haters: STOLEN
fans: GTFO TROLOLoll

As an extra "fuck you" to people like me who realize that this xkcd's comic is stolen from Charles Schulz, we have the alt text. Generally, when you steal something you don't tell everyone you did it. I can just bet Randall's fans will defend him on this one, calling it a "tribute" or some other bullshit. It's not. Randall's done homages to other comics before. But this is just copy-pasting a joke into his own style. Slapping a legendary cartoonist's name afterwards doesn't change that.

Post Script: Huh. Reading over this review I appear to have gone from sarcastic in the first point to downright hostile in the second. RIP Charles Schulz.

--

P.S. from Gamer_2k4:

I'm a pretty big Peanuts fan myself, so here's the original strip in color:


Since we're looking at a real comic by a real cartoonist, notice how there are RECURRING CHARACTERS with ACTUAL PERSONALITIES and that's what helps make the joke? Notice how xkcd doesn't have that? (And before you mention Mr. Hat, he's just the everydick in this strip. He's not doing anything particularly Hat-like.)

You know, for what it's worth, maybe I could've excused Randall for ignorance here. Peanuts is an old strip, and not everyone keeps up with every joke. But the fact that YOU KNOW YOU'RE STEALING MATERIAL AND THAT'S YOUR STRIP is what makes this so bad!

Honestly, it's garbage like that that's made me stop reading other webcomics.

Comic 965: A New Guest Poster Appears!

If it wasn't apparent from the title, today's review is not my own work. It comes from a fellow (a group?) called "sorcfs," which I'm told is an acronym for something horrifying and unnatural. Just kidding!

Maybe.

Anyway, I get a day off, and you get a review that's timely! Everyone wins!


Title: Elements; alt-text: Of all the nations, the armies of the ununoctium-benders are probably the least intimidating. The xenon-benders come close, but their flickery signs are at least effective for propoganda.

Ooh, color. You know what that means: the forumites will be raving over how "beautiful" it is, as is bound to crop up every once in a while. Nevermind all the other comics that use color all the time and have several metric buttloads better art and jokes and aren't goddam scripts with oversized margin doodles.

But hey, pop culture references! yeah! I mean, that makes everything better, right?

No. No it doesn't.

Okay, first off, this joke has been done to death. I’ve seen plenty of things making fun of the fact that ancient cultures thought that nature was made up of 4 or 5 or whatever number of primitive elements as compared to our modern-day periodic table. Just after ten seconds of thinking, I was able to come up with this example from Order of the Stick (a not-terrible stick figure comic). I'm sure there are other places it's been done. But, to give Randall some measure of credit, it's a fairly common sense joke. It's the kind of joke that people make independent of each other over and over again, just like jokes about erections and the underwear of every superhero ever.

So, let's give him the benefit of the doubt on that. And while we're here, let's also say some positive things. The art is at least workable in this comic. It's properly minimalist, with the characters being recognizable to those who can recognize them. So that's an improvement over it just looking lazy.

My beef with this comic is the alt-text. I probably would have just turned my computer off and gone to sleep instead of spending an extra few minutes banging out this review had I not seen the alt-text.No, it's shockingly not Post-Punchline Dialogue this time. Well, maybe PPD. But more importantly, Post Punchline Contradiction. Is there a thing for that yet? Or is it just a subcategory of PPD? Screw it. To get to the point:

Those who want to bother with all those superfluous extra lines of alt-text will notice that the premise of the extra joke is about the scarcity of certain elements. Now, in the Avatar universe, you need some of the element you want to bend before you can actually, you know, bend it (except firebenders. But they were villains, so screw them.) Apply this to the real world, and yeah,it would suck to be a bender. Scarce like, you know, polonium. a quick jump down to Wikipedia (obviously chosen for being an XKCD favorite) shows that polonium is pretty damn rare. As in, poke around in a metric ton of uranium and you'll get something like a hundred micrograms of polonium. Pro fact: uranium ain't that easy to find either. So unless there was randomly a lot of polonium lying around because, I dunno, a zombie ate the guy carrying it, polonium is not a very sensible element to attack the avatar with. And if you're going to make an alt-text joke, make sure it doesn't mess up the joke you set up earlier.

And no, I'm not the only one who saw this. Halfway through writing this I decided to check if any forumites had made the same observation. Lo and behold, 5 posts down we have this.

Oh, wait. The forumites say there was an Avatar marathon on TV yesterday? That's suddenly...unsurprising.

--

P.S. from Gamer_2k4: The tag "factually wrong" isn't QUITE accurate, but I wanted something besides the new guy's name marking this post. Besides, it's more reusable than "contradictory in a way that shows ignorance of facts."

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 959: Point, Counterpoint

First of all, let me apologize for not posting a "Sucks Less" for this week. It's just kind of turning into "XKCD SUCKS, SinbadEV Edition," and while I don't have a problem with that (I'm glad that he still puts in the effort, and I like his submissions), I don't feel as motivated to update when there's only one submitter to choose from. I imagine you're also feeling let down from the lack of bingo, in which case talk to Jon Levi. I don't know what's happened with that.

However! Today is kind of special, because we have not one, but TWO guest reviews! One is in favor of today's strip and one is against it, so you get both sides of the story. We're nothing if not objective here, folks. I'll start with the positive review, move onto the negative one, then post my own thoughts afterwards. Enjoy!


Title: Caroling; alt-text: For a thousand generations we vowed never to forget how his soldiers feasted on our brother Stephen.

Comic 959: Does Randall Read This Blog?

I like this comic. I mean, it's by no means perfect, but hell, I'll take it.

The setup is simple: Some kids are singing Christams carols (presumably on Mr. Hat's doorstep; I'll get to this later), and Mr. Hat stops them with a cruel remark. And it works. This is exactly what I was talking about when I mentioned the "show, don't tell" rule in my last review: Don't have Mr. Hat talk about how he's being a dick, SHOW him being a dick.

The strip avoids the usual pitfalls: It's short, to the point, has no post-punchline-dialogue and even makes effective use of a beat panel. I could argue a case of bad history (King Wenceslas didn't actually massacre anybody), but since this is Mr. Hat ruining a carol for a bunch of kids, it can be written off as a creative lie.

The art is also passable. The kids apparently exist in a featureless void (seriously, some background would be nice), but as Randall has proven multiple times now, he's good at shading. I, for one, would like to see that in more strips.

The alt-text... Well, I'm not really sure what to say about it. It doesn't really do much more than broaden the strip's punchline, but to be honest, it DID get a chuckle out of me. Maybe you people will have more to say about it.

In view of my last review, it seems to me that Randall does indeed read the blog and is willing to learn from our criticism. Maybe I'm wrong and this is just a coincidence, but if not, well... More power to you, Randall. Cheers.
by T-Jack

Comic 959: Winter in Coming

When I woke up this morning I brewed myself a cup of coffee and headed down to the computer in the basement that is good for little else then to browse web comics and blogs and loaded up xkcd-sucks because I hoped Gamer2K4 would have posted a "Sucks Less" for last week. Because there was none, I skipped over to xkcd itself to see how much it sucked.

The short answer was "a lot" and so I left for the bus doubly disappointed.

On that trip I briefly entertained resentment to Gamer2k4 for not having posted a "Sucks Less" despite me having submitted numerous options for him to choose from. Then I thought to myself, "Perhaps he is busy. I could be proactive and send in a guest review and then he would have time to post my amazing 'Sucks Less' entries." I tend to be long winded so, to this point, I have typically refrained from doing so but... this comic was particularly ripe for criticism.

To begin: Randall is making a joke about a Christmas carol on the first weekday of October which makes me think that he has had this joke in his mind for quite some time and thought that it was now close enough to Christmas to post it. Sadly, this indicates that, in his mind, this joke was so astonishingly funny that he could not wait a minute longer to share it.

Next: It is not even funny to begin with. This "joke" is very similar to how, when people make jokes about person's parents and then the person says, "My father is dead." to ruin the joke. This is not humour, this is buzz-kill.

Also: While I feel like Mr. Hat (who I like to call Black Hat Guy [or BHG for short]) is being a dick who doesn't care about social mores for personal gain... he is again doing so in a way that feels (as mentioned in the 958 blog) to fall short of his character.

Finally: The alt-text IS the joke... it took me a coffee and a half to wake up enough to get it but, given that it is likely the only enjoyment you will garner from the comic I will leave puzzling out the terrible pun as an exercise for the class (which is elitist intellectual for "let you figure it out for yourself").

While the pacing is well done, the comic shows instead of tells and the expressive use of the traditionally minimalist style is put to good use... the lack of "funny", post punchline pun and "not quite right" use of BHG causes the whole experience to fall flat.

In short, xkcd 959 sucks because it is disappointing.
by SinbadEV

--

And now for my own thoughts. First of all, thanks to both T-Jack and SinbadEV for their efforts. As I say in the blog header, this comic wasn't supposed to be a one-man effort, and if we can get the community involved (the REAL community, not the 4chan wannabe cesspool in the xkcdsucks comments that Rob and Raven call the community), so much the better.

Secondly, I have my own opinion on this strip. It sucks. A lot.

The two aspects of the comic - the context and the joke - are both out of place. We JUST hit October; it's not even close to the right time of year to be posting Christmas comics. But the joke somehow manages to be worse than that! T-Jack is right (to some degree) that this is technically showing, not telling, but it's "showing" a conversation in progress. As in, it's doing the same thing the "stud finder finder" strip was. And THAT'S where Mr. Hat always falls flat.

The strip itself is ridiculously forced. I imagine Randall read something about the "Feast of Stephen," thought, "ha ha wouldn't it be funny if it was actually about eating a guy named stephen," and extrapolated that to "oh man what if that made wenceslas a mass murderer." KOMEDY GOLD, right? I know! But how would he get that across to his adoring fans? How could he make yet another of his "what if instead of this, that" strips? That's right: by putting those words in the mouth of Mr. Hat and making the strip about caroling.

That's why this feels so out of place, and that's why today's strip is so terrible. Randall's no stranger to writing jokes that require stupid, contrived setups, but here he goes so far as take someone who is canonically a saint and by all accounts was a great person, and portrays him as a mass murderer for the sake of a joke. Yes, I know. Mr. Hat is LYING. That's what he does. But still, without the alt-text to make the joke (as SinbadEV alluded to), this just comes off as lying for the sake of lying. Imagine this comic as follows: In the first panel, people are waving "SUPPORT OUR TROOPS" signs. In the second, Mr. Hat says, "Marines eat babies." In the third panel, the sign holders are kind of standing there, stunned.

IT'S THE EXACT SAME COMIC. And it's just not funny.

Comic 958: The Problem With Mr. Hat

Well, lucky me! I guess after my whining on Wednesday (I was in a bad mood then, yes, I admit it), someone decided to help me out with today's strip. Thanks, T-Jack!


Title: Hotels; alt-text: 'Rating: 1/5. Room filled to brim with semen, and when front desk clerk opened mouth to talk, bedbugs poured out.

I wish I could say that I like this comic, and I'll get to why later, but there are two big problems with it that send it straight to the "awful" territory.

One common complaint among xkcd-haters is that Randall routinely breaks the rule of "show, don't tell", which usually results in comics like this, with walls of text above superfluous doodles of stick figures sitting around. Randall, if what you've written works just as well in script format, it's not a comic. Whenever your comic features two people and at least one of the is sitting at a computer, you should rewrite, if not scrap, it.

lol sCRAP

The second problem, and the main point of this review, is the inclusion of Mr. Hat. I said that I'm torn on this comic, and here's why: This is actually something Mr. Hat would do. His being a dick actually has a point, even though it's just personal gain. But for some reason, it just feels wrong.

Now I cannot help but compare this strip to the last couple Mr. Hat strips. While there are similarities between it and the abysmal "Stud Finder Finder", like the awful hanging-around, "don't show, tell" form, but that comic fails even in the few rare things this one gets thing, with Mr. Hat being a dick just for the sake of being a dick by means of a stupid old joke. On the other hand, in the "Chin-Up Bar" comic, Mr. Hat's shenanigans lack any discernible point in favor of wreaking havoc for shits and giggles, but in spite of (or maybe precisely because of) that it's the ultimate "Mr. Hat done right" strip. Plus we get to see the man in action.

Where am I getting with this? Maybe the problem with Mr. Hat isn't that Randall can't write a good Mr. Hat strip, but that he can't write a good xkcd comic, period.

--

P.S. from Gamer_2k4:

For the longest time, whenever I've seen a Mr. Hat comic, I've thought to myself either, "That doesn't seem like something Mr. Hat would do," or "Finally, the Mr. Hat we all know and love!" I couldn't figure out why the discrepancy existed. I didn't make Mr. Hat, so who am I to judge when he's being a dick and when he's being himself?

But of course, this is the reason. Mr. Hat feels shallow when he's presented in a shallow strip! People act like dicks all the time in xkcd, so when we see some "lolz i'm a sociopath" text coming from a guy with a hat, it seems hastily done and out of place. It's only when Mr. Hat is actually shown in action that we can appreciate him for who he is and what he does.

Just imagine: xkcd could be vastly improved if Randall just SHOWED some more! He sucks as a cartoonist because he writes scripts, not cartoons. Yes, it takes a little more effort, but don't you think we're worth that, Randall? Don't you?

Comic 953: Back 2 Skool

Today's we have a guest review! Believe it or not, reviewing xkcd gets tiring, so when I saw this in my inbox this morning, I knew already it was going to be a great day. This one comes from a fellow named T-Jack.


Title: 1 to 10; alt-text: If you get an 11/100 on a CS test, but you claim it should be counted as a 'C', they'll probably decide you deserve the upgrade.

There is so much wrong with this comic. First and foremost, it's a binary joke, which is basically a way to say "I have a desperate need to be perceived as a geek". Remember, Randall once made a joke about Fourier transform, but now he can't even be bothered to reference Gray code (which, incidentally, is my criteria on whether a binary joke is "stupid" or "stupid but made by someone who knows what he's talking about"). Also, and I am very sad that I have to say this in response to the self-proclaimed "webcomic of ... math...", but probabilities don't work that way! I know that "on a scale of one to ten" is a common phrase, but it is used mainly in rating, not giving the likelihood of something. Probabilities are given with values of 0 to 1, or 0 to 100%, so you have the scale wrong, and even if you took a point of scale to mean 10%, you still have the problem of 0 not being included. Math: You're doing it wrong.

Next stop: the dialogue. To Randall's credit, it's concise, not unrealistic and has no post-punchline lines, three things we rarely see in xkcd. However, it only achieves this by being a stupid joke with a doodle under it. Also, the joke only really works in written form, which I guess isn't that bad for a comic, but it serves as a further detachment of the xkcd-verse from reality (ed. note: very true; see the postscipt for elaboration). It should also be noted that this strip marks the return of an old feature, which is a smart female interacting with a dumb male and showing how dumb he is. I admit, it's not a flaw in and on itself, and Randall hasn't done this in a while (not counting the role-reversal in the utterly stupid "Working" strip), so I guess this is forgiven. What is unforgivable, though, is the everpresent condescending undertone towards people whom Randall sees as not as smart as he is, this time "people who are not aware of this awesome thing called binary".

The alt-text (yeah, I don't care what you call it, for me it's "alt-text". Deal with it.) really irks me, because it's just another version of the "you can fail a test and still get a good mark if you just are a wiseass" bullshit that I hate with a passion. Now, realistically, if you did such a thing, one of two things would happen: Either your teacher would chew you out for being cheeky and fail you, or s/he would award you an extra point and, as a result, fail you again. The alt-text is just dumb.

This comic is a prime example of Randall's pandering to high school kids, what with the binary edge and the exam based alt-text, and that's pretty much the source of why it's so bad. Am I wrong in hoping that he'll one day go back to his roots in obscure math and finely drawn landscapes?


P.S. Prolific "Sucks Less" submitter SinbadEV notes that "If this 'joke' had been spoken in real life it would not have worked because 'TEN' is definitely decimal while 'ONE ZERO' sounds stupid."

He's right.

P.P.S Comic 169 seems rather relevant here.

Comic 931: Quite the Turnoff

Title: Lanes; alt-text: Each quarter of the lanes from left to right corresponds roughly to breast cancer stages one through four (at diagnosis).

Man. Now I remember why we normally leave it up to Gamer's neckbeard to review these. Briefly: if Randall is trying to share with us his amazing insights into what cancer is like, the metaphor is clunky and useless and unhelpful; if he's trying to evoke emotion in us, the dullness of the art and writing poleaxes that; and if he's trying to make a joke he forgot to put one in. Unbriefly: read the above but pronounce all the 'a's as 'aaaaaa'.

Comic 930: Like Sand Through the Hourglass

Title: Days of the Week; alt-text: Not pictured: the elongated Halley's-Comet-like orbit of every Rebecca Black lyric.

Like all of the Google comics, this one can't be said to be lazy; like all of the Google comics, it can't be said to be particularly funny or insightful either. Since Gamer_2k4 will inevitably edit this post to add some actual criticism I shall merely point out that one of the lines is "Got my period _day" and ask, why.

I suspect the results for "Wanted to kill the internet _day" would look like this:

Comic 929: It's Impossible to Speculate at This Time

Evening chumps.


Title: Speculations; alt-text: 'I was pretty good at skeet shooting, but was eventually kicked off the range for catching the clay pigeons in a net and dispatching them execution-style.'

Well, I'll say one thing for Munroe's craft - I initially thought the subject matter of the conversation had anything at all to do with the joke. More fool me, however; it is just chat to fill time and establish that they're playing catch. Which is good because if it was actually important, the fact that the guy facing right suddenly becomes the guy facing left would wrong-foot us (are some motion lines to show him turning too much to ask? Oh well).

But that's not the joke. What is the joke is that instead of catching the ball as one would be expected to do in his situation, Mr. Hat takes 'catch' to mean 'hunt, obtain' and shoots it with a crossbow (because crossbows, like Google+, are nerdy and cool)*. This is an idea which is extended in the alt-text. It isn't a particularly funny idea, but you can't have everything.

He shot the ball. So what? He's Mr. Hat, he's not the 'catch' type, he's a classy asshole, remember? This is assholish and it's, er, classy? (because it's a crossbow?) so it's in character so it must be funny. No. The alt-text is a more amusing situation - in clay pigeon shooting you are actually expected to shoot them, so his finding a circuitous way of shooting them is more amusing than completely misinterpreting the meaning of the word 'catch' - but it's not very well written (it's the juxtaposition of 'skeet shooting' and 'the clay pigeons' I don't like - think for instance of the sentence "He threw the ball at me, and I caught the orb." Orb and ball do mean the same thing, true, but the use of synonyms means the two halves of the sentence don't seem connected. So yeah I'd rewrite the alt as 'clay pigeon shooting' and 'catching the targets in a net') and in any case it comes attached to a comic that might fool you with its 'nerdy' conversation but is, in fact, incredibly slight and, incredibly, not funny.

But never mind. jpk rides to the rescue:

Maybe he just couldn't come up with a punchline. Cancer's a bitch, he's got stuff on his mind. Happens.

Sigh. Goodbye now.

*And he does it without looking, too! That's like so megacool crowning moment of awesome Mr. Hat is a BadassNormal etc etc aaaaargh killllll meeeee

--

Ed. Note:
I know I'm pushing this in every medium I can find (xkcdsucks, the xkcd forums, and now here), but we can't let the second panel off easy with just "the character positioning is wrong" as the criticism (though it is). The thing that gets me, as it's possibly the worst part of the comic (except the total lack of relevance between the setup and punchline), is that Randall's making an awful analogy while being completely oblivious of the fact that he just admitted to having no social life in the real world. That's our Randall!