April 18, 2009

• Well, I've dived back into xkcd comics. Never heard of them (xkcd.com)?
  
  I must thank Katie Holbrook sometime entirely for showing me this splendid internet strip.
  
  I remember reading an article about Bill Waters (author of Calvin and Hobbs) and they had noted how some critics picked up on the fact that Waters can actually draw. Technically, so can this guy, but you have to admire his unneed to.
  
  The catch phrase of the website is A Webcomic of Romance, Sarcasm, Math, and Language. This is so true. One thing I really like about the site is that it totally plays to intellectuals and geeks.
  
  A lot.
  
  

  

  
  I, personally, am in total love with that last one. The comic also tends to focus on some stuff which, I think, our generation relates to far more.
  

  

  

  

  
  I have to say, I do love the artistic variation on a familiar theme in the above one. But one of the best things about this comic is that it can go from an odd hybrid of intellectual and inane humor (that only it could pull off),
  
  to a seriousness that seems almost out of place. As the catch phrase says, romance is in the equation. And plenty of it. All too often, the drawer offers (in a idealistic, hopeful fashion) love as the only solutions to our problems sometimes. In one comic, as two men start to ponder questions and their speech spills out, filling the page, the strip collapses upon itself, all sense of boxes and coherance lost in a mess of words and lines. Then, out of it emerges half-boxes with two people in them. They hold hands and walk off, amid the reckage on the page. At times the strip does nothing more than point out subtle IFs and MAYBEs and, in an almost surreal way, demonstrates itself as incredibly poignant.
  
  
  The caption on the site was, "This one makes me wince everytime I think about it." Other times, it infuses its humor with the notes on romance.
  

  

  

  
  Some happen to be straight serious.
  
  It's odd because the picture shows nothing we haven't been told before. The artwork is drawn in stick figures. Yet I find the faceless characters to stand for something and the scene no less gripping than it needs to be. I dunno, it strikes home for me.

  Otherwise, though, xkcd is just plain fun:
  

  

  

  So many awesome references for an Epic Win.
  

  

  

  That one will be my favorite forever.

   

  Anyway, that was incredibly long and large, but I felt it needed to be said. If you read all of the strips, congrats. I think it's a good comic with a lot of subtle art.

   

  On a completely unrelated note, check this out: http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.matthewgood.org%2F2009%2F04%2Fand-then-beauty-showed-up%2F&h=b8c38379fb5dcf691c924d5637043670. Kaz showed it to me. It speaks for itself. Watch the vid in the link!

  • 2:26 am
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