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XKCD Invited To New Yorker "Cartoon-Off"
UnknowingFool writes "Farley Katz, who draws for New Yorker magazine, ran into xkcd.com's Randall Munroe in a grocery store. He challenged Munroe to a cartoon-off — each cartoonist to produce drawings about the Internet as envisioned by the elderly, String Theory, 1999, and one's favorite animal eating one's favorite food. In the ensuing short interview, Munroe describes XKCD as 'a webcomic about stick figures who do math, play with staple guns, mess around on the Internet, and have lots of sex. It's about three-fourths autobiographical.'"
I sucked CmdrTaco's 2 inch penis for a nickel last night!
hyperbondage
I would love to see fatality
"Steve Jobs invented the world" -- Bill W. GATES
Munroe was the clear winner. 1999 *BC* was just dumb, as were most of Katz's others. The only lame one of Munroe's was the strange skateboard thing. Somewhat off topic, though it gets points for originality.
So does that mean Munroe does math, plays with staple guns, and messes around on the Internet?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Munroe wins hands down, his comics have humour, are original and many of them even contain some strange deeper meaning.
Katz' comics are.. well.. not even funny.
Meh, neither one of them really made me laugh, though the hyperbondage one made me giggle a little.
It's hard to spontaneously be funny about something specific at any given time. Well, unless you're Robin Williams, in which case it's easy. But you get my point. I don't think that improvisation is either one of their strong suit, but given some time to let something come to them, and the freedom to draw about whatever neurons happen to be firing in their brain at the time... That's when the funny happens. (As witnessed by the copies of xkcd hanging on my cube wall, to the delightful reaction of people walking by, staring for a few seconds, and saying, "huh?")
Improvisational comedy can be hilarious. Improvisational comic-drawing, not so much, at least by these artists.
The one drawing showing the internet as envisioned by the elderly was hilarious.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Check out today's comic on xkcd. There is a slashdot reference on the mouseover.
I don't know what's scarier, that Katz's cow drawing has too many nipples - or that I noticed the discrepancy...
Growing popularity and infamy... xkcd has been my secret... when I need a laugh, all I have to do is push that 'random' button and life is transformed to the surreal for a few seconds. It's been like a personal 'hyperspace' button. Now, just another meme. sigh
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I sincerely hope the expression "Pulled a Palin" becomes part of the vernacular.
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
While XKCD is my favorite webcomic that I've been following for quite a long time, I have to admit that Munroe's humor lies more in his ability to crack inside jokes with the nerd in all of us. Katz tries to appeal to the more general public (it's his job at the New Yorker). I think Munroe is funnier, especially here, but his esoteric humor might lose some votes.
I take it Monroe doesn't like staple guns.
So in real life they just do math, play with staple guns and mess around on the Internet.
hyperownage
What's the deal with the pig at the complaint department saying "I wish I were taller"?
#DeleteChrome
My first thought after seeing the Katz's comic about elderly and the internet was: "oh, did I click at Indexed bookmark accidentally?"
!sig
You do realize that xkcd has never been about the art, and its author has never claimed it was?
You mad
Not news. We already know xkcd is funny and the New Yorker isn't. Dinosaurs in 1999 B.C.? Is this guy some kind of unfunny creationist?
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
I'm a huge XKCD fan, but out of these 8 strips, it might be a reach to call 2 funny. I think they both failed.
What I'd have preferred instead of arbitrary subjects that intrinsically aren't funny, is for them to play off each other. One writes a comic of their choosing that fits within their comic idiom. The next plays directly off that comic trying to top if, within their idiom.
The back and forth would likely be much better.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
The Internet, as envisioned by the elderly. KATZ
String Theory. MUNROE
1999. MUNROE
Your favorite animal eating your favorite food. KATZ
Katz cheated on 1999 and Munroe cheated on animal eating.
Munroe's elderly comic makes no sense. Katz actually pulls an XKCD-like description with the Venn Diagrams.
Finally, both string theory entries were funny (Katz more understandably so) but Munroe's entry was more original.
Thus, a tie.
Anyone who thinks different can suck my cock.
We sincerely appreciate you translating that joke for us. None of us here, I'm certain, would've gotten it if it were not for your blinding insight.
On behalf of the Slashdot community, thank you for sharing your wisdom and erudition with us.
NOW YOU'LL - UH...
HA!
AND HERE... I THOUGHT... YOU'D KEEP IT...
HEY!
INTERESTING?
OH I CAN DO THAT.
SMAK!
I'm not sure that makes any more sense with all the fancy graphics and shaded colors. Maybe it makes more sense to 14 year olds... and yes, I know the Nagle Algorithm.
-metric
It's disturbing that all you have to do to turn me on is draw a stick figure and put long hair on it.
I wonder what the minimum figure is that could still accomplish this.
Umm, you are aware that "99.99999% more" roughly means "slightly less than twice as much", right? As in, he reads 199.99999% as much XKCD as he does NYT.
!hyberbondage
or
knot hyberbondage
as the case may be...
Hey now, Girl Genius is AWESOME. But...it's storyline-based. At the moment, they're having a fake fight to stir up a mob so they can storm the castle properly. A fake fight with intelligent-sounding dialogue would just be ... odd.
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
This is actually redundant but it was rewarded with "Funny" because it implies that Monroe has lots of sex. You guys like Monroe and heaven forbid if you could separate the moderation guidelines from your personal feelings. Therefore, this is complimentary of Monroe and gets modded up. I made a very similar post that, while intended to be humorous, could have been taken as derogatory of Monroe since it suggested that the three-fourths part did not include sex, so I get modded down into oblivion. That's alright; to be honest, in hindsight, I don't think my own post was any good and it probably deserves the moderation it received. However, this post is a carbon copy of mine and was modded up. I contend that either they are both funny or they are both redundant.
The reason why I complain about the mods from time to time is because the moderation guidelines are well-written and easy to understand, yet I never see any consistency. It seems like there's always a matter of fanboy-ism that reduces moderation to a matter of popularity (in this case, Monroe's popularity). For an unrelated example, did you know that if someone does a good deal of research, shares his findings, and explains why he came to the conclusion that he did, that he deserves an Informative mod even if you hate his fucking guts and can't stand any of his opinions? That if you want to tell him how much you hate and disagree with him, the way to do it is by posting a response and not by abusing the moderation system? I'm just not seeing that kind of maturity and that's a shame, as Slashdot is one of the few places where it could be possible.
Do I give a shit about a few points when I have more than enough karma to burn? Not really. Do I give a shit about the rampant, childish, nothing-exists-beyond-my-personal-feelings knee-jerk type of attitude that I am seeing more and more often? Yes, that one does bother me, for it tells me that the culture (be it a Web site or a nation) is heading in the wrong direction.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Tintin is a 10? Are you insane?
That said: Girl Genius Online is a 9? Megatokyo is an 8? Are you insane?
Now, I actually like Girl Genius's art, but the fact is that Phil Foglio's grasp of anatomy is shaky at best. He tends to lose sight of proportions, his heads don't act like heads actually do, and speaking of heads, 9/10 of his characters are microcephalic gorillas. It's *pretty*, but it's not a 9. It's nowhere near a 9.
Megatokyo has fantastic architecture. Meanwhile, every single character apparently suffers from Down's Syndrome. I'm serious. Look at the eyes. You don't have eyes that widely spread without an extra chromosome. Also, despite N billion years on the internet, he still doesn't have the concept of "backgrounds" down, and he doesn't even understand what "lighting" is (unless it's on a building, he gets buildings just fine.)
Penny Arcade is cartoony, but it's competent.
XKCD does a surprisingly good job of expression emotion in stick figures, but, I mean, it's stick figures.
I'd call PA a 7, GGO a 5, and Megatokyo and XKCD both 3's (because XKCD tries for very little and succeeds with flying colors, and Megatokyo tries for a lot and faceplants in the mud.) Tintin . . . man, I don't know. Can you even get less imaginative?
I guess I'll call it a 5. At least he has anatomy down.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
Anyway, step back, I voted republican. We cool now?
Sure. As long as that's past tense, previous to 2000, or doesn't apply to the office of the Presidency.
Otherwise... no.
Tweet, tweet.
One of the things that makes xkcd funny is the alt-text... I missed having that here.
Sort of like National Lampoon without the funny.
So, it's exactly like National Lampoon?
Anyway, you do realize that you are complaining about the artistic merits of a comic done in stick-figures?
sic transit gloria mundi
You're judging on eye-candy. XKCD is brain-candy.
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
I found the cow one funny but not any of the other entries. I guess I just don't enjoy jokes about S&M or indignant nerds.
I don't know why people like Shakespeare, he used awful fonts.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
Did anyone go to the New Yorker's Cartoon Lounge and read the interview? The interviewer's questions read like he was on crack and was desperately trying to be funny. He failed. I guess it reminded me why I don't read the New Yorker.
You do realize that xkcd has never been about the art, and its author has never claimed it was?
Er... apart from some of the earlier ones on xkcd.com which (unless I'm missing some really subtle joke) are just art.
Anyway, methinks there's a lot more skill in those "crude" stick figures than some people realise. Look at the poses of the figures in the "1999" one, for example: as far as getting the picture to tell the story he's nailed it. Those stick people have personality.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
All cows have too many nipples, based on my assumption that two nipples is the ideal number. :)
I guess you haven't seen the bordello scene in "Total Recall".
In Megatokyo everyone has the same lackluster expression. It's creepy.
IN THIS THREAD: More proof that humor is subjective!
(rot13) rpbzbab@tznvy.pbz