Mole Reading Comics

[mole-reads]

It is with some sadness that I notice that some webcomics have been migrating to Instagram or other social networks, even though they have a website set up; that honestly makes my "job" harder because that means instead of getting updates as they came from the RSS feed, in time, they end up being mediated by algorithm filtering which, for one, makes their arrival unpredictable, but also it means I avoid even being in their vicinity because I do hate being in algorithm-curated timelines.

Let me tell you, it does very little favors to my already dwindling habit of commentary to have my comics join the slurry of "scrolling". :/

[mole-reads]

(In case you're wondering what is happening, it's just me going through recent XKCDs in an attempt to improve this blog's webcomic variety when something witty comes to mind)

So, this is another case of "huh, I didn't know that" xkcd cartoon, and in this case I am glad I did look it up (because the alt text was giving me clues that I had the wrong idea) because at first I thought this was, somehow, a Peach Mom reference in xkcd, and how the hell would that have happened.

[mole-reads]

Look, I'm gonna level with you, this comic is stupid. And I don't hate XKCD, I rather like it, to be honest, once you get over the nerd cringiness of it and just enjoy yourself it is usually a source of many a sensible chuckle. Yes, I was a regular at xkcd sucks, but that was almost 20 years ago, I've gotten over it (and myself)

But this is dumb as a bag of bricks.

Nonetheless...

This did teach me something. I never knew about dental formulas, and to be frank it's not a very mindblowing concept, it's just a way of representing two sequences of numbers for a very specific purpose, but it's still a new thing I know.

Also, researching dental formulas in Wikipedia I learned that horses have a canine. Well, two on each side of the mouth so actually 4, and I'm not going to lie, the concept itself is terrifying.

[mole-reads]

Noa used Eavesdropping!

It`s super effective!

[kcggggg]

greatures number One Hunderd and Ninty four

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Oh no, it's First Place

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Although, depending on how terminally online and into this specific website you're into, you might be instead plagued by the possibility that an insufferable British detective will conclude you're an alcoholic instead

[shencomix]

[mole-reads]

That's pretty much one in every 3 webcomics from the early 2000s. It was either the "we're silly guys" to "defeating God" pipeline or an increasing roster of unique characters with a lot of allusions to quasi-popular culture that ended up assimilated into the recurring cast

...or both, even.

[mole-reads]

My occasional foray into the humorous offerings of The Comics Curmudgeon rewarded me with a recall of this delightful bit of comics theory which is that time when Beetle Bailey's author wrote a mostly humorous guide on comics iconography that labels the most mundane bullshit like "sweat drops denoting stress or strain" with rather British sounding nonsense like "plewds".

But that's not even the point of my post, actually. That comes when, after Josh cites "plewds" by name, I was reminded of this whole phenomenon and decided to look for references of other stuff, and found a review that includes a few pages of the book itself, which are mildly funny on their own, but also include this bit of possibly risqué implication that, honestly, only gets more distressing the more I linger on it

[mole-reads]

Ah, I guess that explains why the bangs

[mole-reads]

Death Stranding is one of those things you can't really appreciate without taking in all of the cringe of it within, and I love it for that. It also is a perpetrator of the "barefoot badass woman" trope that somehow keeps popping up again and again (looking right at you, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33) which, uh, does not bode well considering previous notable Kojima characters like Quiet, the woman who needs to be naked because she breathes through her skin, of course.

So, it's really a complicated relationship that I have with that game.

That said, I find it interesting that the game's art direction has some effect on Katie's art style. This is a game that really leans into you recognizing that you're doing errands for Junji Ito or having a conversation about a dead baby with Margaret Qualley, so when you cartoon it you can't half ass it. That's got to be Lea Seydoux or bust, damn it!

...Also I kind of assume that "Tomorrow" might have been "Tamara", but Kojima cannot be subtle. We already passed over the bridge with Dollman, to be honest.

[mole-reads]

Guess we'll have to wait until Monday to see Parley get beaten up by the buffest stickman we ever saw

[kcggggg]

'Tis the end of the Sand bit. Please, Cigarette just wants to move onto something else now. Please

[mole-reads]

The saga of Dirt is a delight, to be honest. He keeps getting worse.

[mole-reads]

As an exercise in curiosity (and perhaps a way to get me some sort of "groove" to publish more often instead of just every few Gunnerkrigg updates) I went back into Penny Arcade, wondering what it was up to these days.

The current comic is, to be honest, a very inconsequential thing that takes place in... Minecraft? I'm not sure, could be a dozen other clones that became successful in a Palworldian fashion, but then I scrolled a bit around the site and I found... this.

Now, the first thing I realized upon seeing that is that this must be why PA comics are now published as three individual image frames with a panel each instead of a whole strip you can copy the link to.

This is not a terrible idea. An experiment in comic creation over recombining a large archive of comic panels in a random fashion is fun. I'm sure the Garfield fan community has a dozen of those.

But, like... Penny Arcade comics barely make sense as they are, I don't think they benefit from being recombined. If anything, this might be a scathing self-deprecating statement on the absolute vacuity of this gaming webcomic. Sure, we have nothing to say, so much nothing that we expect picking three panels at random would make as much sense as our usual output.

...also, holy shit: 27 years?!

[mole-reads]

You know what? Screw you!

*unwards your Rogat Orjak*

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From the looks of it, Noa has spent years training the strongest doodle ever conceived, and my fear for Parley's physical integrity grows even larger

Her self esteem definitely could use some work, tho

[mole-reads]

Unsurprisingly, Noa turns out to be a magic hacker. I suppose most of them don't survive the experimentation phase for one reason or another (see previous comic in which Noa almost accidentally burned her self by creating a magic microwave oven to fix her exercise), but I'm so here for this.

[prokopetz]

One of the great strengths of the picaresque as a format is the freedom to wander off on long-winded worldbuilding tangents purely to explore a character, or make a point, or even just set up a shitty pun, then when you're done, set it all aside and never think about it again, because both the protagonist and the world have moved on.

What's extra fun, however, is when a webcomic or a weekly series or whatever adopts the same approach to worldbuilding without that essential element of moving on after each episode, so you just end up with this impossibly complex edifice of Things We Don't Talk About lurking in the background of this random school or small town.

[mole-reads]

That's how you end up with a running gag that is literally the word GAG running around the background, and then it becomes a major character in more than one arc in your story by the end of it