However, while I read Khaos Komic regularly, I’ve got a few problems with it. The magical racism-free world that Katie mentioned is definitely part of it. It’s all very happy/angsty high school drama, despite the characters apparently being college-age… I’m also not super-pleased with the portrayal of the transgender characters. Oh, she’s male-to-female? She’s naturally short and cute and has no problems passing. Same goes for the female-to-male who’s freakishly tall for a biological female. Venus Envy, a trans comic, handles trans issues much better, IMO. I enjoy the comic, I do. It has lovely art, among other things. But I wish it wasn’t so fairy tale, everything goes swimmingly for everyone all the time.

A number of the other comics you mentioned sound wonderful, though! I’ll have to add them to my rotation. =)

One of his best narratives isn’t an actual comic, it was an observation in his blog about the number of movies with women getting the top billing or top 2 billing spots. It was ridiculous to see the number of people going into that thread and trying to excuse the status quo.

That doesn’t mean that criticism isn’t valid when it looks like he’s sending a bad or harmful message (or more often, through carelessness in how he sets up his punch lines, leaving a harmful message as a reasonable interpretation of the comic).

One of the most infamous XKCD strips in feminist discourse seems to be this one because it references the sexist notions of men-as-victims-in-divorce and crazy-scorned-women. But I always saw it as an absurdist riff on the idea of a restraining order, coupled with a smart woman zinging a guy who obviously treated her badly. While I haven’t necessarily changed my interpretation, reading the criticism has made me aware of how things like this can subtly reinforce negative narratives.

Definitely a lot of xkcd is open to different interpretations. I’ve seen that thread before, amazing, isn’t it?!

The idiot boy is too intimidated by the girl/scared of rejection to strike up a conversation, even if she might be interested in him.

I think the question becomes whether he is also criticizing the girl for not shirking traditional gender roles and actually initiating conversation – if he is, good for him, if not, you’ve got a point. I think it can be taken either way (the alt-text is equally ambiguous, though I think it does make what the girl is doing seem sillier). This isn’t one of his better strips – even on this particular topic – but I’m not sure it’s so cut-and-dried.

A lot of what one gets out of this one depends on what one thinks going in. But that’s even true when Munroe is being painfully obvious about his point. You wouldn’t believe how many men in his forum identified with the guy in Friends, even after having it explained to them.

Well, the restraining-order “joke” is the one that tore it for me.

You might be interested in this in-comments conversation at Shakesville about xkcd, woman-identified characters, and the Bechdel test; and this forum post by Quixotess analysing the content.

All I can say is, read through a few of the more recent storylines. If you don’t like the content or the humor, you’re just not going to enjoy the comic. For me, it’s a guilty pleasure.