Is when you can keep up with the attempt to land a probe on a comet half a billion kilometres away from Earth by updates to a popular online comic.
And seeing the excitement online about the landing today, it puts to shame the notion that we need manned space exploration to keep people interested.
What today’s XKCD reminded me off.
XKCD is the best non-continuity webcomic I’m reading right now and strips like this are why. Randall Munroe knows geekdom, the splendor and silliness both and is able to celebrate it without being smug or mock it without being nasty. He also draws the neatest stick figures since Matt Feazle.
the best continuty strip is of course Questionable Content, by Jeph Jacques., which I’ve been following from not long after he started it. It’s a comic you get the most out if you’ve been following it for a while, but you can read the archive in a single afternoon if you so please, guiltily clicking away at work hoping the boss isn’t looking. What I like about QC is that, yes, it is another twentysomething vaguely hip slackers and their romantic entanglements, but Jacques isn’t afraid to change the status quo and actually let his characters develop. The art as well has improved hugely, from servicable to a delight in its own right.
The perils of trawling through the XKCD archive.