Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
- For a list of comics, see Comics featuring Barrel Boy.
- For the comic series, see The Boy and his Barrel.
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This explanation is incomplete:
Love the new description of Barrel Boy, but it needs to be simplified a bit. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!
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Barrel Boy is a
stick figure character in
xkcd. He only appears in the
The Boy and his Barrel series, an early six-comic story whose parts were randomly published during the first several dozen strips. The last image on the
what if? article
Niagara Straw features
Beret Guy riding in a barrel, which may be a reference to Barrel Boy.
Barrel Boy is very different from what would quickly become the xkcd stick figure style, since he has a face and a human-like body. He is recognised as his own character, distinct from even the earliest Cueball stick figure, by both a great gulf of style and by personality. Though the artistic development of style from cartoonish-realism to barebones-stickfigurey might well have included a 'missing link' or two of Barrel Boy 'growing up' into the author-avatar/Rob, the debut to the world (in either its pre-website order, or numbered as per xkcd.com) intermingles the two stages of evolution in a way that at least makes it clear that Randall considers them parallel art styles, not sequential. There are theories that this character is who grows up to be Beret Guy, while one could perhaps also directly link with Jack and Jill, which pops up years later, infrequently as contrast to the contemporary Cueballs/other adults.
