I just have a simple, obvious point about xkcd: It’s not a webcomic. It’s a series of consciousness-raising graphs, with some comics thrown in to kill time during the intense creation of said graphs.

For instance, today xkcd has mapped out the U.S. economy at five orders of magnitude. It’s impressive and informative. “Cartoonist” Randall Munroe points out both factoids (Coke could literally buy the world a Coke with their marketing budget) and fundamental insights (the 400 richest Americans are worth more than the poorest 150+ million).

This is suuuuper not a cartoon! It’s even less of a cartoon than the height chart, the film character interaction charts, the online communities map and the Google phrase graphs.

And that is OK. I just think we should reclassify xkcd from “webcomic” to “what ‘infographics’ should actually mean”.