Michael Bay is out to destroy every one of my childhood favorites!

[ich1990]

Tangentially related but needs to be posted anyways.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/worst_case_scenario.png

[Nate]

And this is exactly why those cuddlefish on xkcd Sucks who always say "If you hate it so much just don't read it!" are idiots and need to shut up.

[Etoh*the*Greato]

[ich1990]

And this is exactly why those cuddlefish on xkcd Sucks who always say "If you hate it so much just don't read it!" are idiots and need to shut up.

Oh, come now. Everybody knows that XKCD is the closest thing to a dominant political party the internet has when it comes to geek culture. You might not like who is in charge and you might not have voted for 'em, but you have to put up with them anyways because you are outnumbered.

Is a link better?

[Nate]

Bah. I will continue to rant and rave about how xkcd sucks, until Ran-dull is out of a job! Or until he gets as good as he used to be. Ah, the glory days of xkcd, back before the 400s or so...it was so good then. :\

[Bobtheduck]

Ah, the glory days of xkcd, back before the 400s or so...it was so good then. :\

I love XKCD just as much now as I did back then, which is about 1/3 of the time. The internet property that has me weeping is Homestarrunner... They just dropped off the face of the earth after the game.

As for Michael Bay Ninja Turtles... TOO SOON, man! After reading the original Comic, though, I'd love to see a faithful adaptation of the comic. SO, yeah, anything with Michael Bay would not be that, but all things considered, I liked Transformers. Never was able to finish the second one, though.

[Nate]

I love XKCD just as much now as I did back then, which is about 1/3 of the time.

Oh yeah, I'm not gonna say everything back before the 400s or so is gold, just that it was at least consistently better than the crap he's pumping out now.

I think ultimately it's three things that's caused it. One, is that the comic started out as random sketches he did in his spare time. People could relate to it, and it was fairly amusing as it filled a niche in comics that most others didn't. Plus, it was something he did on the side. When he made it his full-time job, that I believe is when it suffered. Because when you turn something into your job, even if it's something you enjoy, it's going to change, it's going to become stressful, and I think you can see that with the quality going downhill is that he just isn't trying as hard. Many comics, it's painfully obvious that he comes up with it about ten minutes before the comic is supposed to be updated.

Second is his lack of humor. Randall is suffering from the same problem Family Guy fell into, namely, references are not the same as humor. Randall expects people to bark like a trained seal and clap if he just mentions "Star Wars" or "Lord of the Rings." Simply mentioning these things isn't funny, and yet, that's the kind of stuff he's doing these days, rejected Family Guy "What about that time when" situations.

Second is the fanbase. His fanbase is notorious, absolutely notorious for having a cultish following of him, believing he can do no wrong, and instead of trying to encourage Randall to do better, simply are content to let his comics be the garbage they are. They're fanboys. They can't admit when Randall has done something wrong, he's their god, to admit fault in him would mean that he isn't perfect. They spout out lousy, illogical defenses such as "You just don't get it!" or "You're not in the target audience!" or "You're just jealous of him!" all of which are logical fallacies. They inflate his ego by constantly bowing down to him.

In a way it reminds me of that Penny Arcade comic with the crowd chanting "Will Wright! Please pee on us!" The xkcd fanboys are content to eat Randall's vomit and call it filet mignon because he is their lord and savior.

I'm talking about fanboys, though, you say you only like xkcd about 1/3 of the time, which of course disqualifies you from that label. But you'd be surprised how many people are willing to praise comics like 743 or 513 or God, even 631 (that one is especially...argh).

The internet property that has me weeping is Homestarrunner... They just dropped off the face of the earth after the game.

There's good reason for that. They have families, and one (if not both) of them just had a baby. Babies are hard to take care of, and time-consuming. I'm actually rather glad that they're on hiatus. I'd rather have them take time off and produce quality content later, than be like Randall and just throw crap on their website just to say "We updated!" Besides, it's not like HSR is ending, if they were going to end it they'd give it a huge sendoff.

Wow this thread is off-topic now.

[Etoh*the*Greato]

They were pretty on-hiatus before the game, too, though. It's been several years since they were regularly consistent in providing both the Sbemails and cartoons.