High-Level Art

I've recently come to realize that most of the comics I enjoy are directed towards demographics that I'm not a part of. I'm not quite sure how this happened.

"Wikipedian Protestor" by XKCD

For most of my life, the only comics that I knew existed were the color "Funnies" that were printed with the newspaper on Sundays. Later, I realized that those same comic strips came out every day in the newspaper in a black-and-white format, which meant more humor throughout the week for me. I've never really read the newspaper, but there was a time in my life when I'd come home from school and read the comics page as part of my daily routine (which meant I always missed Saturdays and government holidays).

One of my favorite daily comics was, and is, Dilbert. Garfield only bored me, and The Family Circus was occasionally interesting, but Dilbert was always funny. I think part of the reason I liked Dilbert was because it was my oldest brother's favorite comic (I always assumed). My brother was away from home for two years when I was young, and my Dad would always cut out Dilbert comic strips and send them to him. I didn't always get Dilbert; it's office humor, about silly people with silly jobs and a silly boss - essentially, The Office, but for programmers and computer-science people. Of which I'm neither. I was also ten. And I still read Dilbert last when I read the comics (because I always read the funniest last). 

Now that I'm older, there are a few web-comics that I'm following. One of which is Cat Versus Human, and I realize that I completely fit the demographic of her blog (it's like a 'crazy cat lady' support group). However, I also religiously follow XKCD, "A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language." The bottom of every page of the XKCD website contains this warning: "This comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors)."

"Floor Tiles" by XKCD

I'm an English Lit major (well, technically I'm still in community college), but I find his more mathematical comics hilarious, especially when I understand them. He also posts a lot of pop-culture references, and, in case you're worried, he rarely if ever uses strong language or 'mature humor'. I've written a blog post before about my unnatural love for science and other technical stuff that I don't actually understand, and I've realized that this love is manifesting itself in the type of humor media I seek out.

Another webcomic I constantly follow is PHD, or 'Piled Higher and Deeper', "the ongoing chronicle of life (or the lack thereof) in grad school". I first found it when one of my brother's friends, who I happen to have on my Facebook list, linked to a recent strip. I thought it was hilarious, and, having a lot of time on my hands, I spent about a week curled up in an armchair around my netbook, reading through the PHD archives.

I'm going to stress again that I'm in community college. At the time of discovering PHD, I hadn't even started my first semester there yet. And I spent a week reading a comic about grad students at Stanford complaining about advisers and procrastinating writing their dissertations. PHD is printed in various university newspapers, and they're even coming out with a live-action movie adaption that I am super excited for. And I'm relatively sure I don't fit the intended demographic at all.

There are other comics that I like that I do fit the demographic for. I already mentioned Cat Versus Human, and when I was younger our newspaper used to publish FoxTrot, which also had a few scientific and pop cultural references (the artist went on hiatus for a while, and our newspaper didn't pick him up when he came back. I haven't been following him online since then, unfortunately). Maybe I just like to pretend I'm a smart, high-level thinker, and the humor section of my brain has started to believe it.

(When writing these blogs, I always gather a bunch of images and pick a few relevant ones to post. I collected a bunch of my favorite comic strips, but I didn't have enough room to show them off here. Instead, I'll give you a few links to them. From XKCD, some favorites are: "Time Travel," "Nighttime Stories," and "Cat Proximity." From Dilbert, a couple of the best I found from a quick Google Image search: "Numbers," "Webbish," and "Marketing." From PHD, there are: "Motivation Level," "How to Look Busy Even if You're Not," and "Seminar Bingo.")