It’s coming, the Geek Singularity! A review of the webcomic “Weregeek”

This webcomic, “Weregeek”, is one of my favorites, mainly because it deals with all kinds of nerdy, geeky, fanboy things, like RPGs, sci-fi, games, comics, etc. The characters are all familiar tropes, but the creator has a lot of fun putting them into unusual and amusing stories (the Halloween arc had the characters re-creating a Scooby Doo-type episode during a midnight horror movie show!). She has a somewhat continuing story concerning a shadowy organization that is trying to eliminate all nerds and geeks, by brainwashing them into “normality” (perish forbid!), but the characters are learning to fight back by enhancing their “inner geek“! The title of the comic, “Weregeek” is a play on “werewolf”, but refers to a “normal” guy who discovers an urge to play Dungeons and Dragons, one night when the moon is full! He finds that he likes role-playing games when he stumbles across the rest of the gang in the midst of a vampire-themed live-action role play (LARP) game, thinking it’s real.

One neat thing about the strip is how much in tune with current “geeky” media the author stays. The latest (as of this post) strip mentions the upcoming Shakespeare movie, “Much Ado About Nothing” that will be produced by Joss Whedon, starring many of Whedon’s friends who have acted in many of his other works. Of course, to fans, Whedon’s most famous (and infamous) work is “Firefly”, but he’s also big in role-play circles for creating “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and its spinoffs. What most people don’t know (at least I didn’t before) is that Whedon has his friends over occasionally to act out Shakespeare plays, just for fun! It seems they had so much fun, that he decided to get them together to make a movie.

The fun part of today’s comic is the discussion among the characters, describing how much the “geeky” actors and creators are working together on projects, which leads one to say that “all the geeky things are merging together”, into what one of the other characters calls “The Geek Singularity!” Of course, this is a geeky reference to how giant stars eventually collapse into black holes, or “singularities“, once they reach a certain age. It also refers to a cultural/technological event that author Vernor Vinge calls “The Technological Singularity,” referring to the point when technology advances so much and so quickly that no one can describe it, because the concepts will be too strange.

Naturally, this tickles the geeky funny bone of your nerdy correspondent! (The geeky funny bone is located somewhere behind the eyes and between the ears ^_^ ) I wanted to let everyone who reads my blog here (all two of you! ^__^) about this comic, and why I think other nerds and geeks will like it. Start at the beginning of the archive, read a few of the arcs, and see if you agree!