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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.'"
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.
Thank you Capt. Obvious! It's not as funny if you have to call attention to the joke.
~ I am logged on, therefore I am.
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.
Thank you Capt. Obvious! It's not as funny if you have to call attention to the joke.
I appreciate that. Being merely Sergeant Obvious was really getting old. Nothing but work, work, work.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
mis-moderated, sorry
I don't know what's scarier, that Katz's cow drawing has too many nipples - or that I noticed the discrepancy...
True, but none of the new yorker's comments are *ever* funny. Katz gets some credit for knowing his audience. That in mind, I thought Munroe's last comic (without the text blurb) belonged in the New Yorker more than any of the other submissions. I call a draw. (Though I'd rather, and do read XKCD 99.99999% more than TNY).
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
I understand it's a joke, but it seems out of place. The kind of geekyness portrayed in xkcd and its forums isn't the stereotypical slashdot, basement-dwelling kind.
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
AHAHAAHA LOL NOEW I GETTIT!!!!
I hope you get eaten by a Grue, repeatedly.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
No, I'm thinking he's done with the staple guns, now that all the XKCD fangirls are lining up to blow him.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
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.
hyperownage
If you factor something's popularity into its worth, you're doing it wrong.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
That's a lot of XKCD, even if you only accidentally looked at part of one letter on a cover of some edition of the New Yorker. Maybe somebody sent you a single pixel from a comic that ran in the New Yorker?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Bury a turd somewhere. Never tell anyone. The memory will always be yours alone.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Let me guess, you were a fan before XKCD was cool?
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...
Captain Cliche here. Can I have my insult back?
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.
No, it means that Munroe is actually a stick figure!
Blazing Spiders
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
And I've rued that day ever since.
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.
If you factor something's popularity into its worth, you're doing it wrong.
Unless you're measuring the worth of a social networking site, of course.
!hyberbondage
or
knot hyberbondage
as the case may be...
OO?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
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
I maintain that CmdrTaco overpaid.
"There are no facts, only interpretations." --Friedrich Nietzsche.
...She can't understand why Mike Meyers movies are funny.
I know, I mean what's not hilarious about a masked man that escapes from a sanitarium killing a bunch of hapless teenagers?
Oh, that Mike Meyers... I agree with her.
"There are no facts, only interpretations." --Friedrich Nietzsche.
LOL! Oh come now maxune. You don't think XKCD's nerdy stick figure girls are sexy?
Bury a turd somewhere. Never tell anyone. The memory will always be yours alone.
That sounds too much like a variant of the infamous "library restroom" copy-paste troll...
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I made sure to put something in about never telling anyone.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
No, it means he is a stick figure, you insensitive clod!
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
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
You mean, when it was still underground?
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.
This is Cory Doctorow. I just want my cape back.
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
No, they're always annoying regardless of their user base.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
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..
Lets look at this scientifically for a second.
;). And as someone else pointed out, with XKCD's popularity, there have got to be dozens of fangirls lining up around the block to have sex with the dude. So clearly, the item that should be removed is the staple guns.
1) do math
2) play with staple guns
3) mess around on the Internet
4) have lots of sex
I think it's safe to say that, given that this is a webcomic, 3 is true. And given the content of some of the strips, 1 can be safely assumed as well. So that just leaves us with 2 and 4.
Now, while it could be said that, given the fact that staple guns feature prominently in some of the strips (much like math), you don't really need a solid understanding of staple gun mechanics to make those kinds of jokes (unlike the math jokes. In fact, for the staple gun jokes it might help if you didn't
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
One time, I demoted a guy to Latrine Cleaner's Mate Second Class Obvious. He was inept as an officer.
Captain "1980 called and wants it joke back", ready for action.
Ha! CmdrTaco sends me $200 every month for reading Slashdot, and I still think that I pay him too much.
FYI thats funny because we've seen the fan girls.
I don't know why people like Shakespeare, he used awful fonts.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
I draw you one for $5. Anybody lower?
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
Hang on, did I just offer to make some guy on the internet horny for $5? I feel so... dirty.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
You'd think so, but the odd one out is actually the staple guns. If you look at frames 2 and 3 of the staple gun comic, you can clearly see that the character's technique is all wrong. In frame 2 the staple would not penetrate through the debian disc into the screen, and he doesn't have the leverage in frame 3 to use the staple gun at all. Munroe is obviously making it up with no real experience.
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.
Captain Hammer here, hair blowing in the breeze.
Katz would do better if he didn't have to explain his jokes in captions or devote so much setup time to an obvious statement.
Breakdown:
1. He flat out loses on the Venn diagram of the Internet. It's far too simple and straightforward. Maybe I'm just spoiled by Munroe's wit and attention to detail, but I don't think I'd find Katz's drawing funny before I started reading xkcd either.
Munroe gets bonus points on this one for referring to the New Yorker in his answer.
2. No comment.
3. First of all, it would have been more acceptable to leave the "B.C." unemphasized and thus more interesting, despite the fact that it still raises the question of whether he's a young-Earth creationist. Second, it would have actually been somewhat creative if he left it assumed to be A.D., so it could at least pretend to be a commentary of sorts on our view of the recent past.
4. This was actually funny. All it needs is a way of introducing the favorite animal/food idea into the comic without actually making it suck. But that would be difficult, so it'd probably be better to leave it as is with the criteria/topic introduced ahead of time. Katz is one-for-four against Munroe.
Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
If you factor something's popularity into its worth, you're doing it wrong.
XKCD is reaching the point where I can call the reference before it's made on slashdot. The jokes are original and funny and worth reading a few time, as the OP pointed out. However, once it hits the point where XKCD is right now, where there's a reference on nearly every comment page, the jokes get old really fast. I can't read that Summer Glau comic without thinking about how many people have used it in obviously bad ways.
Basically, being popular isn't bad per se, but the consequences of that popularity are.
I wonder what the minimum figure is that could still accomplish this.
20k / year?
In Megatokyo everyone has the same lackluster expression. It's creepy.
IN THIS THREAD: More proof that humor is subjective!
(rot13) rpbzbab@tznvy.pbz