"Wait for it."

May 1, 2013 1:04 PM

At the end of March xkcd posted a comic called 'time' of two people sitting on a beach. It wasn't particularly funny. But then people noticed that the comic was slowly changing. Every 30 minutes the picture would update, and the characters would slowly begin to move. They're still moving to this day. Once this was noticed the xkcd forums began to go a little crazy, with folks staying up until the wee hours to watch for pic updates (now christened Newpix). The comic was now The One True Comic, the thread The One True Thread. A Wiki soon followed. In case you're curious what all the fuss is about, here's the full comic animated by frame.
posted by leotrotsky (50 comments total)

Whoa. That's AWESOME. Thanks so much for posting this.
posted by zarq at 1:12 PM on May 1, 2013

Holy shit, it's still going on?

I saw it that day, followed it for most of the day, checked out some Reddit threads about it and found the animated versions. Then I got distracted and moved on to other things, figuring it had played out by the time the next comic came out.

Thanks for reminding me. I can't believe it's still happening.
posted by bondcliff at 1:16 PM on May 1, 2013 [5 favorites]

Bemused the day it started; completely dumbstruck now.
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 1:22 PM on May 1, 2013

Dammit, I should have bet the over in the "how long?" pool.
posted by whuppy at 1:24 PM on May 1, 2013 [2 favorites]

I have been enjoying keeping up with this.
posted by shothotbot at 1:29 PM on May 1, 2013

Yeah, I figured something was supposed to happen in that comic, but unfortunately I couldn't devote the time (work, family, etc). I'm glad there's a place to watch the progression.
posted by CancerMan at 1:34 PM on May 1, 2013

I love the way this plays with the webcomic medium. I mean, we're used to there being a different comic at www.xkcd.com every couple of days, so in theory it's not that different for www.xkcd.com/1190 to change from hour to hour or whatever, but in practice it comes off as if you opened a print comic and the characters were doing something completely different from what they were last week.

It kind of reminds me of Darths & Droids #50. D&D is a screengrab comic by the "Comic Irregulars" that tells the story of Star Wars as a tabletop RPG campaign being made up on the fly, and in comic 50 they decided to do a gag where they looked into the world where Star Wars is just some guys' D&D storyline (which means the movies don't exist), and wrote an episode of the comic the Irregulars were doing in that world - Harry Potter. Then 50 comics later, they added a newspost to that fake comic with a link to the comic that was being made in its world. And so on and so on. Every three months, another trip down the rabbit hole. It is now nineteen layers deep.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:37 PM on May 1, 2013 [15 favorites]

How many frames was that?
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 1:45 PM on May 1, 2013

This is the sort of thing that could never have happened in the days before stick-figure technology.
posted by Western Infidels at 1:50 PM on May 1, 2013 [12 favorites]

1024 frames

or 2^10 frames.
posted by triceryclops at 1:50 PM on May 1, 2013

So what happened in the end?
posted by laconic skeuomorph at 1:55 PM on May 1, 2013

related economist article: http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/04/web-comics?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/itsabouttime
posted by mulligan at 1:56 PM on May 1, 2013 [1 favorite]

So what happened in the end?

We all died.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 1:56 PM on May 1, 2013 [3 favorites]

xkcd posted a comic [...] It wasn't particularly funny.

agreed for all values of "comic"
posted by MangyCarface at 1:58 PM on May 1, 2013 [3 favorites]

Wait for it.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 2:00 PM on May 1, 2013

they seem like a good couple.
posted by sweetkid at 2:00 PM on May 1, 2013 [1 favorite]

agreed for all values of "comic"

Xkcd is the Amanda Palmer of the webcomic world.
posted by Sebmojo at 2:10 PM on May 1, 2013 [5 favorites]

This is great. Thanks for sharing.
posted by deezil at 2:11 PM on May 1, 2013

Randall Munroe has become absolutely insufferable ever since he married Neil deGrasse Tyson.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 2:14 PM on May 1, 2013 [47 favorites]

MangyCarface: "agreed for all values of "comic""

Haters gonna hate.
posted by Chrysostom at 2:18 PM on May 1, 2013

It's still a lot of fun when Randall decides to get experimental (although sometimes even that misfires, like the "Externalities" comic from a few days after this one) but his punchline- and chart-based humor has gotten kinda stale over the last, y'know, five years. It happens.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:20 PM on May 1, 2013

How many frames was that?

Not over yet as far as I can tell.
posted by kmz at 2:26 PM on May 1, 2013 [1 favorite]

*whew* It didn't end at 1024.
posted by uosuaq at 2:31 PM on May 1, 2013

Is there anything on the internets that's better than xkcd?
posted by 3.2.3 at 2:39 PM on May 1, 2013

*whew* It didn't end at 1024

No, we're all the way up to 2013 now.
posted by sweetkid at 2:41 PM on May 1, 2013 [1 favorite]

Is there anything on the internets that's better than xkcd?

Porn.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 2:41 PM on May 1, 2013 [5 favorites]

Is there anything on the internets that's better than xkcd?

I dunno I got a pretty funny email forward from my great aunt the other day.
posted by shakespeherian at 2:44 PM on May 1, 2013 [13 favorites]

Thanks to the people who don't like xkcd for coming into the discussion about an xkcd comic to let us know.
posted by markr at 3:06 PM on May 1, 2013 [40 favorites]

laconic skeuomorph: So what happened in the end?

The aliens turned out to be her goddamned father!
posted by dr_dank at 3:12 PM on May 1, 2013 [3 favorites]

Is there anything on the internets that's better than xkcd?

Let me tell you about Homestuck.
posted by Rory Marinich at 3:34 PM on May 1, 2013 [3 favorites]

Xkcd is the Amanda Palmer of the webcomic world.

Someday comparing things to Amanda Palmer will be the Amanda Palmer of metaphors.
posted by Gygesringtone at 3:38 PM on May 1, 2013 [5 favorites]

Let me tell you about Rory constantly badgering me to look at Homestuck.
posted by shakespeherian at 3:39 PM on May 1, 2013 [1 favorite]

Are they building ICBMs?
posted by lordaych at 3:47 PM on May 1, 2013

"Someday comparing things to Amanda Palmer will be the Amanda Palmer of metaphors."

Will they call it "Palming" the conversation?
posted by Kevin Street at 4:03 PM on May 1, 2013

I have been really enjoying keeping an eye on this. I have resisted searching for the animated version with the 90% of the frames I've missed. It was nice to catch up; I'll catch up again on the missed frames in another couple of months.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 4:09 PM on May 1, 2013

THIS is the best xkcd ever!
posted by jmd82 at 4:12 PM on May 1, 2013 [1 favorite]

There are times when someone's creativity makes me want to hang out with them and just talk for a while; there are other times when I realize that I would probably just gawk and stutter if I had an opportunity to hang out with them.

This one falls into category two.
posted by Mooski at 4:15 PM on May 1, 2013 [3 favorites]

Whoa. I assumed it was over when it started fading to white, I didn't realise it was still going. Part of me suspects it will be a clever looping thing, but most of me thinks it's a very sweet memoir / love letter.
posted by lucidium at 4:42 PM on May 1, 2013 [1 favorite]

The aliens turned out to be her goddamned father!

This also describes Prometheus.
posted by flaterik at 6:02 PM on May 1, 2013

Someday comparing things to Amanda Palmer will be the Amanda Palmer of metaphors.

You know who else compared things to Amanda Palmer, and was Hitler?
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:40 PM on May 1, 2013 [7 favorites]

The whole set of Time at your own pace. includes a scroll bar, pause, and reverse buttons.
posted by jjj606 at 8:02 PM on May 1, 2013 [7 favorites]

So..is there an obligatory XKCD for this? You know there is.
posted by Xoebe at 8:39 PM on May 1, 2013

I'm still expecting this to be an extended setup for a gag where the two are unexpectedly eaten by a pair of velociraptors.
posted by schmod at 9:41 PM on May 1, 2013

Only one thing can happen to a sandcastle - it gets washed away.

Unless it's kicked over by some very large boorish fellow.
posted by Segundus at 12:33 AM on May 2, 2013

Are we sure this has finished? I'm on frame 1036, and it doesn't look like an end to me.
posted by zoo at 1:55 AM on May 2, 2013

I love XKCD, thanks for sharing this.
posted by Vindaloo at 4:16 AM on May 2, 2013

Has there been ANY word as to when this will be done?...
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:52 AM on May 2, 2013

I don't think Randall has openly acknowledged anything about the comic.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 11:57 AM on May 2, 2013

"I don't know how the sea works"

"I don't know how anything works."
posted by Buckt at 12:29 PM on May 5, 2013 [1 favorite]

In about 15 hours, this comic will have as many frames the total number of xkcd comics to date.
posted by louigi at 7:38 PM on May 7, 2013 [3 favorites]