xkcd’s ‘Click and Drag’ creates entire world for readers to explore

Creators continue finding ways to use digital comics that print can’t replicate. The new “Click and Drag” strip at xkcd invites readers to do exactly what the title suggests as they navigate their way around an enormous world of silhouetted landscapes and stick-figure people having adventures and quiet moments alike. It’s an amazing, immersive, very time-consuming, but rewarding experience to explore the whole thing.

For those less patient, there’s also a version that shows the whole world at once and lets readers zoom in and out, moving more quickly. It’s faster, but it loses the aspect of discovery that clicking and dragging across a confined panel has. I recommend spending as much time as you can clicking and dragging (be sure to go down holes; there’s more underground!), then use the big map to go back and see what you missed.

International Digital Times and Geekosystem suggest that, at 165,888 pixels by 79,872 pixels (which takes up 5.52 MB of space), cartoonist Randall Munroe has likely created the world’s largest webcomic. Erik McClure breaks down the numbers, including estimates of how long it might’ve taken Munroe to create the comic.

xkcd: The Movie!

Well, kinda. Animator Noam Raby and musician Olga Nunes have teamed up to create “I Love xkcd,” an animated musical version of webcomic god Randall Munroe’s xkcd strip “xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel.” (Which itself was a riff on the aforementioned basic cable network’s jingle-based ad campaign.)

Raby’s actually done this before, previously taking a crack at Munroe’s look at when computer love goes bad, “Letting Go.” Look for both movies to make their IMAX 3-D debut this holiday season.*

(Via Ezra Klein.)

* Do not actually do this