Comic #734

I liked today's comic. I know zombie movies aren't known for their verisimilitude, but it's still fun to mock them every now and again. Plus! this is the first xkcd that mocks the genre, rather than throwing in some reference to String Theorists being dumb or those wacky scientists trying to get a low Erdős number.

Source Comic



Redone Comic (click for larger image)




At the same time, the comic had its flaws, chiefly that the art told the story yet the dialogue repeated it. This is an annoying convention of zombie movies, sure, but the point is that these guys AREN'T falling into clichéd traps. It's simple math: Existence of Zombie - Desire to Keep Zombie = Go grab the gun, Megan! You don't need to work for NASA to figure that one out.

The other, more fatal flaw was that the first two yellow panels are too far apart. When you read through it, your eye is focused on the storyline transpiring below the box. You see a yellow box of narration, then you four panels of an event, then you notice the other yellow box and your mind physically has to recall that there's narration. It *might* have been just fine, except that there's dialogue in the general area of the yellow boxes, which *definitely* breaks the format. It's choppy. By simplifying it to two panels you remove the unnecessary dialogue and artwork while simultaneously keeping the two yellow boxes next to each other and thus much easier to remember.