posted on February 19th, 2008 in Content, Merch, Music, Web Comics, undependence 

Webcomics: Nerd Day Rising!

According to some highly-regarded scholars of the intersection of music and popular culture (by which I mean, whoever wrote the first entry that came up after my hasty Google search), David Lee Roth once said that the reason most music critics love Elvis Costello is because most music critics look like Elvis Costello. (For those who have never really gotten over the nerd vs. jock tensions in high school — Hi! I’m Mike! — it should be pointed out that Costello later got nominated for an Oscar and commissioned by the Danish Royal Opera, while Roth is now doing this.)

The point is — or should be — the relative acceptability of nerdiness is a somewhat recent phenomenon, and the Internet is helping the bespectacled and pallid among us finally convince the world that knowledge is actually pretty cool. There’s a whole slew of webcomics out there celebrating, and not apologizing for, their creators’ love of periodic tables, quadratic equations, obscure art history, and all other kinds of fancy-pants book-learnin’. Here’s two of them:

• XKCD bills itself as “a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language.” Which sounds a lot like my college career. Except for the romance. Also, I failed math. Twice. But even if you score a zero on your AP Calculus test (yes, it happens. Hi! I’m Mike!) you’ll be able to appreciate physicist/artist Randall Munroe’s skewed take on dating librarians, Snapple, and poisson distributions. The XKCD store, temporarily closed, will hopefully return soon, enabling us all to get our fix of “Science: It Works, Bitches!” shirts.

• I’ve written before about Dorothy Gambrell’s brilliant Cat and Girl, but it’s hard for me to say enough good things about this innovative comic strip by the Tucson-based musician and artist. It’s not just because she’s one of the only ones with the guts to say that pirates are “an overworked Internet meme,” but also because of her shout-outs to figures as random as The Captain and Tenille, Count Vronsky, and Jasper Johns. She’s also a leading proponent of geek unity (which, as Girl suggests, could have saved Veronica Mars). Visit her store while you’re waiting for the deus ex machina.

Comics like these have a natural, ever-growing audience: folks who like to laugh and learn at the same time, and who appreciate the work of creators who are hopefully too witty to write a tooth-achingly earnest phrase like “laugh and learn at the same time.” Webcomics are a natural medium for this kind of humor, but you can also see it (very occasionally) on television (The Daily Show, No Reservations), in music (Sufjan Stevens’ history-laden state-themed albums), and — if my financiers come through — even off-Broadway musicals (the hopefully forthcoming Ewing!: The Crazy, Funky Odyssey of America’s First Secretary of the Interior, As Told by Mike). The nerdcore artists and writers of today are refusing to buy into the theory that the world is being dumbed down, and their audiences are rewarding them with not just attention, but ardent fandom.

The nerd revolution won’t be televised, but thanks to the nerdcore webcomic movement (such as it is), it might just be showing up in your RSS feed.

  by Macon on Feb. 19th, 2008

Don’t forget Nerdcore Hip Hop! http://frontalot.com