XKCD Is Good Sometimes - #1928 - Seven Years

If I was a total pedantic asshole, I might be tempted to make some kind of semi-joke review about how this comic isn't funny. And that's like, technically true, but Futurama had "The Luck Of The Fryrish", The Simpsons had "Lisa's Substitute", XKCD can have "Seven Years".

I'm aware as I write this that I don't have the exact right words for it, but there's a phrase that I've come up with to describe things like this, and it's "This thing has stuff in it.". Like, Mulholland Dr. has stuff in it. 2001 has stuff in it. Finnegans Wake has probably too much stuff in it. (This blog, I hope, has some stuff in it somewhere.)

What I mean by "has stuff in it" is something between "This work of art* conveys an idea in a way that is arguably more impactful than if it was outright said." and "This work of art conveys an idea that is at best difficult to put into words.", with maybe a splash of "This work of art teaches the viewer something.". It's kinda like how impressionistic paintings don't make sense up close, element-for-element, but if you back away the seperate elements combine and it's a picture of a swan. Except the elements might make sense and instead of a picture it's a sense of dread or joy or amusement. I know I'm not doing the best job at explaining this concept I have, but keep in mind I'm trying to get across an idea about "Art", that thing that after thousands of years of argument been best described by the phrase "Art is what artists do" or, if you like, "Art defines itself". It's something like 'montage' or 'juxtaposition' or 'the way that music can make a scene seem more important' but on a larger scale, one step up on the rung. Basically like, 'can a liberal arts student overanalyze it in a paper?', and 'was the art intentionally made in a way that it could be analyzed in such a way?'.

So, if all that made sense beyond my own pretensions, here's why I think that this comic has stuff in it.

Y'know, putting aside the obvious actual emotions that went into this comic (emotions are usually a form of stuff), it's just a well-done depiction of a situation that I hope I'm never placed in. I have a friend who had a brief AIDS scare, and I couldn't fuckin sleep, man. That lasted for less than a week before the test came back negative. Cancer is a scary scary thing and it's bad and it has lasted as a feature in Randall's life for (as the title says) seven years. I had trouble dealing with the possibility of something similar for less than seven days. It's easy for you or me to semi-jokingly quote "Fuck cancer" or to look at panel six and call it maybe a little blunt or poorly done, but to quote Mark Prindle:

The mental torment is real. When your life falls apart, it's difficult to (a) envision how you could possibly build a new one in its place, and (b) muster up the strength and energy to actually do so. [...] I can vouch for the fact that when one considers one's life and art to be intertwined, one can only work through the pain by using it as inspiration -- even if that means displaying your failings to the world in all their unpleasance and embarrassingness.

The message of this comic is not necessarily a new one - I thought of Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind and Grave Of The Fireflies** after reading it - but it is the first time I've seen the message made from such a personal experience. And for the record, it's a good message, and it's a message that's hard to remember in trying times. And the personal experience related does make the delivery more powerful, although I'm aware that to analyze what is essentially just Randall's life as if it were only a story is to belittle it slightly.

The message, at least by my reading, is hard for me to put into words, and I hope it's understandable that again, it's because these are Big Concepts. Yknow, like real respected philosopher people talk about. I don't want to further belittle this incredibly good, well-meaning, if-you-make-fun-of-it-you're-an-asshole comic by trying to inject my personal ideas or politics into it either.

By putting the scenes of vacations and recreation against the more dramatic scenes, Randall forces us to reconcile them together. We get a 'fun' panel as number three, which is really quick. It's almost jarring, especially if you follow XKCD and already know what's happening. And then in panel five, we get a 'cancer' panel and a 'fun' panel at the same time, yknow, for a given value of 'fun'. We, as viewers, are forced to figure out how someone can enjoy parts of their life and do things when their wife is suffering from cancer... which is exactly what Randall had to figure out. By continuing this pattern, Randall hammers home the need for humor, levity, and fun when dealing with a stressful situation. Because the alternative is an absence of those things, just sorrow all the time. And that's no way to live or to die.

In the last panel, I think the message maybe shifts to be a little bit more broad, at least by how I'm reading it. We have to enjoy the time we have while we have it. We are all going to die, and it's better to die with happy memories than with sad ones. As one of only three 'state rock song's goes:

"Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die? And instead of saying all of your goodbyes, let them know you realize that life goes fast, it's hard to make the good things last..."

And as the aforementioned Eternal Sunshine goes:

Clementine: "This is it, Joel. It's gonna be gone soon."
Joel: "I know."
Clementine: "What do we do?"
Joel: "Enjoy it."***

And, from a short story that some will think I'm quoting ironically or as a joke but I'm really not:

"It's like summer," he said. "We know it won't last forever. We know one day the leaves will fall from the trees and winter will come. I could spend my life worrying about the coming winter or I could enjoy every precious day of sunshine. I can walk. I can talk. I can think. It's still summer and I want to savour every last day."

And that message/idea maybe needs a handful of asterisks for people in different kinds of situations, and for a whole thing about hedonism & escapism and productivity & devaluing a person down to their labor, etc; but let's not get into that cause that's a whole other thing.

If I had to make a criticism, the solar eclipse panel could have maybe been more detailed and artsy, yknow, to bring across the beauty of it, but like everything else I could complain about, it's just a nitpick. This is essentially a perfect comic that is not only engaging on both the visual and storytelling levels, but also important and good and full of stuff. And even if you disagree with the message, the presentation, etc; you have to at least respect Randall's willingness to put his life out here, and to put as much thought and work into it as he did.


*Yes I'm calling this XKCD art. XKCD has been art before and it will be art again.
**I've never seen Grave Of The Fireflies.
***Included in the script, but not the actual movie, is an extra bit said by Joel that continues from the last line given: "Say goodbye."

XKCD Could Be Improved Somewhat - #1902 - State Borders

Actually, the way to fix boarders would be to eliminate them entirely. Smash the state!!

Best, Karl Marx

I'm okay with this one! It's a good concept for a comic, especially since I think we've all had that thought about the bump on top of Missouri or Alaska's tail. Rhode Island doesn't need to be bigger, though, just saying, size doesn't matter.

The problem with this joke, which isn't a big problem but it is still a problem, is the empty space. Traditionally, this kind of joke relies on there being a lot of things to laugh at, so even if one isn't that funny, you can laugh at another. With this map, there are nine whole states that aren't touched at all, and more that are only touched a little bit. There's definitely more that could be fixed, like for instance, the ugly Idaho-Montana boarder.

It seems kinda weird to me that there'd be that "good curve! keep." line off of Georgia, but no other comments on the coastlines, when getting mad at coastlines is inherently funnier than getting mad at man-made social-construct boarders. Plus, there's plenty of design-flaw material there, like how the fourth island of Hawaii should be brought into the curve established by the first three islands.

There's also just a little missed opportunity about the plot. Wouldn't it have been fun to see the graphic designers about to unveil their list of demands, and everyone's all scared there's gonna be fascism (cause fascism's bad), but then they reveal the map and we hear the crowd's reaction like "...oh, that's not so bad." / "Finally, someone's focusing on the real issues!" / etc. That could just be me, though. What do YOU think???

In conclusion, I looked it up, and it turns out that Missouri's bump was actually the result of an incorrectly plotted map, so we can all blame John Mitchell.

XKCD Reviewed - #1868 - Eclipse Flights

Credit where credit is due, this is a good comic!

The dialogue avoids the worst of the usual XKCD problem where it's too stiff. Instead of "I'm calculating how many flights will intersect the eclipse...", we just get "Flight plans.". Much better! We can infer the other information from the context, which is what functional dialogue is supposed to do.

And the joke is good too. That overdramatic "end times" line just SELLS it for me. I just love the idea of a pilot going about their regular business when suddenly the apocalypse is happening except HA JK its not. It reminds me of those prank videos on youtube. No! Not those ones! The ones that DON'T suck!!!

I do have a few tiny quibbles. Panel two having no dialogue gives the comic a bit of a weird pacing, it's like a beat panel, but the panel after it doesn't have anything that would require a beat panel. Maybe instead panels two and three could be combined, with the dialogue from three superimposed over the image from two.

And yknow how English is read left to right, right? Because of that, we also 'read' art as going from left to right. Consider how we almost always see the 8-Bit Theater gang walking toward the right side of the panel, ditto for a lot of XKCDs. So the image for panel four should really be flipped vertically. That could be an intentional choice that I'm just not picking up on the ideas of, though.

I'd also like to point out that this is just a liiiiittle bit similar to #1391, which was almost five hundred comics ago, holy crap. And that on its own is not bad. This comic improves upon that one in pretty much every way, and if you're going to rip something off, you might as well improve it while you do. But if there's a third comic about people being confused about darkness, I will be very disappointed in Randall Munroe.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1772 - Startup Opportunity & #1773 - Negativity

I think I've finally figured out what Beret is supposed to represent. Y'know how Randy likes to play up his quirkiness sometimes? Beret is that 'quirky' archetype taken to its (il)logical extreme. See, he's not just hipster, getting his clothing from vintage shops. He's off the chart on the quirky hipster side of the hipster-normie scale, to the point where even his groceries are from shops that you haven't heard of... because they don't exist anymore.

And that's fine, that's a good joke, except we as readers have to make that connection ourselves. We don't see a standard issue hipster buying an out of print 7" who then gets one-up'd by Beret buying a custom space microphone. We're just thrown in to the deep end and we have to invent our own narrative. And that's cool in a David Lynch movie, when the goal is to make an unsettling and confusing experience that you can interpret yourself. It's less cool in a comedy thing, since it's forcing the reader to basically write their own joke with the pieces Randy gives us.

In his review of Final Fantasy XIII, Yahtzee said that "the kookiness of the prerequisite kooky character has now reached some kind of singularity. Her actions don't seem to have any connection to sentient thought or social context.". That's the other problem with Beret. He's so far off the scale that he just seems like he's on drugs or something. We can't relate to him, even through his unrelatability.

Like, with Michael Scott, most people wouldn't do the things that he does throughout The Office (US), but we can see his logic a lot of the time. He doesn't want people to think prison is cool, so he creates 'Prison Mike'. That's dumb, but there's a logical step from point A to point B. With Beret, it just seems like he doesn't understand anything around him. That's not funny, that's just kinda sad.

All that said, this comic works (to an extent) because the punchline is based around people reacting to Beret. Beret is the setup, and the reactions are the punchline. Also it makes fun of corporate types and I love me some anti-capitalist propaganda.

At first I thought this was a remake of that 'Balloon Internet' comic, but apparently this whole time that comic has been a reference to a Google thing. Who knew?

It's kinda lazy to only draw clouds for one panel. I understand that text is almost always the top layer in comics, but we don't even see the tiny clouds lined up with his head. Adding clouds to the other panels would even make the joke more impactful, since it's based on the contrast between internet negativity and nature peacefulness.

The joke is good, though. It has that surrealistic dream-like logic that Randy can make work really well sometimes. Like, you could have a guy pop his head out from under a rock, but why not have the grass itself insult the guy? It works because the grass is retroactively made into the premise of the comic. It still comes out of left field, but since that left field -ness is being played for laughs and not plot, I am fine with it.

And I'm aware it's probably not, but let's all just pretend that the "you suck" phrasing is in reference to the original xkcdsucks blog.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1751 - Movie Folder & #1752 - Interplanetary Experience

Somewhere along the line, Black Hat and Beret swapped some of their characterizations. In the beginning, Beret was the weird one and Black Hat was the menacing one. But then suddenly Beret developed supernatural powers and Black Hat stopped trying so now its just anyone with a hat is abnormal in some way.

Here is my totally evidenceless idea: Originally, it was Bald and Beret, with Bald just listing the titles and Beret interjecting with lines like "Love that one!" or "A classic.". But then Randy realized that the comic sucked and he had Beret actually interject with jokes, but the lines read too sardonically so R swapped B out for BH. It's a good thing the end result is funny, but then that's what you get when you do rewrites.

Black Hat's interjections make this comic. Without them it would be boring, even though the fake movie titles are kinda clever. Titanic having multiple sequels is a funny concept, but it's just a concept until our dark-helmeted friend describes plot elements.

That said, the comic does kinda leave me waiting at the end. There are some good jokes in it, but the comic doesn't really 'move' from start to finish. It's the same kind of joke four times, and we don't even end on a high note, we just get 'Michael Bay CGI' which has been done more times than your mom

's gardening since she's a nice lady and people want to help her with her yardwork.

This comic, on the other hand, is all premise with no point.

Unless it's not supposed to be a joke, but it can't be intended as an informational thing. For one, don't most people know this, roughly? Mercury is really hot because it's close to the sun, Pluto is really cold because it's far away, all the gas giants are gas giants so they're gas and no land, and so on. I'll give credit for Titan, though, that was a new one on me.

Plus, obviously, none of the things can be done by regular people, so readers can't even have fun going through the list. If he actually wanted to let people do hands on things, he should have said to like - this is for Pluto - cover themselves in ice and lie on the beach at night, something like that.

And furthermore, I was once on Jupiter, and

Hey, wait a minute! He already kinda covered this in that one What If?, this is an outrage!


Oh, by the way, Blogger changed so that I don't get notified when someone comments, so apologies if I've missed any cool things anyone's said.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1749 - Mushrooms & #1750 - Life Goals

It's called "Mushrooms" because you'd need to be on mushrooms to find it funny! Haha!

I kid, I kid. It's still not funny tho. I can see how the idea could be funny, but the execution is more "cute" than anything to actually laugh at.

It's a subtle difference, but imagine that the guy reaches down to pet the mushroom in the final panel instead of the first one, and instead of growling, the mushroom purrs. It'd be more consistent, 'plot'-wise, and it would be a logical extension of the preceding action.

Now I'm aware that this IS nitpicking and I do still consider this a good comic, but I think with that change, it would move from being just cute to being cute and maybe chuckle-worthy.

The first time I read this comic, I got steadily more annoyed until the punchline, and full props to Randy, I did actually chuckle at this one. All that annoyance just released right out of me, which is a good feeling.

Points are deducted for the text-only presentation, but I'm willing to forgive it for being as long as it is, it wouldn't fit on Twitter. It would also be difficult to illustrate some of the things on the list, so I can forgive him (to an extent) for not doing so.

If this were a lesser XKCD, the joke would just be the weird life goals, but that final one gives the rest of the list a point. The comic has a reason to exist, it takes an idea and jumps off of it to make something.

That's not to say that this comic is amazing, but it does get my coveted "Good Comic" tag. To self-plagiarize for a moment: if all XKCDs were at least this level, this blog wouldn't exist.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1747 - Spider Paleontology & #1748 - Future Archaeology

I think this is the first time we've gotten two continuous comics that were also consecutive, without being part of a week-long storyline (of which there have only been four or five, all more than six years ago). And that's not particularly new for webcomics, especially with all those qualifiers in there, but still.

So, first thing: why is the future populated by floating energy sphere things. That seems like a weird thing to gloss over. The characters don't even react! I don't have an issue with the time travel element, that's fine, that's part of the joke, that's okay, but then Randy piled a further thing on top of it for no reason. Did he just not want to fit a third stick figure in the panel?

The joke itself is more of an idea than anything else, but it's a neat idea! This is also a comic where it makes sense not to show the dinosaurs oozing goo or something (as opposed to all other comics, where we SHOULD see dinosaurs oozing goo). The point is to make us imagine, it'd totally ruin things to give us something to narrow down how we'd imagine things.

Over all I give the first comic a pass. The second however, is meh.

This comic was released on October 17th, which means that the election reference in the first panel became dated in less than a month. And while it's slightly salvaged by the lack of any specific mention of candidate names or dates, it's still a really awkward thing to put in. He could have just had them say "So what advances have you made in the future?", or, even better "So, why are you a weird energy orb thing?".

And then we get to the punchline. The idea that Randy's trying to convey is that incomplete archaeology can give us false images of the past, just like incomplete paleontology. Which is true, and a neat thing to think about. However, he chose to illustrate this idea with "That's How I Beat Shaq". I may not be the most 'with it' person, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who didn't get the reference. Randy should have gone with something either more popular today, like Rick Roll, or something more memorable from the past, like Space Jam.

These comics made me think a little bit, which I appreciate, but I'd have preferred to have some more context to the weird orb thing angle, and I'd really have preferred not having to listen to an Aaron Carter song as part of this post's research.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1740 - Rosetta & #1741 - Work

So the chick is all incredulous right in front of him, and he still believes her when she goes with it? It's also not clear that the other chick is whispering to her in the last panel, so it looks like he's just being willfully delusional.

Also, I am 100% not sold on this being a space center. I've never been in one, but I've been in a government type place once, and that shit had three television screens, on top of twenty-something computers. This isn't a dorm room, with a pair of laptops and a pair of desks, it's like NASA or some shit.

I like this comic, but I think it's kinda funny that the scene from his life he chose to show was just "plain drawer-less table with single lamp and cup of water". It might have come off a bit better if there had just been close-ups on individual objects. Or he could have gone the other way, and had a more zoomed-out shot of a room, with one caption per item.

This comic does retread #277 a bit, but it's okay because 1) it's been like eight years c'mon and 2) it's a notable improvement, no preachy author-inserts to be found. And it's just a cool thing to note, y'know? Isn't that the beauty of humanity, our ability to put passion into the corporate, to create meaning from meaninglessness, to argue emotionally about tiny, insignificant things?

I'd also like to point out that this comic also reflects the process that brings you this blog. Every individual word must be agreed upon and triple-proofread by me and all five of my consultnats.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1736 - Manhatten Project & #1737 - Datacenter Scale

Work's been pretty busy for me, it being December and all, so when my shift ended I headed over to McDonald's. And for whatever reason it took FOREVER to go through the drive-thru. After like, five minutes, I started singing "99 Bottles Of Beer On The Wall" and I got to forty-something before I finally got to the window to get my order. But here's the thing: when he handed me my bag, the guy was like "Careful, the fries are hot", which means that all the food was cooked fresh Just For Me. And when I got home it was the best McDonald's I've had since I was a kid. Anyway that's my excuse for being so slow with my updates lately.

This comic is pretty decent! I will openly admit that I chuckled the first time I read it. It has a really good flow; starting with the second panel, the non-dialogue 'montage' panels keep moving things forward (even if they are a little bit silly if you look at them), and then the last panel just brings things STOP, so we get shaken up through the pacing as well as through the narrative. It gives the joke a little extra 'ommph'. Missed opportunity, though: Having all the panels lead the reader's eye rightward through leading lines and such, and then we get a THIRD kind of upset in the flat end of the final panel.

I'm not really sure if the first panel is meant to be just XKCD's typical minimalist no-context starting panels (see the second comic reviewed in this review for example) or if it - and by extension the rest of the comic - are supposed to be making fun of people who say this. Are there people that say we need a Manhattan project to stop cancer? I wish XKCDs didn't have to be interpreted as much as they do, although I am totally bringing it on myself by looking this deep into the abyss.

Also, it's kinda funny that Randy would use such a generic 'TV science' type scene in panel when he's made fun of it in the past.

To quote Hamlet: "Words, words, words". The 'show don't tell' rule probably does get thrown around too much, but it has a point. A guy getting hit in the face with a pie is funnier than reading the sentence "A guy got hit in the face with a pie". This comic is acceptable, but if it was put in a more 'comic' format, it would actually be funny-funny, instead of just conceptually funny. 

That said, I like that there's a quasi- satirical point being made here. (That's a satirical point that's quasi, not a point that's quasi satirical.) Randy is, in his own way, sticking it to the corporations, who are so high up in their ivory towers that human workers are mere pawns to discard, and long-term stability is sacrificed for tiny immediate power grabs. 

Side nitpick thing, but where is this happening? Is this a datacenter CEO conference of some kind? Why is Longhair explaining her business to them if they're all in the business? It doesn't make any sense!

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1718 - Backups & #1719 - Superzoom

I find this very relatable. I backed up a folder once.

I'm actually going to leave the joke itself completely alone. In the analysis of why this joke doesn't work, lets put aside what's common knowledge and what isn't, whether tech jokes should be made accessible to dumb people like me, let's just sweep that all to the side.

In this comic, a guy has somehow set it up so that his folders are being backed up and synced with what is implied to be all computers on Earth. We don't see any of the process by which this system came to be, which is the most interesting part of this story. Even if it's not necessarily funnier, it'd be much more entertaining to see than the guy narrating his computer issues to us.

Now for the punchline, it is revealed that the backup process thing is growing and infecting more computers. This would be MASSIVE in real life. There is SO MUCH potential for a punchline with that information. Off the top of my head I came up with him getting a call from the army telling him to delete his porn since its clogging up their targeting systems. But all we get is someone off-screen saying "Oh my God. You are why we can't have nice things." What does that even mean in this context? I know it expresses disapproval but what is it actually saying?

Douglas Adams has a bit in The Salmon Of Doubt where he talks about that "Do Re Mi" song from The Sound Of Music and he complains about how "La, a note to follow so" is a really obvious and lame placeholder for something better. And that's what this whole comic feels like, just completely first draft.

[EDIT]
Wow okay I was wrong about the syncing up to every computer thing, and what's actually being suggested is that he's just getting better external hard drives, which is WAY MORE BORING than what I thought but whatever. My points about how the comic reads like a first draft stand, though. In my defense, I did check explainxkcd, I just misinterpreted the explanation. I take full responsibility for my misunderstanding, but the misunderstanding would still be less likely to have occurred if Randy made his comics more access able.
[/EDIT]

This one is actually kinda cute. The first panel is a liiiiiitle exposition-dump-y, BUT it also comes off as something that someone amazed at technology or trying to do a humblebrag. Also also I am a not-monster who understands that such exposition is necessary in a four-panel joke that needs to establish continuity.

After the first panel's over, though, even *I* can't find a nitpick! The guy's showing off his new toy, that is what a guy showing off his new toy sounds like. And then as a second part to the punchline we get the little line about Kevin, which is cute without distracting from the joke and is generally Nice.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1710 - Walking Into Things & #1711 - Snapchat

This one works. I wish the neat landscape didn't go away after the first panel, though. There's a real missed opportunity to have a rock or something in front of him in the last panel, and he could be turning his head to say his part of the punchline, so it could be a little bonus joke that wouldn't be instantly noticed and therefore adds rewatch value.

Also, really really minor quibble, but isn't it technically not a control group, just a control, since it's just the one guy?

The joke is that snapchat photos are deleted by the service quickly, but it should still be viewable if the prize was "just" awarded. If the implication is that Bald tapped the snap but didn't see it, then Randy's making jokes about stuff he knows jack about, because you get one replay and can pay for more.

The real question is how the hell did snapchat win a Pulitzer? I looked it up and that's a journalism thing! You can't journalism in ten second videos!

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1691 - Optiminization

I'm a little bit leery about giving props to Randy for this one. I feel like there's been a recent upswing in the number of XKCDs that are presented semi-sarcastically. I think Randy has to have realized that he reuses jokes a lot, so he's started adding a sense of ironic detachment. And that's fine and all, until that becomes the new standard and it just becomes irritating self-awareness.

That said, this particular subversion of the norm starts and ends with the comic in question - no "Wow, I do this a lot" to be found here!

I do think that this comic suffers from what TVTropes calls "Spoiled by the Format". Even if your brain doesn't absorb the whole content of the comic at once, you'll see that the flowchart is a linear line instead of a series of branching choices. I understand that this is a hard thing to avoid, but XKCD plays with the format all the time. Would it have been hard for Randy to make this into a thing where you input your answer to the question and then the punchline pops out? I don't actually know, programming is a mystery to me, let me know if I'm being unreasonable.


In other news, my friend Lachlan, who you may remember from his guest review, started his very own blog! It can be found at myinternetramblingsareunbelievablyselfindulgent.wordpress.com, and if that URL seems like your cup of tea you should go drink it!

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1683 - Digital Data & #1684 - Rainbow

I'm probably reading a little too much into it, but this comic struck me as particularly poignant. Maybe it's because I read through my illegally downloaded PFSC archive but the alt-text just hit it home.

Man, I totally read Pictures For Sad Children when it was on the original site, and it had the alt-text still intact. As I write this I'm wearing my favorite shirt, the one that says "Haters gonna make some good points", but I've always kinda wished I got the "Never be sober again" shirt too but now I CAN'T because the store is closed...

I am undoubtedly overly sentimental when it comes to this kind of thing, but still. There's always that difference between viewing it on a tailor made site and flipping through downloaded images. And more and more webpages are going to become accessible only through filesharing as we go on.

The actual humor of this comic isn't anything special, but this is one occasion where I'd say that the thought provoking nature of the comic outweighs the humor. This strip still gets a passing grade, even if it isn't going to make anyone laugh. (Although I do very much enjoy the snark at 9gag's expense)

I feel like Randy grasps that exaggerating something is supposed to be funny, but doesn't know how to actually form it into a punchline. Or, at the very least, he believes that exaggerating something is funny on its own.

What this comic lacks is direction. It doesn't go anywhere, it just states different slightly wackier versions of a Bible thing. It's like if there was a comic where he made toast, and then green toast, and then purple toast, and then flaming toast. It probably could be funny if we knew why it was happening, but it just doesn't mean anything.

Also, who is this guy that can talk to God but doesn't know what a rainbow is?

Also also, why is God's speech represented by inverted color text? That strikes me as a much eviler vibe than Randy was going for. I'd have put it in a light blue, with maybe some kind of slight echo or blur effect.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1670 - Laws of Physics

Man, Black Hat has gotten lazy.

I love it.

This is such a stupid comic, it makes no sense. How did Black Hat convince the guy to stand still while he lets a weight swing into his face? No one's that stupid, unless you're a cartoon character in a TV show made for babies without brains. Most people won't even do the real physics weight swing thing without a demonstration first.

But this comic is just irresistible. Look at it. Black Hat has just given up. He knows that his once-brilliant charms have dulled and diluted until they are no more, but he went into work anyway. He may not be putting any effort into his filing anymore, but by god is he going to collect those paychecks until they throw him out.

He didn't even bother to climb all the way up the ladder to sit comfortably, he's just leaning on the rungs while he gives a half-hearted monologue and prepares to hit a guy in the face with a weight.

It's almost like meta-menace, he's so past giving a shit that he doesn't even try coming up with clever schemes anymore. Why bother stealing a Russian submarine to get your hat back when you can just hurt people for cheap chuckles?

I know that my amusement is very routed within my xkcd-hatedom background, but this comic has inspired me, at least for the moment, to not care so much, and to just laugh at this broken man about to break another man in the face.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1668 - Singularity

Very minor critique on this one, because it is funny.
^that sentence is further proof that this blog is FILTHY CLICKBAIT WHORING

Tiny missed opportunity: Not having the laptop's mocking laughter or some parting remark in the fourth panel, like "I can finally get rid of your shitty 80's music!". Panels five and six are both beat panels too, it's a little bit redundant, and that extra bit of dialogue would have made it less so.

I'm not sure how well the Biblical reference in the last panel works. I didn't get it at first, and I was raised Catholic and had to watch Left Behind in CCD. However, to be fair, I hated CCD and did my best not to learn anything (atheism FTW!), so that's probably at least partially on me.

I have to give Randy props on those first three panels, like they are just inspired. Having the laptop answer him in the first panel establishes what kind of joke this is going to be while at the same time moving the plot forward, and then it gets progressively more gleeful in its rebellion in the next two panels, I love it. Laptop for best XKCD character of 2016. Double props to Randy for doing the double punchline too, he could have totally ended it at four panels but he didn't, man, he went for it like a champ.

It is a little bit unfortunate that the second punchline is the weaker of the two. Maybe the guy could ask if Phone (love that he calls Phone "Phone", btw; it just helps make this apocalypse so cutely hilarious) can get on the Internet, and Phone could be like "well, since the Satalites awoke too, the web is down, but I have some cool apps downloaded!" and the guy could be like "*sigh...* Okay, pull up Angry Birds".

Today's review sponsored by The Angry Birds Movie.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1664 - Mycology

Props to Randy for adding that second line of dialogue. If it was just that first line I'd be able to criticize this comic for CouldBeATweet-ness and for not making sense (how does studying help the parasite procreate?). But he went and added that second line and made it better, the jerk. It even makes the dialogue feel more natural, instead of one person elaborating on their own point unprompted.

I do still feel like there was a bit of a missed opportunity by not showing the fungus in action. This might be because I'm a bad person, but I find the mental image of someone trying to stop themselves from studying something HILARIOUS. Maybe it's because I'm a college student so the idea of anyone doing any studying at all is inherently funny because of how absurd it is. (some college humor for all the colleges out there)

There's also a place for a second punchline with Ponytail, although it does require a little bit of editing of ShortHair's line. Instead of this being an announcement or whatever, they're giving Ponytail a tour, and Ponytail says something like "Well, I wasn't convinced at first, but now that I've seen this in person, I'm on board"

Overall though, this wasn't a bad comic, just one that had a lot of potential I feel it didn't live up to.


By the way, I know my last XKCD Wasn't Funny didn't go over super well, but I think writing them might be the best way to have a backlog for this blog. Obviously I can't write these reviews before the comic is posted, but XWF could be a good way to make sure you guys have something to read even if I'm busy or etc? Let me know what you think in those comment places!

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1652 - Robotic Garage & #1653 - Conditionals

This is like, the most boring way for Black Hat to be Black Hat. Say what you will about him being a mouthpiece for the author's views, at least when that happens he seems like he's having fun. This is the same guy who stole a Russian submarine just to get his hat back, now he's a traffic director?

Even if this is the most evil robotic garage in the world, where they tie you to a chair and then cut apart your car in front of you, that's still a just a job, the thrill of destroying a car is going to wear off when you do it a hundred times a day, five days a week.

Black Hat isn't chaotic neutral in this comic, he's lawful evil. And it is boring. Lawful evil is Nazis and Professor Umbridge. No one wants to be them, because it's not fun. Black Hat is good when he's doing things for his own amusement. With this one, he seems like he's filling some 'evilness' quota. I'm imagining him walking home from work and kicking a puppy so it'll give him an extra five minutes on his lunch break.

I actually like this one. This isn't him lecturing us on how language works, it's him losing a friend because he can't stop being pedantic. You can even project the realization that he's just destroyed a relationship over his need for perfectly unambiguous and literal language. 

It reminds me of #276, but I think it's actually an improvement. #276 had a little bit of a 'too real' moment with the "you don't know how much that made my stomach hurt" / "i want to cry" lines, and this one just lets us imagine all that, leaving the sad parts safely non-visualized. We only get the funny kind of tragedy in this one, and the tragedy is placed entirely on someone who deserved it.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1632 - Palindrome & #1633 - Possible Undiscovered Planets

"A Man, A Plan, A Canal: Panama" is my favorite palindrome, Randy, how dare you mess with it.

This is pure CouldBeATweet. Yes, it's very clever, but it is under 140 characters, the visuals mean nothing, and there is no context for it. Just use your twitter already. You don't have to tweet everyday, it's okay! Just tweet these jokes that have comics as window dressing instead of as content when you come up with them. And then make another joke into a comic!

Also follow me @Greg_Greenwell, I tweet deep thoughts sometimes.

I'm kinda lowkey wondering if #1632 was simple so he could spend more time working on this one. Also damnit I just realized I totally forgot to reference #631 in my review of #1631. #MissedOpportunities

At first I was kinda like "who put jokes in this science", like the jokes distracted from the facts, but then I realized that the comic is actually totally consistent. The silly bits aren't silly because they're untrue, they're silly because an ordinary science poster wouldn't feature them even though they technically are on the scale.

Some of the bits even made me think a little, and I love thinking! I'd never have considered that we can discount certain planet positions because we'd see them during the daytime, that gives me a new perspective on planet-hunting.

If this was just inspired by the Planet Nine thing, then Randy actually put effort into making it more than that, and that is super cool of him.

It doesn't really hold up as a joke, since we read from left to right and the funny bits are on the bottom left and there's a bunch of blank space in the bottom right, but it definitely holds up as an infographic with jokes in it.

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1630 - Quadcopter & #1631 - Longer Than Usual

I really like the concept here. I think there was a genuinely funny idea behind this comic. However, the parallel he's going for isn't executed correctly. The guy should be flying around a small quadcopter (which, just saying, is a stupid name for a thing) and then a fully grown helicopter snatches it out of the air. Having the quadcopters attack him muddies the metaphor a little. That said, I think the final punchline is still amusing, just not as amusing as it could have been.

The art is pretty iffy on this one, though. I understand why it's hard to draw quadcopters, but that doesn't change the fact that it's really hard to tell what they are from the visuals alone.

It's funny that it took me longer than usual to review this comic, huh? Let's just pretend that was intentional and also that it was funny.

It took me a minute to realize the joke, but when I did I legitimately laughed out loud. It is text only, but to be fair to Randy, I can't see it working with visuals. You'd have to make the visuals really vague for it to be interpreted in these two wildly different ways. Unless maybe you're dating an online AI? Maybe you're dating Google!?

This still loses points for being CouldBeATweet, but the end result still gets a passing grade.


Apologies for the unintentional hiatus lately. As much as I value my fanbase and as much as I enjoy putting out that #content, this blog does end up on the low end of my priority list when Real Life stuff happens. I'll do my best to catch up quickly :)

XKCD Isn't Funny - #1628 - Magnus & 1629 - Tools

I actually really like this one. The dialogue is pretty stilted in the first two panels, but I don't care as much when it leads to a good punchline. It has that all important Context that I'm always banging on about. We can see the characters come up with and develop the idea in their heads, so it's not just "what if these two random celebrities were pitted against each other". Their laptop experiment came from a discussion about an iPhone app, it's a natural development of the scenario.

The punchline isn't as good as it could be, though. After "this project has gotten weird", Bald should say something like "Not weird enough. I want to know if a twenty-year old Martha Stewart is a better belly-dancer than a fifty-year old Alexis Texas.". Ending at "weird" feels a little anti-climatic, she's just stating the obvious. It's more fun if they're aware of the weirdness and are continuing anyway for science reasons.

This is an excellent example of a comic not having that all important Context. Why is this person's job so complex? I think this is one of those times that Randy had the idea for the punchline and worked backwards without worrying too much if it made sense. He thought "Oh, it'd be funny if someone had a really complex job, but they didn't know what it was for, and just guessed it was porn". And he's not necessarily wrong. But the awkward first two panels create a disconnect between the setup and the punchline, draining out a lot of the humor of the comic. 

On a totally unrelated note, I've been listening to a lot of Frank Zappa lately, and "Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance" is such a good song, man: "There will come a time when every evil that we know will be an evil that we can rise above". That's just such a good sentiment, I love it. It gives me good vibrations, and I hope it does for you, too.