Xkcd

Introduction to XKCD

XKCD is an American English webcomic located at xkcd.com. The website, comic and affiliated products and fora are all by Randall Munroe, who describes the website as "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language." (2) and as described by Dresden Codak, a fellow webcomic artist, XKCD is "Simplicity itself, this comic is lined paper, stick figures and math jokes resembling the margins of a high school math exam but with fewer misspelled Nirvana lyrics and crude drawings of genitalia." (1). The range of jokes that the comic strips touch upon is immensely diverse and polymathic, and is hence aimed at a (largely very educated) "deep geek" audience (3); the comic material of the strips is often so involved that it can be necessary to have wikipedia on hand while reading XKCD to fully "get" the humor that the strips employ (3). sometimes the comics are not jokes at all, simply art or some commentary on life, in particular or in abstract (3). New strips are introduced on the front page of the site on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, at or around midnight (4). The comic is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License (5).

Creation and History:

XKCD began in September of 2005 when Randall Munroe found some of his doodles from high school and decided to scan them and put them on his personal website (8), whose name was XKCD because that was Munroe's favorite internet handle at the time (the username by which he most commonly referred to himself) (2). He originally chose the name as his I.M. screen name, because, as Monroe details: "I wanted to pick a name that I wouldn't get tired of. That would just always mean me. So I just went down combinations of letters that weren't taken, until I could find one that didn't have any meaning, didn't have any pronunciation, and didn't seem like an obvious acronymn for anything." (8).

Munroe, a twenty-seven-year-old physics major, programmer, and former NASA contractor (6), now makes his living entirely off of XKCD (7), selling thousands of XKCD t-shirts a month (6). The site has become wildly popular among techies internationally (9), and enjoys such fame that it is commonly parodied and imitated, to such an extent that there is a website dedicated entirely to deprecating Munroe's efforts (10). Given its audience and rocket growth, "there really shouldn't be any doubt that xkcd is a rock star in comics." (11). The site, which began publishing regularly in January 2006, has 500,000 unique visitors a day and 80 million page views per month (6).

What XKCD Means For Webcomics Everywhere:

On the Internet, Munroe has said, “You can draw something that appeals to 1 percent of the audience — 1 percent of United States, that is three million people, that is more readers than small cartoons can have.” (8),

1: "Webcomics for any taste -- and free." Times Colonist (Victoria, British Columbia). (November 22, 2008 Saturday ): 272 words. LexisNexis Academic. Web. Date Accessed: 2012/10/12.

2: xkcd.com. Date Accessed: 2012/10/12.

3: Winkler, D. (2008, Xkcd. Broken Pencil, , 56-56. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/docview/213098915?accountid=14667; http://mgetit.lib.umich.edu/?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info:ofi/enc:UTF-8&rfr_id=info:sid/ProQ%3Aaltpresswatch&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.genre=unknown&rft.jtitle=Broken+Pencil&rft.atitle=xkcd&rft.au=Winkler%2C+Derek&rft.aulast=Winkler&rft.aufirst=Derek&rft.date=2008-07-01&rft.volume=&rft.issue=40&rft.spage=56&rft.isbn=&rft.btitle=&rft.title=Broken+Pencil&rft.issn=12018996 Date Accessed: 2012/10/12.

4: XKCD: a perfect marriage of snark and skepticism. (2012, September-October). Skeptical Inquirer, 36(5), 44. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA301180943&v=2.1&u=lom_umichanna&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w Date Accessed: 2012/10/12.

5: http://xkcd.com/license.html Date Accessed: 2012/10/12.

6: Cohen, N. This Is Funny Only if You Know Unix. Published: May 26, 2008. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/26/business/media/26link.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss. Date Accessed: 2012/10/12.

7: Altmeyer, E. (2012, Jan 17). Online comics: A new frontier for the common artist. Pittsburgh Post - Gazette. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/docview/916325037?accountid=14667; http://mgetit.lib.umich.edu/?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info:ofi/enc:UTF-8&rfr_id=info:sid/ProQ%3Anewsstand&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.genre=unknown&rft.jtitle=Pittsburgh+Post+-+Gazette&rft.atitle=ONLINE+COMICS%3A+A+NEW+FRONTIER+FOR+THE+COMMON+ARTIST&rft.au=Altmeyer%2C+Emma&rft.aulast=Altmeyer&rft.aufirst=Emma&rft.date=2012-01-17&rft.volume=&rft.issue=&rft.spage=C.7&rft.isbn=&rft.btitle=&rft.title=Pittsburgh+Post+-+Gazette&rft.issn=1068624X Date Accessed: 2012/10/12.

8: Fernandez, Rebecca (2006-10-12). "xkcd: A comic strip for the computer geek". Red Hat Magazine (Raleigh, North Carolina: Red Hat). Date Accessed: 2012/10/12.

9: COHEN, N. (2009, Apr 20). When pixels find new life on real paper. New York Times (1923-Current File). Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/docview/1030660022?accountid=14667; http://mgetit.lib.umich.edu/?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info:ofi/enc:UTF-8&rfr_id=info:sid/ProQ%3Ahnpnewyorktimes&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.genre=article&rft.jtitle=New+York+Times+%281923-Current+file%29&rft.atitle=When+Pixels+Find+New+Life+On+Real+Paper&rft.au=Cohen%2C+Noam&rft.aulast=Cohen&rft.aufirst=Noam&rft.date=2009-04-20&rft.volume=&rft.issue=&rft.spage=B3&rft.isbn=&rft.btitle=&rft.title=New+York+Times+%281923-Current+file%29&rft.issn=03624331

10: http://xkcdsucks.blogspot.com/

Date Accessed: 2012/10/12.