Follow Friday: xkcd

I tend to assume that everyone I know who spends any amount of time on the Internet is aware of xkcd but then every so often I will bump into someone who doesn't know it, so I'm mentioning it here on the off chance...

xkcd is a web comic with a minimalistic style and exceptionally wide-ranging content. Its comics tend to be just a few panels with a gag built in, and often with a computer, science or nerdy theme (and sometimes they are really obscure, I'd be surprised if there was anyone out there who has "got" every xkcd joke without some googling) however there are many many exceptions to that format from comics where the gag is only apparent from the "alt text" that pops up when you hover your mouse over the comic image to comics that are stories, games or serious infographics.

A representative sample:

Duty Calls:


Probably my favourite straight gag comic


Movie Narrative Charts:


An infographic showing the interactions of groups of people over time in several popular blockbuster movies


Time - Time was an animated story that updated slowly over nearly 6 months. I'm fairly sure when this first appeared I saw only the first frame, assumed it was an xkcd joke I didn't get and moved on, only to discover later that it was telling a story. The link her goes not to xkcd (which now only displays the final few frames of the animation) but to a separate site which lets you play the animation at the speed of your choice.

Hoverboard: Hoverboard appears to be a fairly simple, collect the coins game. By the time this appeared I was fairly wise to some of the tricks xkcd plays and so realised it was possible to escape from the initial simple space into a much larger world. It must be said I explored it a little and then moved on, but G. saw me doing it and she explored the whole game thoroughly managing to collect all but one of the coins.