XKCD Isn't Funny - #1446 - LANDING

Much like yesterday's episode, this comic is derivative of two better comics, but this time the scale's been stepped up. If you go to the off-site player (which for some reason doesn't seem to work on Internet Explorer), you'll see that this is none other than a mini-TIME, filtered through a #695 lens.

I'm not that great at HARDCORE ANALYSIS of big things, so forgive me if I don't get too in-depth here.

Now, TIME won a Hugo award and has a big thread and a religion, it's Randy's magnum opus, and with good reason. Also people who probably think lifetime movies are emotional and dramatic are still banging on about #695 from time to time. It really isn't suprising that Randy would attempt to follow up on his best work and that other one.

However, I feel, philosophically, that this is a step backwards. Like an underground artist that suddenly had a top forty hit, Randy was faced with two (main) choices: Continue to grow, expand, and be awesome, a la Chumbawamba and Semisonic; or do exactly the same thing over again and hope the same success comes along, a la a bunch of bands no one cares about because they kept doing the same thing over again and over again and over again (over and over and over and over again).

To quote my beloved Bomb the Music Industry: "There's nothing new about the old sound regardless of what you say. The world is looking on like 'Really, again? Okay, okay..'". And while there have been the inevitable gifs on tumblr and there is a sizable thousand replies currently on the thread post, this comic is missing some key factors that made TIME so big and new and cool. The image upload time was changed from a half hour to five minutes and the total story length was shortened from 3,099 pages to 142. It also, obviously, isn't the first time he's done this. TIME was really neat because it was something that had simply never been done before. Thus it was impossible for this comic to work up the suspense that TIME had that caused all the theorizing and stuff that (I am told) went on in the TIME thread.

The actual story? It's alright, I guess. Not much of an attempt at being funny other than that the comet lander talks like Beret Guy sometimes and there's a bit with the president that doesn't really work. I don't like the 'Worry' bits toward the end, just because it seems to me that people at NASA (kNown for lAunching Stuff into spAce) would have a pretty good idea of what they're doing. But then, Randy would know better than me on that one. ;)

That winky face was completely unnecessary and I apologize.

I'm probably being harsher than I should be on this, it had some interesting visuals and it obviously took some work, but I really can't help feeling like this is just Randy's best work... but smaller, less impressive, and not surprising anymore.