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.'"

Re:Katz vs Munroe?

[physicsphairy]

Inside jokes are still funnier, IMHO. The best jokes are those that have the most surprising punchlines, or engage the maximum of brain activity (while still being decipherable). Personally, I think an unfamiliar academic context goes a long way toward supporting both of those concepts. Actually, a lot of my esoteric science knowledge originally came from researching jokes at the infamous http://www.xs4all.nl/~jcdverha/scijokes/index.html [xs4all.nl] and I remember a lot of those being hilarious well before I had proper context for wholly understanding them. And nowadays I find Dinosaur Comics brilliant, seemingly component to my utter unfamiliarity with the field of linguistics, which Ryan North frequently refers to.

Admittedly, maybe that isn't true for everyone. But for me, anyway, the least funny humorists are always those that condescend or use humorous tropes that have already been done to death. I'd always rather have someone joking way over my head than at the level where I can figure out the punchline before I even hear it.

Re:O__O

[Javarrito]

I don't know what's scarier, that Katz's cow drawing has too many nipples - or that I noticed the discrepancy...

How about the fact that that mistake could ruin his political career (in Vermont, at least). [wikipedia.org]

During the televised debate, Tuttle asked a series of humorous local knowledge questions rather than political questions. McMullen was unable to correctly pronounce the names of several Vermont towns, or correctly answer Fred's question "How many teats a Holstein got?," answering "Six", instead of the correct "Four". In the primary, Tuttle defeated McMullen by ten percentage points. Winning the primary with 55 percent of the vote, Tuttle promptly endorsed the incumbent Democrat, Patrick Leahy.

XKCD

[Enderandrew]

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.

Re:And the winner is...

[ComaVN]

Did anyone else habitually hover over the pic to see the alt text?

Now it makes sense

[causality]

This is actually redundant [slashdot.org] 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 [slashdot.org] 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.

Alt-text

[brucmack]

One of the things that makes xkcd funny is the alt-text... I missed having that here.

Re:Munroe Wins

[History's Coming To]

It's the New Yorker, they expect a certain amount of political commentary. Katz got it in with the Creationism reference in 1999 (hence the underlining) and Munroe was making a Palin reference. Sorry. Not funny now that I've explained it.

Munroe won in my book, and not bad when he's playing an away-game. I did consider a detailed description of exactly why he wins with references and footnotes and sign it "Summer Glau", but I'm gambling that someone else will go to the effort for a +5 Funny :)