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 950: Zombie Amelia Earhart

Title: Mystery Solved; alt-text: The Roanoke Lost Colonists founded Roanoke, the Franklin Expedition reached the Pacific in 2009 when the Northwest Passage opened, and Jimmy Hoffa currently heads the Teamsters Union--he just started going by 'James'.

Ugh. This comic makes me mad for a couple of reasons. First of all, the mystery of Amelia Earhart HAS been solved, and obviously not in the stupid way Randy is offering. Second, the first panel is entirely unnecessary. In fact, the execution as a whole is bad, but I'll get to that a little later on.

The third, and arguably the worst problem, is the "joke." Amelia, and Randall by proxy, is doing something called "trolling." You say something absolutely and unequivocally retarded, then make fun of your audience for being confused or trying to call you on it. It's like saying, "I've discovered the square root of walrus!" How the heck do you expect people to react? Would a "smarter" person be able to parse that out into any form of sense or logic at all? Anyway, the point is, Randall's trolling. This brings up a rather relevant question.

Why.

Why, Randall, did you feel the need to make this a comic? It's not funny. It's not accurate. It's not relevant. It doesn't have anything to do with romance, sarcasm, math, or language. You're being nonsensical for the sake of nonsensicality (stupid for the sake of stupid, if you will), and randomness by itself does NOT guarantee humor. Sometimes it does. Sometimes, as the same comic shows, it does not. Today it did not.

But, just for the sake of argument, let's say that this was an excellent punchline. You know, hypothetically. If such a thing were possible for Randall. It's still crippled by some of the worst execution outside of walls of text. Why is all the conversation off-screen? Why do we need to be told in such a clunky manner what the plane is or who its pilot is? How would Earhart, now age 114, even be recognizable? Why do we need to be told, word by painful word, every step leading up to the joke?

Look. I'm no cartoonist; I've said that time and time again. Still, I'm going to try my hand at making an actual revision when I get home from work (6PM CST). In the meantime, take a look at this easy, EASY edit to vastly improve the comic.


Look at that and tell me it's not WAY better than the original.


P.S. It's worth noting that this is not the first time that Randall has dug up a dead woman in his strip. Seems like kind of a weird obsession.

P.P.S As promised, here is my edit of the comic.


And before you say, "Randall's looks better," remember that I don't do this for a living. I have a real job.

Comic 935: Randall's List

I know that by putting this review up so soon after Jon's bingo post might hide it from people, so, if you're into xkcd fora bingo, take a look here. It's good stuff.

And now, onto today's comic.


Title: Missed Connections; alt-text: The Street View van isn't going to find out anything Google won't already know from reading my email.

Hmm...this looks kind of familiar. Where have I seen this before...

Oh. Right. Comic 886.

You know, that one was bad, but it still was better than this one. Comic 886 came from a time when Randall was too lazy to use a ruler to draw lines, but at least attempted to recreate the search fields on Craigslist. Guess that's too much work these days.

Anyway, this comic has -

No, hold on, I can't let this go yet. This is a LIST COMIC. "Drawing" it involved ONLY writing. How do you not have the time to make the header look tolerable? What is this? How LAZY do you have to be to make a comic like this, look at it, and think, "Yeah, that's probably good"? It's shorter than the apartments one as well, with exactly half the entries. Come on, Randall, if you can't give us quality, as least give us quantity. Make it look like you put SOME effort into your strip.

Anyway.

This comic has some wicked show-don't-tell issues; that is, Randall thinks of an arguably "humorous" interaction, and writes it down. Do we get to see it? Do we get context? Do we get a setup? No, no, and no. Although, to be fair, when Randall does start with a punchline and nothing else, he generally destroys it in trying to cram in a hastily written setup. Because of that, some might say this is an improvement. Unfortunately, a 60 is an improvement from a 50, but they're both still failing grades. An improvement from Randall at this point means jack squat.

Furthermore, the way I understand it (I've never used Craigslist), people use the "Missed Connections" section not just for the literal documenting of a missed connection, but also because they want to meet the person again. Why would a person avoiding a car accident care about hooking up with the driver? Why would a husband need to use this to MEET HIS WIFE? How would the wishing well killer EVER get a response? Everyone who goes there is a silhouette to him! Half of these don't even make sense.

Then of course there are the "lol google knows about you" jokes that aren't really funny. I thought I remembered some recent (but not THAT recent) commentary on Google reading emails, so I did a quick search. The oldest relevant article (on the front page!) is from 2007. Google Street View? Released the same year. It would be one thing if these privacy concerns are fresh, but they're not. All the jokes about Google's ubiquitousness have been done.

The only possible excuse I can think of for these constant dated references is that Randall has a big stack of ideas he's written long ago in case he can't think of something. But, as that's clearly not the case, I guess we can just chalk it up to Randall being a lazy, out of touch sham of a webcartoonist.

Comic 934: Lost for Words

Title: Loss; alt-text: Ok, so I'll bet some people just said "That's it, I'm not reading this comic anymore!", and that's fine, I respect that decision. Thank you for reading.

Okay Randall, what the fuck.

At first sight, yep, it's another cancer comic. And there are no words. Now for once I wish it were a comic with too many words, so at least we'd get an explanation for what the hell's going on! The context is not clear at all, as Randall is neither showing or telling. Why is the guy rushing to the hospital? It's hard to tell if Megan is having a cancer or a miscarriage.

On top of everything the comic as a whole shows a dramatic mood-swing from 'hey cancer is fun, derp' to wordless angst. Think about this: two days ago Randall posted a comic that make radiation therapy sound all sci-fi and badass. This is just what happens when a webcomic author decides to insert unnecessary drama into an otherwise lighthearted comic that wasn't that good in the first place. If this doesn't cross the line into Wangst, I don't know what does.

On a slightly positive note, the artwork is slightly better than usual. It still ultimately fails because it's impossible to convey emotion in people who don't have faces!

The forumites are already sucking it up. Comments like this are everywhere.

So sad... so much there is said by so little. I want to cry.

I do not expect you read these comments, but I just want to say to Randall, your comic has been the highlight of my day for the last four years. Just know that no matter what happens, there will always be at least one adoring fan for you to talk to.

I can't help thinking there's another comic that this really reminds me of...

Ah yes, its 383.

And yes, this review is not at all serious.

Comic 914: In which Beret Guy ISN'T the wacky one

Gamer_2k4, reporting in. The original plan for this blog was for Raven to review the weak, boring strips, and for me to take on the ones that really irked me. I figured, knowing Randy, that I'd get some nice downtime. I was wrong. Randy has seen fit to give us complete garbage twice in a row, so that means I'm on the job twice in a row as well. Here goes.


Title: Ice; alt-text: On the plus side, she wrote 'Welcome to the AAA Club!' in lipstick on the bathroom mirror, and left me a membership/roadside assistance card on the counter.

Well, my first thought upon looking at this was, "Oh hey, it's Megan and Beret Guy. This is going to suck." That's xkcdsucks' influence on me, I guess, because my first thought SHOULD have been, "Really? A banner that just says, 'PARTY'?" I'm not sure which way to be angry about this. Is it that Randall thinks we're too stupid to realize what's going on? Is it that he understands his art is awful enough that the stick drawings alone can't convey a real scene? (Actually that's something else that bothers me. More on that in the next paragraph.) Or is it that he just has no clue that "show, don't tell" is actually a thing that decent writers (and ARTISTS) should have a grip on? And you know what? We don't even need to be told it's a party. Who cares? Beret Guy needs to get ice. That's all we need to know.

I think that's all for the first panel. That takes us to Panel 2, where there's a LOT more to hate. Remember what I said about Randy's art being too awful to present a scene? Well, the thing is, it doesn't HAVE to be that way! Look at the second panel! A sidewalk! A street! A store with brick walls, a sign, and stuff inside! PERSPECTIVE! So Randall CAN draw, and he's just too freaking lazy to do it!

And boy, that really irks me. Why? Because he has his priorities all wrong! When it might be important to establish a setting, the best he can do is give us a freaking sign that says, "PARTY". When the setting doesn't make a darn bit of difference, he goes all-out in drawing it. I just don't even know what to say about that. It's mind-numbing. It leaves me speechless. How can someone write a comic strip (and I use the words loosely) for YEARS and not figure something like this out? You know one reason why I hate xkcd when I used to like it? It's because Randall is REGRESSING. He's not getting better, and he's not even staying level. He's going downhill, and he's going fast. Every day amazes me with how deep he manages to dig this cesspool.

Okay. For the second time in as many strips, I need to actively force myself to calm down. That's something I'm not used to. Relax, Gamer...

Let's put the art behind us for now. (It'll be back.) What else is wrong with the second panel? Well, how about the dialogue? Or rather, how about the situation in general? Why is Beret Guy walking in the middle of the road? Why is the girl pitching her "party" to random passersby? Do people, even people with ulterior motives, even do that? Would anyone listen and think anything other than, "I should probably keep moving"? Is Beret Guy really swayed by the "hey sexy" line? Well, to be fair, that's probably all it would take to get Randy to follow her, so I guess I can see where the notion came from. And Beret Guy is known for being kind of clueless, so maybe I'll let that slide. Still, the situation feels awkward to me. There's got to be a better way to set up the punchline.

Panel 3 isn't bad. For xkcd. You can kind of see what's going on, and for stick figures, that's good. Well, it's tolerable. Moving on.

Ah, Panel 4. You confusing mess of non-humor. What's going on here? Couldn't Randy have channeled the artistic effort in Panel 2 into this one instead? Maybe then we wouldn't have forum posts like:

"are those kidneys or weenies in the bathtub?"

"or is it shit?"

"I thought it was bloody ice. did he get his organs harvested or something?"

"Are those potatoes?"

"Weenies, in cocktail sauce."

No joke, those are the first five responses to the original post. Wow. Really, Randy? You can spend time filling in BRICKS on a freaking STORE WALL but you can't draw the panel with the actual PUNCHLINE in a manner that people can understand it? Can you imagine if he didn't use color? Oh, and that's not to mention that the punchline is, "Hey guys, instead of stealing kidneys and leaving the Beret Guy in a bathtub full of ice, she stole his ice and left him in a bathtub full of kidneys. It's an inversion of a not funny concept and therefore is funny!"

Well...no. "A bar walks into a guy" isn't funny, is it? You have to work harder than that, Randy. Randomness is not the same thing as humor. And, okay, there's a bit of a subversion of expectations at work here; you're expecting something terrible to happen to Beret Guy because he's functionally retarded and accepts offers from random strangers, and something rather quirky and innocuous happens instead. But if you're going to do that, it has to be punchy! It has to be instantly obvious to the reader what's going on. If they spend two minutes staring at the panel trying to figure out what's going on, like I did, the reaction is going to go from "haha, lulz" to "Uh, that's just stupid."

And sadly, we're not done yet, not even after a 1000 word blog post. There's still the alt-text to deal with. I admit I didn't get the reference at first, but the same trip to the forums that got me the above quotes also pointed me to the urban legend that the text is referring to. On the plus side, it does exactly what alt-text is supposed to do; it provides an additional, relevant joke that's not simply an explanation of the earlier punchline. Unfortunately, the alt-text suffers the same problem as the last panel: readers probably aren't going to get it right away. They'll have to look it up or ask someone before it makes any sense. You know the phrase, "It's not funny if you have to explain it"? Yeah. It's not.

Now, one thing that gets me about this joke in general is that it seems to be set up for one of his recurring characters, either Mr. Hat or Beret Guy himself. (It's actually kind of a problem that I can't figure out who it would fit better). On the one hand, Mr. Hat seems like the type to cook up an elaborate plot like this (bathtub full of kidneys? really?), where the preparation outweighs the actual effect. On the other hand, Beret Guy seems like the sort to be all "lol randumb" and simply invert the expected kidnapping situation. But neither happened. Beret Guy was in the comic because he's stupid enough to fall for a stupid trick like this. It's a waste of a character.

Really, this strip is just one massive miscue for Randy. He explicitly describes a scene that doesn't need it, puts detail into a scene that doesn't need it, doesn't put enough detail into a scene that DOES need it, forces the readers to do research for a punchline that needs to be gotten quickly or not at all, and puts in characters but doesn't make the most of them. It's a jumble of misplaced priorities that adds up to four panels of complete garbage.