Comic 717: Inspector Hilarious

Hey dummies, it's person #1 here guest postin' about a certain webcomic we all know about. First and foremost, I would like to mention that rob is a huge fatass and carl is a meanie. Now that I have insulted y'all, let's get to the comic.



Funny story, actually. Quite recently I told a friend of mine how and why xkcd was going downhill and how it was white-knight-esque pseudo-feminist. That was one day before he came out with 714. I was so happy the moment I read that strip, because of the i-told-you-so routine that was coming my friend's way soon. He ended up greeting me with "Damnit, person. You might be right." that day. Great fun.
Anyway, the reason I am telling this story is that today he was actually the one that lead me to read the strip when I did. He MSN'd me today saying "Son of a bitch", "Why must you ruin things for me.". I like to imagine he put a period instead of a question mark because he knows how much I like making people, specifically him, suffer. He also thought the author of xkcd was named "Rupert Murdock", which is actually kind of a badass name.

But my actual point was that keeping these words in mind, I went to the comic. It's hard not to be biased when you're writing a hate blog, it's even harder if your friend tells you something is shit ahead of time - but it's not even that. I looked at the comic. I read it, went back to him, said "I don't get it", went back to the comic, read it again, and asked him "wait, is this actually the joke? Inspector Gadget has a lot of crazy shit 'under his belt'? That's it? That was a joke in the show too, Randall just made it dirty". Ok that may be paraphrased to insert that hilarious pun.
But yes, that is it, my friend confusedly reassured me. Huh. Well. That's not funny.

I'm going to go more in-depth on the actual joke, but I wanna talk about something else first



That doesn't really look like inspector gadget. a big part about inspector gadget was not only his goofy behaviour, but also his looks. Notice that if you take away the face and the hair, you aren't left with much of his original personality or charme. Could randall possibly have picked a more retarded choice in terms of his comic gimmick? The point of a comic is that you don't spell everything out, you show it. Your characters not having faces does not make this easier. Randall did kind of a good job at making him look around and showing that no one is there, but only considering the arbitrary restriction he set himself.



The point of that is not to prove that I'm a shitty artist, my point is that faces bring a whole new atmosphere to the comic, and allow randall to express himself better. But since you will all just bitch at me that this is his style (this is a criticism of exactly that, by the way - his style) and that it's just something I have to accept, let's move on.
I'm not done with the art, though. Why is he shown so far away in the last two panels? There's no walls, no anything. It makes you think he shrinked. Randall, we're not asking you to draw us an oil panting in the background of your comics, but please, at least draw a line that shows us that your characters are not constantly in limbo. Also, I get that you want to show that he's alone, but too small. You have to realize that since you've drawn nothing, the borders of the panel are the first possible boundary of the room. What this means is that Gadget is standing in a hugeass room (both in height and width). The fact that it is empty is usually not a big deal since your stick figures are closeup, and their surroundings are unimportant - in this part however it plays a big role since the idea is that inspector gadget is all alone, but alive. You're getting one of these points accross.
ALSO, what's up with his arms not being down? That's weird, man. He probably realized he drew him too small to pull that off. So that makes it two points for bigger inspector.



Doesn't that look far less distracting and better than xkcd's version? Yes it does, shut up. Where's YOUR criticism of xkcd? What gives YOU the right to criticize my criticism?

Well, that leaves one thing. The humor. Sigh. Here's the thing, Inspector gadget was meant to be entertaining, and the fact that he had whatever the fuck seemed convenient in his hat was a joke of the show. What randall did was essentially a conversation I imagine some high schoolers are having somewhere right now. "Dude! What if Inspector Gadget had like naked chicks in his hat so he can look at them whenever he wants" "THAT IS AWESOME! HIGH FIVE! I wish I had naked chicks in my hat, man. Inspector Gadget ROCKS". We've established that it's a joke of the show, so what did Randall do? He took something that didn't belong (as it was a children's show) and mixed it with an unfitting concept. Actually, it's not like he showed an emo kid taking care of orphans, he just took something innocent and made it dirty. Rule 34, basically. Except it's not really very imaginative or funny. Hell, even if we completely ignore the bluntness of the joke, he still just showed a dude talking. It's not he even made an effort to at least surprise the reader through action (Maybe by inspector gadget pulling a dildo out of his hat or some shit. It still wouldn't be funny, but it'd at least be a little more creative than just saying something stupid.)

And then we have the alt text. A 2girls1cup joke? Really? Again? Actually, not joke. Just reference. The difference is that he thinks he can get away with just mentioning something, instead of deriving humor from it. LAME.

But enough about the comic, let's see what the forumites have to say

"go go gadget decaying comic"

"...Well congratulations, you've made Inspector Gadget unfunny and disturbing. I didn't even think that was possible. Go go gadget anti-comic!

It's like anti-hero, you see, except not at all interesting. And gone gone gadget repetitive lame joke intro phrase."

This, basically. While half of the forumites thought it would be hilarious to just say "go go gadget" and then a vague reference to the comic or anything really (implicitly giving randall credit for saying something unusual after go go gadget), a lot of them were also disappointed with the comic. Understandable.

"Just gonna say, xkcd been going downhill recently. Maybe it's just me, but it has a really different feel to it..."

"Point of order: "Lesbians doing it" is an event or possibly fantasy, not a "gadget."

A video camera and cup would be a pair of gadgets, but I don't think they ever appeared in the cartoon. (Binoculars may come in handy if his legs go off instead)."

This guy is funnier than the comic. That's really not saying much, though.

"Funny comic, awful (but predictable) mouseover."

I'm slightly uneasy about both the fact that he liked the comic and that he PREDICTED a 2girls1cup joke at the mere mention of lesbian sex. Poor guy.

"Go go gadget people getting butthurt over a difference of opinion on what is/isn't funny"

I like how this guy calls a bunch of people who just said they didn't like the comic or that xkcd was getting worse butthurt, because he was getting "butthurt" over a bunch of people not liking his awesome favorite webcomic. I'm guessing he doesn't know about this site.