Why I Pick On Randall

One of the more legitimate questions that gets shouted at me is why I hate Randall Munroe so goddamn much. xkcd is far from the worst comic online, and lots of people have had success with less (see: your newspaper's comics section).

Here's why I think Randy deserves more criticism: Given the "requirements", as I'll call them, of his comic, he should be doing much much better.

Think about this: Most newspaper comics have to think of stuff to write 7 days a week. Randy's schedule just gives him 3. Even most of the popular webcomics tend to be daily, if only on weekdays (C&H, Qwantz, Overcompensating, the Natalie Dee and Drew comics, Chainsawsuit, SMBC). That's still more per week than xkcd.

True, some comics publish only once a week - but these (Subnormality, Truck Bearing Kibble when it existed, PBF when it existed) tended to feature pretty complicated art - so at least the artist had to do a lot more work, per week, and you got a much more visually appealing end result. xkcd: not so much.

Even the updates-when-possible comics (Achewood, Kate Beaton) are much longer and have more interesting visuals than xkcd.


But the bigger issue isn't the timing. It's that thematically, Randall has no limits. He has exactly two recurring characters, and they don't even recur that often. He has no particular amount of space he must fill - they can range from tiny to huge. He has no limitation on what he can or can't represent (unlike newspaper comics which probably can't, for example, use the phrase "gosh-darned cunt" or show stick figures having sex and get away with it). Sure, xkcd claims to be about math, romance, sarcasm, and language, but there are tons of examples that have none of those.

For example: If Ryan North, sometime around his 1400th comic, made a crappy comic, I can forgive him. His limitations - self-imposed, but an integral part of his comic - are tough: six panels, only three on-screen characters, a fixed amount of space. Same with Achewood: He's got some well developed characters, but he has to use them. Kate Beaton: She always draws historical stuff in her own completely charming way.

Randy...has none of this. So given that he can write anything he damn wants, I expect a little more. Achewood can't have a long buildup to a painful pun. Moe can't just comment on Final Fantasy VII. Cyanide and Happiness never has subtlety. But xkcd can have all this, and basically anything else. He has no limitations - so it's especially lame when he can't think of anything funny.

Of course, Oscar Wilde might say that this explains xkcd's problems - he wrote that "the absence of limitation is the enemy of art," meaning that by giving yourself totally free reign, you take away the meaning or interest of anything you might produce. Perhaps one way Randall could try to improve would be to limit himself in one of the ways I've mentioned.