It's ironic that as I write this, I'm listening to Johnny Hobo and the Freight Trains, one of the least Spice Girls-like bands this side of Merzbow.
I got a really good first impression from this comic. Look at that: Depth! Details! Shading! Perspective! But then I noticed that the two side walls have different angles with the roof (and that they're not given the normal thick lines for some reason), that the speech line is really unclear as to who's speaking it and to whom, and that the joke sucks. Thus I shake my head sadly, a single tear glistening in the moonlight, before giving this comic a failing grade in spite of the effort that was put into it.
Boy, this is clumsily done. What is that box in the middle of the room even supposed to be? I'd say it was a safe but it doesn't have any dials or anything. Is it just a block of wood? Did they bring a block of wood into their hideout just on the off chance they'd be found out and would need enough cover for one person? And then there's just a torn bit of paper or whatever but the rest of the wall's perfectly smooth. But now I'm nitpicking.
The core idea, as per usual with XKCD, is fine. The execution, as hinted at repeatedly and explicitly throughout the previous two paragraphs, is not.
The spice girls reference feels dated as all hell to start, considering their last album came out in (checks Wikipedia) 2000, and their last good album came out in (checks TV Tropes) 1997. I'd have gone with something more current or timeless, like "90's TV shows" or "flavor of ice cream".
"The merciful one..." is a really clumsy phrase. Besides the fact that there're apparently only two Spice Girls in this alternate universe, as opposed to our full set of Kicking, Screaming, Gucci, Little, and Piggy, wouldn't someone in a stressful situation just leave it at "Which Spice Girl are you?"?
All of this is avoiding the obvious question of why someone is shouting this in this situation at all. I don't get it. Why does Randy like to imagine this? I could see it if it was a parody of the new Divergent-type dystopian teen fiction that's been popping up for a little bit now, where people are sorted by really arbitrary methods, but that's obviously not the case.
In conclusion, I don't know how to end reviews.
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