Pictures for sad children is a quietly sad comic featuring simply drawn characters expressing very honest and simple desires that resonate deeply in a ever more complex world. There is no frustration in their contemplation of the world, only a wonderfully disarming honesty. Like this:

A softer world is not really a comic at all. Sure, it presents itself through a standard layout of three panels, each containing part of a photo. Together, the three photo panels frame the sordid, candid, and poetic prose that describe unexpected situations, recall sore memories, make bold manifestos – all sparkling in their brevity:

Another thing that I enjoy immensely about both comics is the facts they use the hidden picture “alt text” to add a little secret extra dimension to the comic, often twisting the words or pointing out hidden details in the art. Just hover your mouse cursor over the images to get the text (but note that the alt text on my blog is stuff that I have put in. To get the original comic alt text, you should go to the sites themselves).

Have fun.

Found in Jyri Engeström‘s presentation on Social software:

The Internet is powerful at distributing information. It lowers the transaction cost involved in social relationships and both developers and users have taken advantage of this to favor communication with more people than we would ever communicate with face to face. Social software has thus focused on increasing the Dunbarâ??s number of circa 150 people who we are supposed to be able to have meaningful relationships with.

It’s interesting to see how people are developing rules for whom to ‘friend’ on social networks like Facebook. I now have 172 friends on Facebook, a great part of whom I haven’t seen for years. In that way, Facebook isn’t helping me sustain a Dunbar number greater than 150, but it does help me maintain a great number of latent relationships which I suppose I could rebuild if the right occasion arose. There is some sort of comfort in that, I guess.

Now, consider Garfield. Probably the best-selling comic strip in the world. The basic premise is that you have a fat, ego-centric cat who enjoys annoying his lonely owner. The sarcastic drive of the cat dominates every other character in the strip. But what if Garfield was just a figment of poor Jon’s imagination?

Well, now, with Garfield minus Garfield, we can see what Jon’s life would be without Garfield. As the introduction reads:

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Letâ??s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness in a quiet American suburb.

You need to read a few pages to get the full desperation and crazed loneliness that the comic conveys. But then it’s downright startling.

Though there’s no real rhyme or rhythm to the links I receive, they’re always fascinating, and often do they expose surprising traits of modern society through what was once pop culture. Like this 1960s speculation of what USA of would be like if it was the USSA (aka the United Soviet States of America),
a comic book adaption of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment with Batman starring as Raskolnikov, or an archive of the instances of Superman being a dick to his friends:

I really can’t imagine how any publisher can justify printing something so bizarre. Contrasting this shameless appeal for attention is the work of Henry Darger, which, much like most of Kafka’s oeuvre, was never meant to be published or even shown to anybody. I cannot help but wonder how many people like him now use the Internet to publish their innermost thoughts anonymously, in that way multiplying the dark and wonderful corners of the Internet…

One of these reviewers goes by the supremely unfortunate moniker “Yahtzee”, who presents a new review each week under the title Zero Punctuation, which subtly hints that the main trademark of the reviews is a non-stop hilarious gabbing at whatever game he happens to review. A good example of his style can be found in his review of the latest installment in the Tomb Raider saga:

Another witty gamer is the Angry Video Game Nerd – formerly known as the Angry Nintendo Nerd (though he had to change his nom-de-plume in order to avoid unhappy interest from certain Italian plumbers). The nerd makes humorous, though at times rather long-winded, reviews of old Nintendo and Atari video games, showcasing just how primitive they were. But it is not so much the games themselves, as it is the Angry Nerd’s ability to look back upon the pop culture which fostered these games in the first place. The best example of that is probably his excellent review of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game for the Nintendo:

It gets even better when he goes on to describe his old indulgence with the pubescent amphibians even further by reminiscing the Turtles movie trilogy.

Best of all. there is a highly recommended 45 minute cut of the show freely available for your viewing pleasure.

For a more sober explanation of economics, you might want to read this instead.

Did you see that TV-show yesterday? They were just dancing limbo beneath the lowest common denominator.

It works even better by sounding less mathematical in Danish, so your mileage may vary.

Web comics do this very well, since most of them do not seek to please. They are simply an outlet for the writer. A way of letting go of their thoughts. Of course, some people eventually make a business out of it, but with genuine web comics (ie. comics only published on the web, and as a pastime at first), the original nerve is that freedom to write what feels right. Without seeking to please anybody.

My first webcomic love was Achewood, which I still read. It is a bottomless font of new English slang and curious incidents. The first strip sums up the style quite well.

It combines wide-eyed wonder with world-weary slang. It’s basically like treasure.

I also had a brief fling with one called Men in Hats, which upon rereading it is a bit of a letdown. Still, some of them do have that sarcastic distance which seems almost zen.

My latest infatuation is with the aptly named xkcd, which brings wonderful honesty and a deep fascination with mathematics together. Now I may not know mathematics, but somehow this still manages to be funny:

Especially those ponderings of love struck some rare chord with me. As well as those pseudo-scientific theories that erupt from time to time.

I think most people find themselves in situations where whatever they’re thinking just isn’t relevant to anybody around them. I hope to be able to think in strange ways, even if it isn’t the Bellman-Ford algorithm.