254: Comic Fragment

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Comic Fragment
No one wants an explanation more than us. Except Ms. Garofalo.
Title text: No one wants an explanation more than us. Except Ms. Garofalo.

Explanation[edit]

In this comic, Randall has gone missing from the office, and his 'editors' have found only this panel from an unfinished project (of which he has labeled 'best idea ever'). The panel depicts an amalgam of science fiction disasters.

  • A crippled space station falling from orbit.
  • An exploding volcano.
  • Rampaging dinosaurs.
  • A lone hero in what appears to be a hopeless situation.

Janeane Garofalo is an actress and comedian associated with strong feminist roles and opinions. She is an unlikely choice for an action hero, but she has fringe appeal. It should be noted that in the panel it is Janeane Garofalo herself on the motorcycle, not a character played by Janeane Garofalo, meaning she is the character. Randall is parodying a mode of self-indulgence common among artists and writers, particularly those who have been prolific and have gained mass appeal. A writer might have a project he thinks of as his "best idea ever," but upon examination, it is just a mish-mash of ideas the writer thinks are cool, which don't add up to a coherent story. This type of project is self-indulgent because it allows the writer to feel like he's exercising creative impulses he can't use in his regular work, even though the actual project has little artistic merit and is unlikely to appeal to a popular audience. In this comic, Randall winks at a lot of the hallmarks of this sort of "project:"

  • It is unfinished. The point of such a project is not to complete it, but to have a place to set down all the fun ideas you never get to use, so you can feel like you're using them. But elements like these are found throughout xkcd, so the joke is that it's absurd to need a separate outlet for them, but he has one anyway.
  • He keeps it in a folder labelled "My Best Idea Ever." A writer might think of such a project as his "best idea," but it's unlikely anyone would use that phrase as a working title. Using it so boldly here emphasizes the self-indulgent nature of the enterprise.
  • It includes a ton of scattershot, disconnected ideas that are all cool individually, but are likely to require massive amounts of suspension of disbelief when combined:
  • Why does a motorbike exist on a small spacecraft?
  • The aircraft and its rider both require an amount of air pressure.
  • On a falling spacecraft that air pressure would amount to enough air compression to fry the motorcycle and its rider.
  • What keeps the motorcycle on the falling spacecraft?
  • How is Ms. Garofalo supposed to survive the impact?
  • Dinosaurs and spacecrafts should be tens of millions of years apart from each other.
  • If the volcano explodes: Will the dinosaurs still attack her and not just flee?

Some of the ideas (dinosaurs, spacecraft) are derivative of Randall's prior work; others (volcanoes, Janeane Garofalo) are not. It is telling, though, that the closeup inset of the woman on the motorcycle, while referred to as Janeane Garofalo in the text, looks an awful lot like Megan.

  • Good judgment and artistic sensibility are suppressed in favor of heightened coolness. (Janeane Garofalo is cool. Janeane Garofalo on a motorcycle is cooler! With tranq darts! On a spaceship! Etc.) The comic takes this to an extreme. Every element in the comic is there because of its awesomeness; no other aesthetic principle is being exercised anywhere.

Later on, in December 2007, Randall Munroe suggested in a speech at Google that a motivation to draw this comic was to put an end to reenactments of his comics (such as the Richard Stallman and Cory Doctorow comics, which inspired real-life happenings)... or challenge anyone to reenact such a complex one:

I've been doing these comics, and people have a habit of acting out the comics. I first — I did a comic about Cory Doctorow; you know, he wears red cape and goggles when he blogs and a week or so later, he was given an award. And he went up on the stage; they presented him with a red cape and goggles. I have done a comic little before that about Richard Stallman suggesting that he sleeps with the katana, you know, just in case. And, sure enough, they sent him, some fans pitched in together and sent him a katana. He had never heard of the comic. He was very confused. And I decided, okay, this is going to get out of hand. So, shortly after all that, I did a comic about Janeane Garofalo jumping a motorcycle off of the International Space Station as it crashes over an island with a volcanic eruption and Tyrannosaurus. And I said, okay, if someone can make that happen, but until they do that...

The title text is written from the 'editors' perspective, expressing their extreme puzzlement — outshone only by Ms. Garofalo's confusion.

Transcript[edit]

Editor's note: Mr. Munroe has been missing for several days. We have recieved no submissions from him for some time, but we found this single panel on his desk in a folder labeled 'MY BEST IDEA EVER'. It is clearly part of a work in progress, but we have decided to post it in lieu of a complete comic.
[Single panel illustration in color with one small panel embedded within, showing a zoomed-in version of Janeane Garafolo on a motorcycle. The background is a gray landscape beneath a falling space station, a large volcano with smoke rising the only discernible feature of the landscape below.]
As the damaged space station fell deeper into the atmosphere and started to break up around her, Janeane Garofalo tightened her grip on the motorcycle.
The volcano was looming ahead, and her tranquilizer pistol only had six darts left - barely enough to bring down even one Tyrannosaur.


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Discussion

Who is Janeane Garofalo? -- ‎130.194.73.251 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

A New York comedian. I've wikilinked her name. Mark Hurd (talk) 18:19, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

I think it should also be noted that this may be a parody of the Lemony Snickett's Series of Unfortunate Events books, where each book ends with some 'discovered' documents/evidence from the 'author' Snickett regarding the next title in the series. 75.101.102.252 06:04, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

I really wish this comic would be re-enacted... Greyson (talk) 06:45, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Seems to me that making Richard Stallman very confused would be in keeping with the spirit of the comic. At least he didn't get a bobcat. 184.21.189.153 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Ha +1 Spongebog (talk)

I wonder if the title should be read as 'fragMENT' as in 'to break up'... this is what Ms. Garofalo (herself a 'Comic') will soon be doing upon re-entry in such a scenario. Squirreltape (talk) 19:15, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

The explanation seems to miss something about this comic. It is a close call which is most ingruiging: how Ms Garafalo will manage to survive the re-entry of the space station, on her motorbike, with the very imminent danger of the volcano and the presumably lurking danger of multiple T-Rexes with barely enough ability to deal with one; or... how she got into the position of being on the outside of the space station, on a motorbike, the whole lot hurtling out of orbit towards a volcano and a foreseeable (re)encountering of T-Rexes for which she has equipped herself with a now dwindled supply of countermeasure ammunition... This could be the mere inconclusive fade-out at the end to the actual Best Ever story, perhaps providing a useful hook for a potential sequal (which will never be quite as good, statistically, even if it avoids being a Highlander II). 141.101.99.90 23:44, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

"How is Ms. Garofalo supposed to survive the impact?" - If it's got the suspension (and you've got the skill) you can ride off the top of a spacestation-sized cylinder and land safely on the ground, a few metres below. So clearly she does that just before impact with the ground destroys the spacestation. 141.101.98.225 22:13, 13 January 2022 (UTC)