Written by Matthew Pardue
My first review referenced xkcd; it seems like a nice shift from last week’s story-heavy webcomic, so now’s as good a time as any to get to this one (I spend a surprising amount of time trying to figure out which order I’ll do these in). Like Two Guys and Guy, xkcd has plots in the same way that Windstream has full glitch-free days: they’re nice on the rare occasions that they come up, but that’s not what either is known for. So, again like Two Guys and Guy, you can read through the archives in binges when you have the time without worrying about forgetting key story points if you lose track of it for a while. It’s a good webcomic for casual readers. On the other hand, the content itself is usually aimed at Internet nerds, which doesn’t overlap well with the previous demographic.
Quick side note, because it’s bugging me: the name, according to the creator (Randall Munroe), is ideally lower-cased unless you put it at the beginning of a sentence, in which case you capitalize the whole thing. Now my fellow English majors and I can stop twitching when we see the title. Munroe further writes of xkcd that, “It’s not actually an acronym. It’s just a word with no phonetic pronunciation — a treasured and carefully-guarded point in the space of four-character strings.”
Anyway, onto the good stuff. XKCD is a stick-figure webcomic with an almost absurd range of topics. Various sciences take precedent, Munroe being the physicist that he is. Don’t let that push you away, though; there’s something for everyone. I guarantee that no matter how obscure your interests may be, at least one strip will touch on a subject you understand, enjoy, and probably feel is underappreciated. In terms of tone, the strips are usually funny, occasionally poignant (I spent about eight minutes trying to spell that, so I hope you’re grateful), and from time to time will make you lean back and think deep, philosophical thoughts until your boss comes by and yells at you to get back to work (not that you should be reading webcomics on company time anyway, unless it’s part of approved research [I cannot stress how much I like my job]). By no means should you let the stick figures fool you. The gap between the simplicity of the art and the complexity of the writing could stretch to the sun and back.
Like I said, about half the pages are science-y. Early on, there’re some quirky drawings that Munroe presumably sketched when he got bored in class (he began xkcd by scanning old artwork that he didn’t want to lose). After the audience started rolling in and he had a reason to keep posting things, the new material alternated between math/physics jokes and a grab-bag of everything from pop culture to romance. The first category originally tended to fly well over the heads of people like me. Munroe gradually got better at writing for a broader fan base without giving up on his fellow scientists; not many people could pull that off. These days, even if you don’t understand the specifics, you can almost always get the punchline.
Think of the possibilities for self-education, too. I’ve spent more than one afternoon researching online to figure out what Munroe was talking about (I probably still got it wrong, but that’s beside the point). I wonder what his childhood was like, or if he takes inspiration from friends who studied different things than he did. If he actually wrote every strip from his own knowledge base, then damn. Da Vinci’s bloodline apparently found its way to America under a different name. In addition to sciences, he does some fun strips about language; when I see one, I get excited about finally being in on the joke.
On the other hand, xkcd isn’t always kind to the liberal arts side of the fence. Keep in mind that he pokes fun at everything, eventually. Read with a sense of humor. If you weren’t already, though, then you’ve missed the point of the webcomic anyway. I think it makes for a life lesson in itself, in addition to the genuinely insightful strips Munroe sometimes tosses out. If you can’t laugh when something you like or do is playfully mocked, then you have no business laughing when it happens to other people.
Current events, social commentary, and human nature bits round out the package. At this point, any focus that the webcomic might’ve had is officially gone. I’ve read complaints about this, people saying that the randomness keeps them from latching onto xkcd like they have with story-driven webcomics. I guess it’s a matter of opinion. Ultimately, xkcd reminds me of a personal blog. The only thing the vast majority of scattered strips have in common is their creator; xkcd is less a traditional webcomic and more a “what’s Munroe thinking about today?” machine. You may or may not be into that.
I’ll finish up with the disclaimer. Munroe himself says it pretty well: “Warning: this comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors).” …Huh. That’s in all caps on the website, but it copied and pasted in that form. I have no idea why; I’m pretty sure it isn’t an MS Word function, because other, similar text isn’t reacting the same way, so maybe Munroe did something via coding-magic. You know who could probably tell me? The average xkcd fan.
The first page is a kid floating in a barrel on some ocean or another, kicking off one of the rare plots. I think it has four-six pages to it, scattered with other strips in between; all other plots follow that same pattern. You owe it to yourself to at least have a look. Click the “Random” button a few times to see if you like what you find. That’s more likely to give you a good sense of the webcomic than starting at the beginning, really.