Vexxarr

This week we visit the amusing (well more like hilarious...or maybe ludicrous actually fits better) webcomic Vexxarr. The frequency with which this strip pulls off yet another witty punchline isn't even funny (for one, you'd never find something as lame as a double meaning of "not funny" in Vexxarr). Before Roget's fails me, one with the intro!

Vexxarr is a servant to the Emperor of Bleen laundering his socks who happens to be the only alternate invasion force leader available on wednesdays. Armed with a sarcastic robot minion he is dispatched to conquer Earth (what else do space aliens ever try to conquer?). Needless to say, he quickly becomes the prisoner of the Hu-mons who, after subjecting him such humiliations as human holidays, medical examinations and installing linux on his starship's computer, release him.

So fleeing Earth (as well as his emperor) Vexxarr sets out to hide in the dregs of the galaxy. Poor luck and attraction to the most absurd of aliens lands him on a planet inhabited by depressed and co-dependent aliens, a race of doom-weapon building robots and several other civilizations of which the galaxy happily has no knowledge.

The Conversations with and between AIs have to be my favorite. For one the robot is messed up beyond belief: forget Data's quest to be more human, Vexxarr's minion-bot has delusions of (as seen on TV) humanity. To make things better this strip has two intelligent computers which are often in opposition. And the computers act so much better than most science fiction. Instead of going after the irrationality in daily life that human satirist tackle, they find the more prevalent (and often ignored) things, like grammatical violations.

The dialogue is well-tailored to situations and characters. "What in the name of Isaac Asimov is wrong with you," Vexxarr screams at a planet of naïve robots (if that one doesn't make sense to you, first bookcase in your library's science fiction section). This improves the AI's speech drastically; cheap byte/bite puns have no place here. Human concepts are translated onto mechanical construction (often allowing absurd concepts to be reached via rational reasoning).

During Vexxarr's stay on Earth, he touches on a variety of topics. Our culture always provides numerous hooks for satire. A few are exploited and are well-protected against repetition: Short visits to the Bleen and Vexxarr's running conflict with robotics are interspersed, and before the best of Earth's exhausted, Vexxarr sets off for the quirks of the universe.

Sometimes simple one-shots, others are gradually built up through weeks of smaller gags, by Vexxarr has yet to leave off without a punchline.