Xkcd
| xkcd | |
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Panel from "Philosophy" (#220)
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| Author(s) | Randall Munroe |
| Website | xkcd.com |
| Current status / schedule | Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays |
| Launch date | September 2005 |
| Genre(s) | Geek humor |
xkcd, sometimes styled XKCD, is a webcomic created by Randall Munroe. The comic's tagline describes it as "A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language". Munroe states on the comic's website that the name of the comic is not an acronym but "just a word with no phonetic pronunciation".
The subject matter of the comic varies from statements on life and love to mathematical and scientific in-jokes. Some strips feature simple humor or pop-culture references. Although it has a cast of stick figures, the comic occasionally features landscapes and intricate mathematical patterns such as fractals, graphs and charts. New comics are added three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, although on some occasions they have been added every weekday.
Munroe has released two spinoff books from the comic. His 2014 book What If? is based on his blog of the same name which answers unusual science questions from readers in a light-hearted but scientifically grounded way. The What If column on the site is updated with new articles from time to time. His 2015 book Thing Explainer was based on comic No. 1133 ("Up Goer Five") and explains scientific concepts using only the one thousand most commonly used words in English.
As a student, Munroe often drew charts, maps, and "stick figure battles" in the margins of his school notebooks, besides solving mathematical problems unrelated to his classes. By the time he graduated from university, Munroe's "piles of notebooks" became too large and he started scanning the images.
xkcd began in September 2005, when Munroe decided to scan his doodles and put them on his personal website. According to Munroe, the comic's name has no particular significance and is simply a four-letter word without a phonetic pronunciation, something he describes as "a treasured and carefully guarded point in the space of four-character strings." In January 2006, the comic was split off into its own website, created in collaboration with Derek Radtke.
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