XKCD prides itself on it's in-references. So much so I avoided it because it seemed pretentious that way. I've since resigned myself to the fact that geek-friends will occasionally find it riotously funny when I barely understand the comic.
Growing up, I found Mark Trail, Judge Dixon, and Prince Valiant to be very hard to get into. VERY long established story-lines with not a lot to hook a new reader.
Editorial comics are perhaps the most in-reference comic form around, as they require news literacy to convey the message they're trying to convey. Re-reading editorial comics from 1982 only makes sense if you either lived through 1982 or studied it.
Editorial comics for times when I wasn't are fascinating to me. It's like reading science fiction where the author hasn't bothered to inclue anything at all.
(That said, it takes a lot of hard work to make anything out of them other than "the author dislikes someone who wears his hair parted on the side" or "some famous person at the time had a big nose".)
I loved loved loved Bloom County as a kid, and now I have a hard time understanding why! I mean, I still love it, but now I get all the political jokes and references and I know I did not get them as a child, and yet I still loved the comic!
I think I just liked the cute drawings, and the fact that the main characters were kids who got to have adventures and do stuff. And I remember I loved Bobbi Harlow; I did not get that Breathed was making fun of her 70s style feminism, I adored her unironically.
I remember a couple of years ago coming across the Bloom County strip where the communist cockroaches are addressing each other as Ahmed and Eduardo, and realizing that that was part of the joke. As a kid that never occurred to me - how could it? My family are all named things like Ahmed and Eduardo. That was normal!
I'm with you on the XKCD - maybe a slightly lower percentage because I'm an accountant, not a programmer! Sometimes I have an awful time trying to read fast enough to even see the little side comments that pop up and have to switch screens a few times to see it all
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Growing up, I found Mark Trail, Judge Dixon, and Prince Valiant to be very hard to get into. VERY long established story-lines with not a lot to hook a new reader.
Editorial comics are perhaps the most in-reference comic form around, as they require news literacy to convey the message they're trying to convey. Re-reading editorial comics from 1982 only makes sense if you either lived through 1982 or studied it.
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(That said, it takes a lot of hard work to make anything out of them other than "the author dislikes someone who wears his hair parted on the side" or "some famous person at the time had a big nose".)
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I think I just liked the cute drawings, and the fact that the main characters were kids who got to have adventures and do stuff. And I remember I loved Bobbi Harlow; I did not get that Breathed was making fun of her 70s style feminism, I adored her unironically.
I remember a couple of years ago coming across the Bloom County strip where the communist cockroaches are addressing each other as Ahmed and Eduardo, and realizing that that was part of the joke. As a kid that never occurred to me - how could it? My family are all named things like Ahmed and Eduardo. That was normal!
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