The definition of irony, courtesy of the irony-proof:

[theweaselking]

Fun fact: A hundred times as many people will see this online as who could *possibly* ever see it in print. In ten years, a hundred thousand times as many people will have seen it online.

Comments

[lurkerwithout.livejournal.com]

Fix'd

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

NICE

[maelorin]

excellent dude :)

[i did something similar, in my head, as i looked at the original strip...]

[sophia8.livejournal.com]

MOAR FIX'D (http://terminalkitty.tumblr.com/post/42166724107/itswalky-adamthealien-my-tumblr-and-twitter)

[kafziel.livejournal.com]

This one being of particular note (http://25.media.tumblr.com/2a60f1b709253b8bd702a724f4fa2f6f/tumblr_mhm7mqgw1C1qdlcpxo5_1280.jpg). He is just the worst.

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

4chan had one (in full colour, presumably taken from the website version of the strip) with the final panel from Ctrl Alt Delete's infamous miscarriage strip in the gap.

And in that case, you kinda have to admit that the comic makes a strong argument for print media.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Umm, the whole point here is irony. The week involved the new guys talking about getting rid of the old guys, the old guys replacing them, and here being clueless. Trudeau has been pretty good about embracing new tech for his strip, and laughing at himself.

[fortysevenbteg.livejournal.com]

If so, that presents a terrible decision on his part, considering how, without context, it makes him look like a scared luddite. :P

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Well, reading the whole week of the arc is probably too much to ask of the attention-deficit generation, i know.

[fortysevenbteg.livejournal.com]

Reading the whole arc in the newspaper = context.

Reading the comic on LJ or Reddit or wherever, spread around virally by itself = without context.

Until you mentioned it, the thought hadn't even occurred to me (nor a lot of people, apparently) that this was not what it seemed at face value. There aren't really any clues in the strip to suggest otherwise.

So yeah, it is too much to ask. The burden is on the author to create a strip that can stand alone -- by either blatantly inserting a numeric device ("2 of 3", "Part 5", etc.) to imply continuity, or crafting the joke just right so it doesn't require you to have seen the previous ones (harder, sure).

The number of people reading newspapers on a daily basis, at this point, is probably low enough where this almost certainly happened to a large number of people, even if they did read it on dead trees first.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Reading the whole arc online (which i do) is easy. It is not the author's burden to create a strip that can stand alone; it's far from the only arc-based strip in newspapers (or on the Web) and none of them use your particular device. Basically, you lot are complaining that you don't get the joke, and that it's the author's job to ensure you get the joke, when the problem is that you walked into the middle of a story and then complained that it wasn't funny.

When you find a quote out of context that you don't like, do you also get indignant when someone points out that you should look at the context?

[pappy-legba.livejournal.com]

I didn't read it like that at all. The sarcasm was pretty clear to me.

[monodelamuerte.livejournal.com]

Go online to see this comic in color!