Comic 786: Lost In Space

[alt: I'm just worried that we'll all leave and you won't get to come along!]

I am very tempted to go the xkcdexplained route here and just write the following analysis and nothing else:

"Mr. Beret is excited because of science. His enthusiasm is lost on a sleepy man."

Alas, my nature compels me to elaborate.

I guess the fun in this comic is supposed to come from his child-like enthusiasm - a common enough theme in xkcd. Often it seems to be set up in way which, like in the comic above, the message is that those who do not have childlike glee are missing out on something and the childlike person is happier and better than the other. They nearly all feel like ripoffs of Calvin and Hobbes, which perhaps was able to get away with this by having its childlike excitement come from an actual child.

I suppose another feature of this comic that is meant to be positive is that he is excited about science in the abstract, and not in any way that will affect him (note the "in a few generations" line). Are we supposed to feel the same way? I hope not. Future scientific discoveries are not always those which people expected several generations earlier, and some things, like travel to another planet with intelligent life, seems too remote to even consider getting excited about.

We are left to conclude that Mr. Beret is a figure to be laughed at for his naiveté. I guess that is starting to be a somewhat defining characteristic for him (finally!) - he is dumb and/or enthusiastic. I am guessing we'll have a few more of these comics which will get very boring very suddenly. Dumb people can be lots of fun but the "I am excited about silly things" trope is rather narrow.

Lastly, the ending to this comic is atrocious, with a print-comicesque line from the sleeping guy and a nonsensical response from Mr. Beret. All of it constitutes post-punchline dialog.

Book Review: "Overcompensating: A Dangerous Obsession" by Jeffrey Rowland

I'm a big fan of Jeffrey Rowland's surreal diary comic Overcompensating. It took me a while to read through the archives when I first started, but I thought it was worth it, especially since I think it's gotten better as it goes along. Like Achewood, I think Overcompensating has a wonderful way of using language - even if most of the time it's Weedmaster P calling someone a dick ass in a new and fun way. Rowland is able to write dialect in a way that still feels authentic - that's really difficult to do. But when you read the characters in Overcompensating, they sound like real people.

I also like the fact that his characters will be wearing shirts that change text randomly or they will all be wearing costumes, and no one will comment on this.

None of that is particularly relevant here, I just want to establish that I like Overcompensating a lot, and have high hopes for Mr. Rowland's future both with his comic and with the TopatoCo empire he has forged with his own robot arms.

Point being, when I heard he was making an Overcompensating book, I was very excited. Then I thought to myself, "why did this take so long? he has about 6 years of archives - he could have released a book years ago." Then I went back to being excited.

Thanks to David Malki, I got myself a copy of the book (THANKS DAVID MALKI!) and then proceeded to wait several weeks before writing a review, because I was lazy. But also because I realized the review was going to be very long. For example, we are several paragraphs in and I have still told you nothing about the Overcompensating Book except that it is a book.

Here's the deal with the book: I was disappointed. Some of this was the fact that this book, being Volume I, was full of the early comics - from the first (a classic example of forcing a bad punchline on a not-as-bad comic) to the one where Jeffrey moves from Oklahoma to Massachusetts. The fact is, they aren't great comics - yet. The later comics are better. It roughly corresponds to the quality of the art - which has a flat, far more cartoonish look to it at the beginning. It's also true that putting the comic into black and white takes away some of the energy and fun of the full color comics. I recognize that color printing would seriously increase the cost of the book, but it's also true that it would increase the quality of the final work. Would it be worth it? I don't know - I don't know what the costs would be.

But my real problem is this: The comics themselves are overrun with extra text. Here - I'll show you the image they have on the product description page:

See what I mean? Each comic (or almost all, at least) has a huge amount of text next to it, and I'd say a reader would have to spend about three or four times as much time on the text as on the comic itself.

Now, I realize that this is the exact opposite of the criticism I had for Kate Beaton's Never Learn Anything From History. In that case, I wrote that I was disappointed by how little she wrote about her comics. Nonetheless, I feel like I'm justified here - the problem with A Dangerous Obsession isn't so much the amount of text - though really, it's pretty crazy - it's that it's not all that interesting or relevant. It's mostly just random conspiracy theories of the sort that are occasionally funny in very small doses but are present here by the dozen. The stories just get boring after a while, and distract from the comic - especially when they are physically breaking up the comic itself, as in the left-most example in the image above. At some point I just wanted Rowland to leave his comics alone and let me read them, and not interrupt to tell me about the original version of Ghostbusters and how it was a documentary that made viewers go mad. I think a good example of the right balance to strike - both in tone and quantity - was the way Chris Onstad did it in the Achewood book.

All that said, the quality of Overcompensating: A Dangerous Obsession is made to look far better when compared with the atrocious introduction by one "Andrew W. K." The introduction actually goes for the middle school trick of "I don't know what to write about so I am going to write this introduction about writing this introduction." Mr. W. K. comes off as a huge tool here and in his other portrayals in the comic, and I hope to never have to deal with him again.

Also, just a caveat emptor sort of thing here: there is a picture of Rowland's horrible spider bite necrosis, and it is towards the beginning, and it is not as bad in black and white.

Final grade: C+. It pains me to write it, and I still love the comic - but for now, I'd say to stick with the online version. forgive me jeffrey.

Overcompensating: A Dangerous Obsession is 192 pages, softcover, black and white, and includes the story "Crisis on Infinite Butter Dimensions." It costs $14.

Comic 785: Sit Down

[Alt: Ever notice how the more successful observational comics become, the more their jokes focus on flying and hotels?]

Ugh. What a sad little comic on which to end my week of guest posting. Here we have what open mic night would be like in the wacky world of xkcd. Each panel serves as its own little mini-joke, and the alt-text is an observational joke about observational comics. Hee hee! How meta!

None of these jokes are particularly amusing. The first panel is essentially "lol, aphasics can't speak correctly." As much as I love making fun of people with disabilities, just pointing out that they're incapable of doing something isn't enough to make a joke for me. YMMV.

The second panel is the evil Mr. Hat. He launches into a joke that one expects to be a typical "yo momma so fat" snap, but ends up being what I assume is supposed to be a biting insult about how yo momma wishes she never had you. Oh, how you cut to the core of me, Mr. Hat. I liked you a lot better when you were cutting improperly parked cars in half. At least then you were moderately clever.

The third panel is... OMG OMG OMG A COMPUTER SCIENCE REFERENCE *nerdgasm* Okay, now I need to go smoke a cigarette. Well, except that it's not exactly an accurate reference to a quine, but that's only something a super pedantic Aspie would say, right? B- for effort, I guess.

The last panel is Mr. Beret saying something idiotic that I guess is supposed to be something wacky and out-there. Oh, Mr. Beret, I liked you a lot better when you were giving woodpeckers power drills. At least then you were somewhat cute.

Hey, ever notice how the more successful nerd comics get, the more their jokes reference a shoehorned compsci concept?

Anyway, thanks for tolerating my presence this week. I wish I could have finished on a much higher note, but this comic was seriously the textbook definition of "meh."

Lots of love,
aloria.

Comic 784: Just Take a Dirt Nap

[Alt: Sweet unintersecting dreams!]

It appears that poor Randall is having some trouble with his love life. Either he has been participating in some unhappy relationships, or, like me, has been out of the love game so long that he has become bitter and disenchanted with the concept of romance. Contrast recent strips like 770 and today’s with the sappy shit he used to produce. For example, take this strip , which is so glurgy and saccharine that I just vomited a rainbow.

Given my (and many of you guys’) distaste for xkcd’s usual tack of “look how quirky and sweet our relationship is, aren’t we just the cutest couple on earth” crap, you’d think this sort of thing would be a welcome change. It isn’t. The whole “look how bitter and jaded I am” thing is just as bad as the quirky love thing; they’re just flip sides of a coin forged of pretension. So you’re sleeping with a girl you can’t stand, so much so that you huddle on the edge of the bed? Tough cookies. Kick her to the curb, or quit your bitching.

Aside from the whiny little bitch vibe this comic gives off, it fails on a few other levels. Part of xkcd’s draw has always been relatability; as much as we mock the whole “GOOMH” thing, fans seeing a bit of themselves or their lives in a strip contributes highly to its appeal. Even ignoring the “nerds don’t get laid” stereotype, do you really see a lot of fans going “GOOMH, I shared a bed with someone I hate, too!” Even if it’s a common occurrence, which I doubt, people generally don’t like thinking about uncomfortable situations. It’s an awkward reminder, especially when coming from xkcd, which tends to be pretty light and whimsical. It’s like reading Blondie and being reminded of the time your drunk uncle exposed himself at the family reunion.

The second issue is that it isn’t immediately apparent what is going on here. Of course, initially thinking they’re in love and then realizing they’re not was Randall’s intent, but until you really scrutinize the last panel, it doesn’t hit you right away. Slowly figuring out the punchline is fine when the eventual realization is really mindblowing. Here, the payoff is just some weepy emo shit, so the fact that it doesn’t “pop” makes for a really lackluster conclusion.

Third, as many have pointed out, this is totally an A Softer World rip-off.

Guest Review: "Questionable Content"

many months ago, Ann Apolis decide to wade into dangerous waters by reading the archives of Questionable Content by Jeph Jacques. The content proved so questionable that she had to divide her review into multiple parts. Here is part one. I have never read QC so I absolve myself of all responsibility for the accuracy of this post. Enjoy --Carl

Hello, compatriots! My name is Ann Apolis, medical doctor and doctor of humour, able to observe comedy with the detached air that comes of living in Actual England instead of New England.

It so happens that one day on the #xkcd-sucks IRC channel Kirk suggested (nay, demanded) that I read the webcomic Questionable Content. And I did. And, mindful of the common criticism of this blog ("Why do you spend all your time whining about xkcd when there are worse things in the world, like genocide and war and Questionable Content?") I decided to write up my experience for Carl 'Ugly' Wheeler to display on his popular pictoblag.

So.

---

Here is a song. It's "Lady in Red" by Chris de Burgh. Go listen to it.

Did you like it? Of course you didn't, it's "Lady in Red" by Chris de Burgh: reheated cabbage with a dodgy backing track that would elicit sneers at the Eurovision Song Contest. I hate it. And yet... and yet I rather enjoy listening to it, because its utter detestability fails to outweigh how pleasurable it is detest it, what joy there is in mocking every facet of its carefully constructed awfulness.

And it was much the same emotion that got me through reading the first 507 strips of Questionable Content. There is a lot to mock.

I shall go easy on the art; it is only the first 507 strips after all (looking at the latest ones it seems to improve a lot) and given that it's a webcomic on the internet nitpicking the art seems petty; suffice to say, the canonically fat Faye doesn't look particularly fat and the canonically well-endowed Faye doesn't really look bigger than the other two ["Ann Apolis, why are you staring at boobs on the Internet?" "It's research for an article!"]. But as I said, picking on the art is a little unfair.

Picking on the writing isn't. Again I imagine it probably improves (or at the very least changes) over time, but the writing in these strips is pretty bad. For one thing, Faye (who is over this period of time pretty much The Main Character - Marten exists to facilitate plot and conversations with Faye) is kind of a jerk. She punches people a lot and is generally rather nasty. (Aside: I can't find it cos there's no search function, but there's also that comic where she punches the dude in the music shop for being judgmental about other people's taste in music. Despite the fact that QC seems to be The Official Webcomic Of Being Judgmental About Other People's Taste In Music: uno, dos, tres...) And I don't like media where the main character is a jerk because I don't like hanging around with jerks, even if they're meant to be jerks (and Faye is meant to be a jerk, and Jeff has crafted her very well as a jerk).

Thankfully (SPOILERZ) she does get called on it, although (EVEN MORE SPOILERZ) she gets given a Freudian Excuse for it later on, and I can't really tell whether her character changed in the long-term, because I'VE ONLY READ UP TO STRIP 507 jesus people.

Characters are all yer generic wisecracker, pretty interchangeable as long as you're careful. One particularly annoying tic with the writing is the attempt to make every joke a Brilliant Social Observation, and the result is that the girls all say things like "Remember that all girls like going to the park!" and the boys say "Ah but as a boy I want to get into your pants" and then someone will say "Indie rockers [like us!]; why are we so obsessed with", er, I dunno, "indie rock", and it all devolves into that awful As You Know stuff. And it does happen. All the bleeding time.

What else? Oh yeah, there's that strip (again I can't find it) where Dora the goth comes out of her house wearing a pink shirt and you think "OH WELL THAT'S NOT A METAPHOR FOR HOW SHE'S ABANDONING GOTHHOOD AT ALL" and it's a bit clunky and obvious to be frank (although maybe this is just my superior literary ability ruining things for me).

Wow, some of the guest strips are pretty harsh (I include the last one only because of panel one).

Nice things! Let me say some nice things. Well the art is sure as hell better than some comics I could name (hint: look at the blog name!), and for someone who's admitted to using copy-and-paste sometimes he sure manages to conceal it well. Also Jeff usually tries to make humour flow from the conversation rather than shoehorning a punchline in somewhere. That's commendable. Marten is actually quite a good character, really; he works as Punchline Vehicle #3, as a sort of blank slate character for the action to revolve around, and it's also pretty easy to get a handle on who he is.

Why did I only read up to strip 507? Well (SPOILERZ) it drops a pretty big drama bomb so that seemed like a good time to stop. Also I suspect it changes quite a bit after that strip so it was best if I got my insights on strips 1-507 done before thinking about the rest.

Right, I think that's everything. There we are then, Questionable Content: a webcomic of indie snobbery, jerks, "as you know..."s and bewbs. Do your worst, Internet.

P.S. I am myself an indie snob so don't be all "well maybe you'd appreciate it if you had actually heard of The Arcade Fire".