Ok. I have mixed feelings on this one. On the one hand, it's nice that Randall is actually finishing the story he began. This is nice. And it makes yesterday's comic a little less pathetic. Of course, it also makes yesterday's comic completely unneeded - it would have worked fine as the first panel of this one.I have a question: If you parked in front of someone's house, perhaps wearing an iconic black hat, and noticed mines all around the car, and you picked them up and moved them to the garage, and then you went inside, and then there was an explosion, would you really ask "what was that?!" Or would you, you know, know what the explosion was? Because you just put mines in a garage?
Lastly, I found this comic extremely reminiscent of the old Mad Magazine Spy vs. Spy comics:
Also - when did Mr. Hat go from being lovably sarcastic to blowing up people's garages? He's kind of a terrorist now.
"What was that? I ask not for my own knowledge, but for the reader."
ReplyDeleteThat's some lazy writing.
Not to mention: both characters decide that they're in a relationship after getting through ten words of a wooing monologue?
Oh, you know kids these days. They are so casual about their relationships.
ReplyDeleteBesides, didn't both characters know this was going to happen ever since Journal 2? Or at least Journal 3?
It could've been a habitual thing.
ReplyDeleteKind of like how many people automatically ask, "How are you?" or "What's up?" when they already know the answer or don't care.
This is possible. Still, the scratching-of-head seems to indicate genuine confusion. Mr. Hat doesn't seem like the kind of person who would say unneeded things.
ReplyDeleteI just found this excellent blog tonight, and wanted to thank you for doing this. I'd been a fan of XKCD for months, then felt like something was off somehow, and not in the geeky references (the CS jokes were clear enough, and I don't even program).
ReplyDeleteThen I learned what white-knighting is, and the despising grew from there. But it's also not a horrible comic, so I still check in on it for the wittier days.
YOU, sir, please keep calling the comic out for its worse days. Thank you very much.
Thank you for the encouragement. You can always spread the word about this blog if you want, but as it is just commenting is pretty encouraging.
ReplyDeleteI think there are a lot of people who used to like xkcd more and are annoyed at it now, enough so that I know it's not just me. I think are are a greater number who used to like xkcd and are pretending to still like it or forcing themselves to because it's popular, among the right crowds.
It was just lazy writing to have Mr. Hat ask "what was that?" A much better line would have been, "I didn't have a chance to mention, I put your remote mines away." The next panel would need changing, obviously, but the rest would then work as-is, and keep Mr. Hat from seeming quite so clueless.
ReplyDelete