Jeff Stuart - Memoirs of a CPUNERD

I was playing around with Google Reader the other day, looking for more ways to stay current on all things nerdy. The Reader team recently unveiled what they call “bundles.” Bundles are a group of feeds with a common theme, and these are automatically generated. There are no people sitting behind a machine, grouping like feeds together. Google found a way to do this automatically.

An easy bundle to guess is “sports”; this contained roughly ten feeds such as “Top ESPN Stories” and “Sports Illustrated.” I found several bundles of interest, one was “iPhone/Android”, another was “Soccer”, I found a few on various programming languages, but one, when expanded, surprised me: “Web Comics.”

I already have a few in my collection. PBF, XKCD,  PHD, etc., etc. But one that I didn’t have is called Questionable Content. The basic gist that I’ve gathered so far is that it’s about an “Indie” boy and his group of friends. I went back and started reading the archives. Most comics tend to have a slow start. I remember going back through the first thirty or fourty XKCD strips, and it was pretty hit or miss. Questionable Content though… I’m not sure why I’m still reading it. I think I must have at least a slight case of OCD. The ten or so newest strips are interesting, but it’s more of a relationship-drama comic then a comedy. More than half of the strips aren’t meant to be funny, they’re more expositive than humurours. I’m on comic #266 now. Perhaps the author had a really long story to tell, or perhaps not. I think I’ll finish reading the other thousand strips over the next few weeks and determine if I really like it, or if it was just that I committed so much that I needed to finish it.

I’m probably just used to my funny, niche comics. XKCD focuses on science and tech, PHD focuses on my school life, Penny Arcade is about games, and PBF… well PBF is just freaking weird. But they are all amusing with virtually every strip. QC does have its moments, but they, so far, much sparser than these others.

P.S. The manner in which QC has a lot of longer, intertwined stories reminds me of CAD. I actually am not the biggest fan of CAD. It can be very funny every now and then, but the recent “Mesocron of Knowledge” that lasted twenty strips, didn’t have an ending, wasn’t funny, and in fact just plain sucked. Don’t disappoint me QC!