November 1, 20161

Comics are Better Than You Think

XKCD Web Comics
Created by Randall Munroe on his website xkcd.com

Review by:
Vlad Vandalovsky

Thumb Wars
xkcd October 31, 2016

The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck and The Brownies are the worlds oldest comic books, and
were released in the mid 1800s. Both books were written very similar to todays childrens books: a
series of picture stories featuring drawings of the main plot and captions underneath contributing extra
descriptions. The Brownies comic became so popular that it was featured in a magazine in the 1880s, a
feat unheard of for its time. 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 works for them (Judge even featured Dr. Seuss illustrations on its
cover). This innovative 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.2 Now, over 100 years
later, thousands of comic books and series of many different types exist all over society - featured in
magazines, newspapers, websites, TV shows, and even a bi-annual convention called ComicCon and
yet some people have not ventured outside the familiar world of the historic Sunday paper comic.

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 math 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
1 ENGW1111H, Word Count: XXX, MLA Citation
2 Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic Books By Jean-Paul Gabilliet, Bart
Beaty, Nick Nguyen

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.

Among the most famous of these online comics is xkcd, made by Randall Munroe, who
classifies his work as a web comic or romance, sarcasm, math, and language. His comics feature 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 of light output to the suns brightness, and calculates how many fireflies it would take to
match that light level, which is 3 * 1031 fireflies (about twice the amount of grains of sand on Earth).
Later in the text, Munroe also likes to propose different solutions to the same problem, and also does so
with the fireflies. 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).

Sun Bug
what-if June 21, 2016

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 humorous analysis of
migrating birds and includes a simple sketch of migrating geese (a topic that most people are familiar
with). On the other spectrum 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.

Migrating Geese
xkcd September 5, 2016

Unicode
xkcd August 29, 2016

As xkcd has grown over the years since its 2005 start, so has its fan base, and with it have
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
himself encourages. One example of the later is based on the 249th comic of xkcd, where 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 in collaboration 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.

Chess Coaster
Webpage of chess pictures compiled by Munroe

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 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). As more and more people in
society start to benefit from scientific knowledge (like deciding to take flu shots, or learning to code), all
of these great platforms provide great options for the expansion of the STEM push in society. Now,
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.

At this point, most of you have been reading a review of xkcd comics and are probably (still)
wondering where the name xkcd comes from, or what it means. Ironically enough, xkcd actually
doesnt mean anything. According to Munroe (on the about page of xkcd.com) he claims that xkcd is not
an acronym, and is rather just a word with no phonetic pronunciation. The only official definition of
xkcd released by Munroe is featured in a comic from 2007 that describes the xkcd through various
drawings about life. So, much like Munroe did in 2007, I leave you with a question what does xkcd
really mean?

What Does xkcd Mean?

xkcd January 8, 2007
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.