Since starting to work from home full time in March, I have gotten a little out of the habit of checking the XKCD web-comic regularly. I’ve forgotten how I first found it; I suspect my brother forwarded me one he thought I’d like and the rest, as they say,… Anyways, I realized that I had XKCD: Volume 0 on my shelf, and I don’t think I’ve ever read it through until very recently. The tagline on the webcomic is “A web-comic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language”, and I’ve long appreciated the combination, although admittedly some of the more math-centric stuff goes over my head along with some of the more obscure computer science.
XKCD is, as the above quoted description suggests, a very nerdy, witty comic, and very much an intellectual exercise. Every M, W, F (mostly), the author posts his next entry. Each one is a 4-panel stick figure joke or scene involving some high level literature, math, computer science, or combination thereof, frequently with some sort of social commentary suggested. Frequent exceptions exist, as there are some single panel comics, some with more than 4 panels, and some with animation or movement added (none of these in the book obviously).
Volume 0 is I think the first book to come from the comic series, and in a lot of ways it is definitely nearly work, especially in comparison to what it is now. The art is still very much the same, pretty simplistic, which I think works well as it allows for more focus on the words and ideas both directly stated and those implied. What’s changed a little is that Volume 0 is a lot heavier on the computer science and romantic relationship stuff. One of the comic I remembered that’s in the book I vaguely remember being quite proud of myself for getting the joke when I first saw it involves the “sudo” command { https://xkcd.com/149/ }, and this one in a lot of ways gives you an idea of what the rest of the series is like. In the forward, the author does explain his background in physics (apparently he used to work for NASA), so it would make sense that there would be a lot of math and computer science, but the series has since become a lot more than just that. One addition that the book adds is some author commentary (sometimes text, other times image), usually set apart by being outside the panels and in red, for example thanking people who apparently set a comic comprising of song lyrics to music. I liked these, since they added something to the original comic.
I was a little disappointed that the book didn’t really have any of the literature or language, because that’s my area, and some of those comics are so well done. Here’s one of my favorites: https://xkcd.com/788/ It’s an older one, and if you really look and think on it, hopefully you’ll recognize all the cleverness. I would be a little surprised if a lot of people here didn’t already know of the series, but if not, you’re welcome, and if so, consider yourself reminded.
