Vlad Vandalovsky

First Year Writing Honors

MLA Citation

Project 2 Draft 2
Due: October 21
Words: 1476
Comics are Better Than You Think

Some people think comics are just illustrated jokes in the Sunday paper, but that is only
scratching the surface.
Comic books have officially been around since the early 1800s, dating back to the first
known comic books The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck and The Brownies, which were
released in the mid 1800s. Both books were graphic novels, and were written as a series of
picture stories featuring drawings of the main plot and captions underneath contributing extra
descriptions. The Brownies comic book became so popular that it was featured in a magazine in
the 1880s. Soon enough, other magazine companies like Harpers, Puck, Judge, Life, and Truth
realized that including a weekly comic strip section could improve popularity, so they also
started hiring comic artists to produce. This strategy proved to be such a huge success, that
newspapers also started joining in, begging for artists to make the marketable Sunday comics for
them as well. Now, over 100 years later, hundreds of comic books/series of many different types
exist all over society - being featured in magazines, newspapers, websites, TV shows, and even a
bi-annual convention called ComicCon and yet some people have not explored outside the
familiar world of the historic Sunday paper.
One of the main platforms for original informative comics nowadays is the internet. With
technology expanding every day, there are many online communities and websites that
contribute to the comic community in new different ways. For example, Spiked Math Comics is a
web comic strip devoted to quirky mathematical comics, using mathematical principles such as
equations and proofs to joke about everyday scenarios. Because of its intellectual nature, Spiked
Math can also educate younger audiences on advanced concepts by simply applying them to
common scenarios (its like having a free math tutor that teaches with jokes). Another example
of an online comic database is called PHD Comics, and features the interaction between a PhD
student and his professor. This comic strip, similar to Spiked Math, throws an intellectual spin on
everyday school interactions, and provides the reader with an informative way to enjoy comics.
One of the most famous of these online comics is xkcd by Randall Munroe. xkcd is a
web comic or romance, sarcasm, math, and language (xkcd.com), containing stick figure
drawings and text that highlight everyday events through a comedic and scientific lens. Munroe
frequently uses real (and sometimes advanced) mathematics and science to satire strange
scenarios, everyday nuances, or quirky habitual trends in modern society. Munroe creates two
different branches of comics on his webpage: his what-if series, and his xkcd series.
In his what-if series, Munroe exclusively focuses on directly applying mathematical
logic to answer seemingly crazy questions about hypothetical scenarios (which are submitted to
Munroe by fans through email). When Munroe tackles his answers, he tends to start with general
background knowledge, and then zoom in closer to the situation afterwards. For example, in one
scenario, Munroe tackles the question How many fireflies would it take to match the brightness
of the Sun?. In this case, he first dissects where a fireflys light comes from and how much light
is actually produced. Then, he compares that amount to the amount that the sun does, and
calculates how many fireflies it would take to match that specific level (which happens to be
3e31 fireflies). Later in the text, Munroe also likes to propose different solutions to the same
problem, and also does so with the fireflies. First, he approaches the problem from the

perspective of seeing how big one firefly would have to be in order to accomplish the same task.
Here, he again dissects the anatomy of a firefly, and calculates that a firefly the size of the solar
system would produce the same amount of light as the Sun (and also quickly become a black
hole, but thats a different issue).

http://what-if.xkcd.com/151/
The other aspect of Randall Munroes comic creations lies in his xkcd comic strips. In
these lighthearted shorter comics, Munroe highlights social trends, funny applications of math
and science, sarcastic remarks, and other similar nerdy humor. Although these comics are
definitely meant for an older, more educated audience than Sunday paper comics, Randall does a
great job of keeping content accessible by younger audiences. For example, below are two
comics that came out within a week of each other, but are geared for completely different people.
The first drawing is a humoristic analysis of migrating birds and includes a simple sketch of
migrating geese (a topic that most people are familiar with). On the other side though, is a
drawing that references a specific computer science community and the language problems
inside of it (a topic not so many people are familiar with). This versatility in subject area and
audience pulls in many varieties of readers to xkcd, and allows Munroes work to impact and
inspire more people. From a personal perspective, one of the best ways to understand a comic is
to understand the context behind the scenario, and therefore apply it to the joke or drawing at
hand. By allowing his comics to span such a large subject matter, Randall not only gets younger
readers interested and exposed to the nerdy side of humor, but also allows his more
knowledgeable readers to enjoy different types of humor.

http://xkcd.com/1729/

http://xkcd.com/1726/
As xkcd has grown over the years (since its 2005 start), so has its fan base, and with it has come
some fun traditions, events, and pastimes. Not only is there an entire list of the small offshoots
that xkcd has inspired on Wikipedia itself, but there are even spinoffs on the main xkcd website
that Randall encourages. One example of the later is based on the 249th comic of xkcd, which a
character is pictured gluing chess pieces to a board, and pretending to play chess on a roller
coaster. In this trend, xkcd readers would go on various roller coasters, and submit pictures of
themselves playing chess, checkers, and even jenga games on the rides. This idea, not only got
very popular among his readers, but has also created a bigger and more involved fan base for
Randalls inspiring comics. Another example of a comic based offshoot is geared towards
explanation rather than interpretation, and is called explainxkcd.com. This website, is an entirely
fan made Wiki page where comic readers post scientific, social, mathematical and logical

explanations for every single xkcd comic ever written. Although this website is not made with
cooperation with Munroe, it has served as a very useful tool to many readers of his works,
(myself included) and provides wonderful in-depth descriptions of any references, puns, or ideas
that Randall puts into his satirical comics. Explainxkcd never ruins a joke while explaining it, but
rather enhances the experience by allowing younger readers to learn about the content in a fun
and engaging way.

https://xkcd.com/chesscoaster/
xkcds comics, although still amusing to this day, have been around since 2005, so what
makes them relevant and popular now? Over the last two decades, with the ever more prevalent
impact of technology and science on our everyday lives, there has been a huge push on
expanding knowledge of math and science to the general public. Throughout these years, society
has seen many different flavors of attempts to get people motivated, educated and excited about
fields in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). Over my lifetime, I have seen
many television shows such as Bill Nye the Science Guy, Mythbusters, The Big Bang Theory, and
Cosmos, develop and push average viewers to get interested the STEM fields, and learn more
about them without being a boring lecture-type environment. On top of that, there are many
different subreddits that strive to achieve the same goal, including Explain Like Im Five, Today I
Learned, I Want to Learn, which all take a different perspective on voluntary fun intellectual
learning, using text and sometimes drawings and pictures. Lastly, and perhaps most prevalently,
YouTube hosts hundreds of educational, engaging, and enjoyable channels about STEM
education (like Minute Physics, Veretasium, NumberPhile, and VSauce). With all of these
wonderful resources, anyone interested (or not yet interested) in learning new and relevant

information in a casual and enjoyable way has plenty of opportunities to do so, and will likely
have plenty more with years to come.
All in all, education doesnt have to be in a classroom. It can be in a movie theater,
watching YouTube, reading a Reddit post, or even enjoying an xkcd comic. As more and more
human interaction involves technology, the benefit of learning about that technology becomes
very important. But, before I go, I want to leave you with one piece of advice: never be afraid to
gain extra knowledge even if it means collecting fireflies to light up the sun.
Acknowledgements:
I would like to recognize Colin, Rayven, and Kasandra who proofread and critiqued my
essay throughout the process. I would also like to acknowledge Professor Musselman for helping
me with ideas and edits during project 2.

Bibliography
Coville, Jamie. "The History Of Comic Books." The Comic Books. N.p., 16 Feb. 2001. Web. 21
Oct. 2016.
Munroe, Randall. "Sun Bug." Xkcd. N.p., 21 June 2016. Web. 12 Oct. 2016.
Munroe, Randall. "Migrating Geese." Xkcd. N.p., 5 Sept. 2016. Web. 12 Oct. 2016.
Munroe, Randall. "Unicode." Xkcd. N.p., 29 Aug. 2016. Web. 12 Oct. 2016.
Munroe, Randall. "Chess Photo." People Playing Chess on Roller Coasters. N.p., 16 Apr. 2007.
Web. 12 Oct. 2016.