[[Image:Citationeeded.jpeg|right|thumb|upright|A fan of "[http://xkcd.com/285/ Wikipedian Protester]" on a playground in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2007]]
[[Image:Citationeeded.jpeg|right|thumb|upright|A fan of "[http://xkcd.com/285/ Wikipedian Protester]" on a playground in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2007]]
On several occasions, fans have been motivated by Munroe's comics to carry out, in real life, the subject of a particular drawing or sketch. Some examples include:
On several occasions, fans have been motivated by Munroe's comics to carry out, in real life, the subject of a particular drawing or sketch. Some examples include:
*Olga Nunes created the viral video We Love XKCD, featuring a host of famous faces from the worlds covered in XKCD, including some who have actually featured in the web comic.
<ref>{{cite news| url=http://www.olganunes.com/xkcd| title=We Love XKCD| accessdate=May 12, 2010}}</ref>
* [[Richard Stallman]] was sent a [[katana]]<ref>{{cite web| url=http://blag.xkcd.com/2007/04/19/life-imitates-xkcd-part-ii-richard-stallman/| title=Life Imitates xkcd, Part II: Richard Stallman| work=xkcd| date=April 19, 2007| accessdate=August 20, 2007}}</ref> and was confronted by students dressed as ninjas before speaking at the [[Yale Political Union]]<ref>{{cite news| url=http://yaledailynews.com/articles/view/21889/| title=Stallman trumpets free software| work=The Yale Daily News| accessdate=October 19, 2007}}</ref><ref>{{cite web| url=http://www.yale.edu/ypu/blog.html| title=Richard Stallman Debate| work=Blog of the YPU| date=October 18, 2007| accessdate=October 21, 2007}}</ref> – inspired by "[http://xkcd.com/225/ Open Source]".
* [[Richard Stallman]] was sent a [[katana]]<ref>{{cite web| url=http://blag.xkcd.com/2007/04/19/life-imitates-xkcd-part-ii-richard-stallman/| title=Life Imitates xkcd, Part II: Richard Stallman| work=xkcd| date=April 19, 2007| accessdate=August 20, 2007}}</ref> and was confronted by students dressed as ninjas before speaking at the [[Yale Political Union]]<ref>{{cite news| url=http://yaledailynews.com/articles/view/21889/| title=Stallman trumpets free software| work=The Yale Daily News| accessdate=October 19, 2007}}</ref><ref>{{cite web| url=http://www.yale.edu/ypu/blog.html| title=Richard Stallman Debate| work=Blog of the YPU| date=October 18, 2007| accessdate=October 21, 2007}}</ref> – inspired by "[http://xkcd.com/225/ Open Source]".
* When [[Cory Doctorow]] won the 2007 [[EFF Pioneer Award]], the presenters gave him a red cape, goggles and a balloon<ref>{{cite web| url=http://blag.xkcd.com/2007/03/28/cory-doctorow-part-ii/| title=Cory Doctorow, Part II| work=xkcd| date=March 28, 2007| accessdate=September 5, 2007}}</ref> – inspired by "[http://xkcd.com/239/ Blagofaire]".
* When [[Cory Doctorow]] won the 2007 [[EFF Pioneer Award]], the presenters gave him a red cape, goggles and a balloon<ref>{{cite web| url=http://blag.xkcd.com/2007/03/28/cory-doctorow-part-ii/| title=Cory Doctorow, Part II| work=xkcd| date=March 28, 2007| accessdate=September 5, 2007}}</ref> – inspired by "[http://xkcd.com/239/ Blagofaire]".
Revisionasof18:17,12May2010
Warning: Display title "<i>Xkcd</i>" overrides earlier display title "xkcd" (help).
According to Munroe, the comic's name has no particular significance and is simply a four-letter word without a phonetic pronunciation, something he describes as "a treasured and carefully guarded point in the space of four-character strings." The name of the comic is preferably spelled in all lowercase letters, or all capitals.[4] The subject matter of the comic varies, including statements on life and love (some love strips are simply art with poetry), and mathematicalorscientificin-jokes. Some strips feature simple humor or pop-culture references. Although it has a cast of stick figures,[2][8] the comic occasionally features landscapes, intricate mathematical patterns such as fractals (for example, strip #17 "What If" shows an Apollonian gasket), or imitations of the style of other cartoonists (as during "Parody Week").
The comic is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.[9] New comics are added three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays[10] at midnight North American Eastern Time,[11] although on five occasions so far they have been updated every weekday: Parody Week, the "Choices" series, the "1337" series, the "Secretary" series, and the "The Race" series.
The comic began in September 2005 when Munroe decided to scan doodles from his school notebooks and put them on his webpage. Eventually the comic was changed into a standalone website, where Munroe started selling t-shirts based on the comic. He currently "works on the comic full time,"[4] making xkcdaself-sufficient webcomic.
In May 2007, the comic caught the attention of many by depicting online communities in geographic form.[12] Various websites were drawn as continents, each sized according to their relative popularity and located according to their general subject matter.[12] This put xkcd at number two on The Post-Standard's "The new hotness" list.[13]
xkcd is not an acronym, and Munroe attaches no meaning to the name, except in a joking manner within the comic.[14] He claims that the name was originally a screen name, which he selected as a combination of letters that would be meaningless, as well as phonetically unpronounceable.[10][4] Some people have, however, inferred other potential meanings for the term xkcd: the Short Minds webcomic, for example, makes much of the fact that the ordinal values of the letters X, K, C and D add up to 42, Douglas Adams' celebrated Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.[15]
On September 23, 2007, hundreds of people gathered at 42°23′44″N71°07′50″W / 42.39561°N 71.13051°W / 42.39561; -71.13051, a park in North Cambridge, Massachusetts whose coordinates were mentioned in a strip, #240. The strip's author appeared, commenting, "Maybe wanting something does make it real," reversing the conclusion in the last frame of the same strip.[16][17]
In October 2008, The New Yorker magazine online published an interview and "Cartoon Off" between Randall Munroe and Farley Katz. For the "Cartoon-Off," Katz and Munroe each drew: "the Internet, as envisioned by the elderly," "String Theory," "1999," and "your favorite animal eating your favorite food."[18]
Recurring items
While there is no specific storyline to the comic, there are some recurring themes[19] and characters, many of which are touched on in an xkcd parody of the Discovery Channel's I Love the World commercial.[20]
A large number of the strips are mathematics or computer science jokes. These jokes often feature university-level subjects, although many are written in such a way that a clear understanding of the subject is not required to get the punch line. Romance is another subject often visited in the comic, with many strips not intended to be humorous.[19]
There are also many strips opening with "My Hobby:" and usually depicting the nondescript narrator character describing some type of humorous or quirky behavior often involving language games.[21]References to Wikipedia articles or to Wikipedia as a whole are an occasional theme in xkcd.[22]xkcd also frequently makes reference to Munroe's "obsession" with potential raptor attacks,[23][24], and to many "your mom" jokes.[25] There have also been several strips featuring "Red Spiders" and Joss Whedon's short-lived series Firefly.
Each comic also has a tooltip, specified using the title attribute in HTML. The text usually contains an afterthought or annotation related to that day's comic which is known as alternate text.[26]
Although Munroe does not maintain a list of characters on his web site, some recurring characters can be identified by their visual features (for example, hats) and mannerisms.
A man who looks like a normal stick-figure xkcd character, but for the addition of a black hat. The man's hat is a reference to Aram from the now-defunct webcomic Men in Hats, not to black hat hackers as is often supposed.[27][28] This character first appeared in the comic Poisson (the twelfth comic published on the website).[29] The character refers to himself as a "Classhole" (aportmanteau of "classy" and "asshole").[30] He does not shy from pointing out the failures of others and has at times used extreme violence in order to emphasize a point.[31][32] In the January 30, 2008 comic, his hat was taken by a woman, though he later retrieved his hat by stealing a nuclear submarine and using it to crash through the ice where she was skating. The latest appearance of the two together was comic #669.[33] The character is one of the most frequently occurring in the comic, though he remains unnamed (he was referred to in the tooltip for comic #493 as "hat guy").[34] In the "Secretary" story arc, he is nominated for the post of Secretary of the Internet when the Internet has started to collapse, but after a variety of hijinks involving Ron Paul, Cory Doctorow, and the Auto-Troll Shuffle, is sentenced to death, escaping by filling the Capitol rotunda with plastic ball pit-style balls, which distracts the pursuers, while he flees on Doctorow's hot-air balloon.[35]
The most common recurring female "character" is known as Megan in several strips; she was first referred to by name in comic #159 - Boombox,[36] and again several times afterward.[37][38][39] She is recognized by her short, dark hair.
A boy in a barrel appeared in five early strips. Unlike most other characters, he is not a stick figure. He was repeatedly seen inside a barrel, floating in a large body of water. The boy in the barrel was one of many doodles in the older comics, but has not been seen since comic #31, in which he flew away with a ferret wearing a toy airplane.[40]
Another set of recurring characters is the nihilist and the beret-wearing existentialist. Until comic #291, they had only been seen together, never separately. They are first seen in the "Nihilism" comic,[41] and again in "Kayak,"[42] "Hypotheticals",[43] and "Dark Flow."[44]
Mrs. Roberts was a main character in the "1337"[50] series, and has appeared in other comics along with her children, Robert'); DROP TABLE Students;-- aka "Little Bobby Tables," (a reference to SQL injection) and Help I'm Trapped In A Driver's License Factory Elaine Roberts, the protagonist of the "1337" series.[51]
Firefly character River Tam—and actress Summer Glau, who played her—has appeared in a few comics, usually in a dream sequence where a character in the strip makes reference to her.[52] Other Firefly cast members, such as Nathan Fillion, have appeared in the series [53] and many turn out to have similar personalities to their Firefly characters.
The family name "Lenhart" recurs, as a "Mrs. Lenhart" appears or is mentioned in "Substitute", "Zealous Autoconfig", "Scantron", and "Principle of Explosion".
Inspired activities
A fan of "Wikipedian Protester" on a playground in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2007
On several occasions, fans have been motivated by Munroe's comics to carry out, in real life, the subject of a particular drawing or sketch. Some examples include:
Olga Nunes created the viral video We Love XKCD, featuring a host of famous faces from the worlds covered in XKCD, including some who have actually featured in the web comic.
A subgroup of "geohashing" xkcd readers has emerged, members of which travel to pseudorandom nearby latitude/longitude locations calculated by the geohashing algorithm described in "Geohashing".
YouTube has placed a feature on comments that plays back the comment aloud on "Audio Preview", possibly based on the strip "Listen to Yourself".[64][65]
Running the following code is an easter egg in Python 3.0: import antigravity, inspired by the strip "Python".[66] The module also contains a geohashing function.
In the xkcd cartoon "Troll Slayer" (591), 4chan's /b/ boards are taken over by Twilight lovers. In response to this, /b/ was temporarily renamed "Twilight Appreciation Station", and included the text "We have met the enemy and he is us", which appears in the cartoon as a note added by Randall Munroe. In order to prevent /b/ from trolling the xkcd forums, registration was blocked for several days after the comic appeared.
Cory Doctorow wears a red cape, goggles and a balloon as he receives the 2007 EFF Pioneer Award Inspired by "Blagofaire"
Awards and recognition
xkcd has been recognized at the Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards. In the 2008 Awards, it was nominated for "Outstanding Use of the Medium," "Outstanding Short Form Comic," and "Outstanding Comedic Comic," and won "Outstanding Single Panel Comic."[68]xkcd was also voted Best Comic Strip by readers in the 2007 Weblog Awards[69] and 2008 Weblog Awards.[70] It was also nominated for a 2009 NewNowNext Award in the category 'OMFG Internet Award'.[71][72]
Translations
Many xkcd comics have been translated into Spanish by one reader.[73] The comics available are the ones that, according to the translator, can be translated without losing their humor.[74] A community of readers translated nearly half of the comics into Russian,[75] and almost all of them into French.[76] There is also a German,[77] a Finnish,[78] and a Czech [79] translation.
Book
In September 2009 Munroe released a book, entitled xkcd: volume 0, containing selected xkcd comics.[80] The book was published by breadpig, under a Creative Commons license, with all of the publisher's profits donated to Room to Read to promote literacy and education in the developing world. Six months after release, the book has sold over 25,000 copies. The book tour in New York City and Silicon Valley was a fundraiser for Room to Read that raised $32,000 to build a school in Laos.[81]
References
^Cohen, Noam (May 26, 2008). "This Is Funny Only if You Know Unix". NYTimes.com. Retrieved May 30, 2008. ... Randall Munroe, the 23-year-old creator of xkcd, a hugely popular online comic strip (at least among computer programmers)...
^ abGuzmán, Mónica (May 11, 2007). "What's Online". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. p. D7. Retrieved May 30, 2008. Created by math and programming geek Randall Munroe, the xkcd comic updates every Monday with a new adventure for its cast of oddball stick figures.
^The Times (June 6, 2007) xkcd.com; The click; Wednesday. Section: Features; Page 4. (writing, "Web comics have thrived and one of the best is xkcd.com. The comic strip of 'romance, sarcasm, math and language' is brilliant on the stupidity of people who comment on YouTube videos and, oddly, how we take dreaming in our stride: 'I'm gonna go comatose for a few hours, hallucinate vividly, then maybe suffer amnesia about the whole experience.'")
^"Exploits of a Mom". Retrieved January 10, 2008. Help I'm Trapped In A Driver's License Factory Elaine Roberts' name is given in the tooltip for this comic.
