Monument ([info]marnanel) wrote,
@ 2008-07-19 12:03:00
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Webcomics
Sometimes I read webcomics. I used to read User Friendly many years ago, and I read Sluggy Freelance religiously (once in 2001 I actually set aside an entire day to do nothing else but read the comics from the start to where I'd started reading). For a while I read Bunny. Now the only comic I read is xkcd. [info]ghoti thinks I should read Ozy and Millie, too; I've tried a few times, but it's hard to jump in in the middle, and I don't have the time I had in 2001 to read things from the beginning.

I have sometimes thought of making a page which explains the joke in each xkcd for non-geek people (after all, occasionally I have to go and ask other people when the tables are turned). On the other hand, there are the xkcd forums to do that in already.

Sometimes I read A Softer World, which is the only place I know where the comics appear in more (or perhaps as many) dimensions simultaneously as xkcd:

1. The contents of the comic image
2. The mouseover text
3. In xkcd, the title of the comic, which is also the filename. ASW comics have titles hidden in their filenames which usually also give you an extra insight into the comic. (It also makes them a lot harder to read, though I suspect there's a greasemonkey script.)

ASW needs forums even more than xkcd does, though: xkcd is often clever and subtle, but either you get it or you don't. With ASW it's more like a poem, and quite often one of those kinds of poems where you read it and you want to run out and stop the next person on the street and say "Read this poem! Quickly! Savour it as fast as you can, and then tell me what you think it means!" Of course there's the LJ feed, but that disappears off into the bit bucket after a few weeks anyway.

So really I like thinky comics more than laughy comics, and that was what I wanted to say, and I should write my posts more readably rather than relying on stream-of-consciousness. And I would rather be a judge than a miner. The end.


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[info]rysmiel
2008-07-19 04:34 pm UTC (link)
I suspect you might like Friendly Hostility, though from a very different angle than xkcd; it's thinky, but character-level thinky. (Also laughy in ways arising from character).

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[info]rysmiel
2008-07-19 07:00 pm UTC (link)
also, you would definitely need to read from the beginning.

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[info]fridgemagnet
2008-07-19 04:45 pm UTC (link)
Scary-Go-Round is pretty much the only one these days (apart from Penny Arcade), though I can't judge how much it relies on character-based in-jokes as I've been reading it through at least two major art style changes and one title change. Still. It has good t-shirts.

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[info]bean_bunny
2008-07-19 06:32 pm UTC (link)
Have you ever read Achewood? It's my favorite, and it uses mouseover text too.

However, it's intensely weird and character driven, and probably won't make any sense unless you start from the beginning and stick to it. Maybe divide it up so you read a year a day instead of all at once?

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[info]xugglybug
2008-07-19 11:24 pm UTC (link)
With ASW it's more like a poem, and quite often one of those kinds of poems where you read it and you want to run out and stop the next person on the street and say "Read this poem! Quickly! Savour it as fast as you can, and then tell me what you think it means!"
Yay! You feel like that too!

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[info]naltrexone
2008-07-20 02:37 am UTC (link)
Hadn't heard of ASW before, so thanks for recommending it!

I looked for a greasemonkey script that revealed both the image title and filename, but only found a couple that claimed to reveal the title. So I whipped one up that inserts the important part of the filename above the comic as a sort of title and the image title below it as a sort of caption. Feel free to modify or distribute-- all very straightforward, just an xpath query or two.

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[info]marnanel
2008-07-20 04:52 am UTC (link)
Oh, that's really nifty-- thanks.

Here's an example where it comes in really useful.

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[info]stephe
2008-07-20 04:41 am UTC (link)
You know, I could have been a judge. I actually do have the Latin.

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[info]marnanel
2008-07-20 04:51 am UTC (link)
Et ego quoque, but probably not to your extent. But do we have the trappin's of great luxury, or have we got hold of the wrong load of trappin's?

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[info]stephe
2008-07-20 05:07 am UTC (link)
Ya' know, I'm not sure if my trappin's are exactly luxurious, but they do seem better than the ones you would find down a mine. For example, I have discovered that I can spend days on end without having to worry about whether I've found a piece of coal or not, and I really am a bit old and tired and sick and stupid to do my current job(s) properly, but they do let me keep on.

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[info]marnanel
2008-07-20 05:39 am UTC (link)
Whoops! Did you notice I just said whoops? It's something that comes from when I was working in the record shop and someone came in and said "Do you stock the fourth album by the eighties new wave band The Blow Monkeys?", and I replied, "Whoops! There goes the neighbourhood?" And now if I became a judge I'd be up there all regal, sentencing away... "I sentence you to whoops, there goes the neighbourhood." And you see, the trouble is, under English law that would have to stand...

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[info]ghoti
2008-07-21 07:38 am UTC (link)
Ozy and Millie is slowing down now, as the artist moves on to other things. She's still writing her political comic, I Drew This.

I like to read Friendly Hostility, but as [info]firinel recommended it to me, I imagine you though of that.

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[info]narenek
2008-07-28 06:16 pm UTC (link)
I'd have to recommend Irregular Webcomic which is done in lego, has umpteen different storylines and the author takes great pains to explain his geekier jokes in comprehensive footnotes (alternatively he goes to great depths wondering if a lego spade is infact a lego shovel or vice versa.

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