The Eventual Gander: Of Comics, Web and Otherwise

I'm a computer scientist. What that means, roughly, is that I don't expect pretty pictures on these beasts of burden of post-modernity and relativism. Microprocessors can munge text with the best of 'em, but a single .gif or .jpg confuses them to the point where they would throw up their arms if they had arms. And thank god they don't.

Do you know about Linux? Pardon the digression, but if you're a resident of Earth, odds are onlya bout 1 in a billion that you're reading this, anyway. Some people say Linux is an Open Source Operating System (OSOS). Maybe it is, but you'll never be happy if you think of it like that. You'll spend all your days frustrated that your computer, the product of 50 years of innovation, can't even open up a stupid interweb game. Instead, Linux is a video game. I have beaten the level where you get firefox working, and I rescued the princess that allows me to look at pictures, but I'm stuck at the boss that is video.

Therefore, this Eventual Gander is focused on comics, that visual form of communication that's still exclusive to we humans. The thing that separates us from the machines is that we laugh at these while the computors[sic] just whir along. Unless you're talking about the New Yorker, in which case we all just whir along.

Strip number 1:
IndieTits. A comic strip titled off the seeming naughtiness that we at the Enfranchised have commented on before. Written as the moonlighting of Jeph, the author of Questionable Content and a man whose dialogue has all the shortness of Ron Jeremy (to wit: Jeph enjoys bludgeoning to death the kernel of a good joke more than Foster does a baby seal's testicles), the strip is visually identical to itself. There are 4 or 5 or 3 or who knows how many backdrops, over which he writes jokes that are obscure or silly. But man did he hit a homerun in this one. He gets to the core of what a comic is. Is there one bird, or two? Which one is telling the story? Beautiful use of post-modernism, man. Just effing brilliant. Especially considering that it was probably written 5 minutes before your deadline when you hadn't actually thought of a joke for the day.

That's what theories of academia are supposed to be used for: covering your ass.

Join us next time on the Enfranchised when I talk some more!