Is it just me, or has the comic really declined in quality lately? Just when I think it's getting better, it produces a cluster of weak strips.

@Reg, how about the one where he murders that guy for no reason? Also, what's with the random capitalization?

Inkblot, you are not alone! I have made my feelings about this sufficiently known elsewhere, so I won't go into detail here .. unless I need to ..

You got it exactly. You would have to be him for all of them to make sense. For me, the Math/Sci/Computer are funny while the romance is iffy. Its different for everyone, naturally leading to everyone complaining.

PS: No, its not declining

-Lemur

Is it a decline or is it just that he writes for a spectrum of people. The romance ones, the math ones the popculture ones are all aimed a different people. When it hits you it will probably miss another person. It's the luck of the draw.

It is indeed declining. For about its first 300-400 strips, I tended to enjoy it no matter which of its subtitle topics it handled. Now... it's just cheap references to nerd culture masquerading as actual jokes, increasingly creepy sex stuff, and an overall quality of delivery that smacks of a bad sitcom. Methinks people are willing to forgive or ignore the low quality of humor because it's about topics they enjoy, but for me that just makes it even more insulting.

Yes, Lemur, yes it is. It's in part that he writes about many subjects, but he has been deviating from his basic 4 pillars(Romace, Math, Sarcasm and Language) quite wildly, unless you are willing to accept very open definitions of those all. Let's say xkcd has been much more about sex than romance, for starters.

Also, despite what I saw on this same wiki, his art is criticizable, yes. It was good, even if they were stick figures. He did cool backgrounds, managed to try cool effects, he tried to improve. Nowadays he just makes black-on-white sticks with barely any background, and sometimes even the heads aren't connected to the torsos.

Usually with me Randall manages to make one decent or barely decent strip and then a bunch of meh-ish to horrible strips.

(And might I add... strip 631? Oh, boy...)

While I wouldn't say its so bad its horrible, the science strips really aren't funny. To summarize: look numbers! look, a jerk's attempt at a witty observation! Its funny LAUGH! I do genuinley like the strips with black hat guy. The strip could focus entirely on him and it'd probably be an improvement.