Comic 856: An Affront To Reality

[I was just burning incense at my shrine to Megan, picturing her naked flesh (as lovingly depicted in 631) being penetrated by Randall's member (sadly not depicted in 631), when suddenly an angel appeared and was all like, "hey, you have an email." It was from some poor, naive creature called "Suiseiseki" or some shit. I think maybe it's a guest post? I have no idea, I always do what I'm told when I'm on my vision quests. -Ed.]

I will begin by saying that I have never been as filled with hate for xkcd as I currently am. Comic 856 is, as far as I can remember, the worst of Randall’s work, with the few obvious exceptions (the vagina thing and the Mr. Hat sighing thing…). This comic fails in so many places…and yet, should all of these things be fixed, 856 might have forced at least a smile from me, instead of receiving the cold, dead eyes of scorn that I gazed upon my screen with. (I would not have done more than smile…the joke was pretty bad. I have low standards, just like Randall.)

I’ll start with the bad things, because that’s what you guys like I guess, and because you’ll stop reading this like halfway through or something.

First, the reader is assaulted by this:



What the fuck, Randall? You could have shrunk the font size down to make it fit in that second panel. You could have shortened the text. You could have done anything, ANYTHING but that. I had to look at that three times in order to understand what the fuck was going on. This is just...retarded. This alone would have fucked up this comic to the point that one could reasonably write an angry rant about it. It wouldn't be terribly long, but it would be an angry rant.

Second, this other shit:



That asterisk should have gone at the end of that sentence. When someone sees an asterisk, they want to figure out what the fuck that asterisk points to, damnit. I, being me, stopped reading the sentence, read what the asterisk said, went back up to the sentence and got lost. With most audiences, this wouldn’t be a massive issue. However, Randall’s audience is typically a bit autistic, so this serves only to confuse the machine that these people’s brains are. A mistake like this is kind of meh with most audiences: with people who will probably smash the screen when they get confused, this is a fatal error. Don't do this shit, Randall: You know your audience better than that.

Now that I’m done bitching about the way in which 856 is formatted, I can begin bitching about the ways in which 856 fails in essence.

First, who the fuck is that guy? He’s obviously not a loving father or anything; he seems to support bashing the kid’s brains in with a brick. Nor is he a Doctor; he doesn’t know what the hell Dr. Megan’s talking about when she plans to reprogram the girl’s brain. He doesn’t fit in the comic at all. He’s just…there. Seriously, take him out of the comic, erase his lines, and modify Megan’s text just a little. The comic works JUST AS WELL.

Second, Randall seems to have forgotten a punchline. It exists, I could underline it…It’s even the last line, so there isn’t any “post-punchline dialogue.” However, it is so utterly lame that it seems like there isn’t even a punchline. The essence of it is, “I’m going to kill this kid with a brick because she’s so annoying.” That’s all. There’s no punch to it. It just…sucks.

Now, in order to be "fair and balanced" like faux n00z, I should point out the things that Randall has done well. Feel free to stop reading here: you probably don’t care about anything past this line.

First, Randall seems to be trying to do the “Show, don’t tell” thing. This would have been reasonably effective had the joke not been lame. He even took the time to draw the annoying girl with curly hair, a diagram that shows roughly what is going on in the girl’s brain, a machine that looks like it does what Randall says it does, the girl waking up…There is clearly an amount of effort going on here. He could have draw the girl getting laz0red or something, but still, he definitely deserves credit for trying.

Second, he captures the essence of these annoying little bastards reasonably well. If you’ve not yet had the misfortune of dealing with one of these people…let’s just say, it isn’t nice. They’re annoying, unfunny, and they make you want to…well, get a brick. The XXDDDD SO RANDUM crowd deserves this type of depiction, and thankfully, they get it. Sadly, they get it from Randall.

That’s all. Seeing as this is an actual review, there’ll be a few of you who really enjoy reading this, despite the fact that it isn’t incredifunny. Yeah, I’ve probably missed a fuckton of cheap shots (I haven’t slammed Randall for making Megan significantly smarter than him, for example.) But, whatever. Enjoy reading Rob laugh at Randall for having a small dick and assburgers and creepy and gay fanfiction and stuff next time.

[One thing I'd like to point out, fundie that I am: note that Randy is asserting that obsession with Jesus is a form of brain damage. Just throwing that out there. -Ed.]