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.'"

Comments

Munroe Wins

[bshell]

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.

Re:Munroe Wins

[orkybash]

Excuse me, please tell me how "Scientist + alchohol = string theory" is funnier than "hyperbondage." Maybe if it had been a pot joke instead...

Re:Munroe Wins

[phantomfive]

Pretty simple......show both comics to 10 random people on the street......which do you think will get the most laughs?

They are both funny, the only difference is the target audience. We happen to be the target audience of xkcd, and that is why Munroe is famous on slashdot and Katz is a cartoonist for the New Yorker.

Re:Munroe Wins

[cultofmetatron]

learn or at least become familiar with lisp, game theory and take physics 101 (specifically vector diagrams), program in python and c, look at perl, watch all of starwars, and you will understand 100% of it... or go insane

Re:Three-fourths Autobiographical?

[riceboy50]

Thank you Capt. Obvious! It's not as funny if you have to call attention to the joke.

Katz vs Munroe?

[fishinatree]

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.

Re:Katz vs Munroe?

[gad_zuki!]

Humor needs to be esoteric. There needs to be a pause between seeing the joke and getting the joke.

Katz's work is painfully obvious and looks like something out of a "cartooning 101" workshop. A drunk scientist? A cow biting itself? Those are hackneyed jokes!

My understanding is that the new yorker has this reputation for cartoons so bad that the audience has learned to love their badness. Well, theyre still terrible to me.

Re:That's cartooning?

[Broken scope]

You do realize that xkcd has never been about the art, and its author has never claimed it was?

Re:It's a tie.

[m.ducharme]

Munroe's elderly comic makes GREAT sense, but you have to get the in-joke. Have you seen the comic captioned "on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog"? And if so, what magazine do you think it first appeared in? I thought it was the best one of all of them, with so many delicious levels of irony and meta-references.