Webcomics and Their Laughs

I regularly read xkcd.com. I first heard about the site from references people made to it. People would say "I saw this on xkcd," or "That reminds me of an xkcd from a while ago."

The site describes itself as: "A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language." It is a "Stick-figure strip featuring humour about technology, science, mathematics and relationships, by Randall Munroe."

A lot of the comic's humor involves specialized knowledge. For example, many jokes are based upon internet culture or recurring ideas online. I have Googled many terms and people I was not familiar with such as Rickrolling, Richard Stallman, and Rule 34.

There are also computer related jokes. It seems Python can do anything and understanding SQL is a lot of fun when naming a child.

There are many science fiction references. Aside from being up on everything from Ender's Game to Ghostbusters, knowledge of the show Firefly is very helpful. I would recommend you watch all the episodes of Firefly on hulu.com when you have some time. It is a good show, even if the last person I told that to agreed with a wonderful tone of scarsim in her voice. The writer/cartoonist/humorist Randall Munroe also mentions Summer Glau relatively often. Then there are the Star Wars references. Some of these are so subtle I missed them the first time around.

One aspect I enjoy a lot are the science jokes. One of the early ones is great.

If you don't get the joke, check out law number two from the Unnamed Geniuses. The quality gets better, since a few of the early ones were scanned in from notebooks before the site was envisioned.

In the language category of humor, irony is on display as well.

There is one last thing. I am almost embarrassed to say I did not know this until after I had read many of the episodes. There is mouseover text for each of the strips. After you read, hover over the image and more text will appear.

This makes it half a dozen links and this makes it seven.