If he’s become less like Seinfeld, how is that a bad thing? “Like Seinfeld” means “unfunny”.
I’m not sure what’s gimmicky about putting an astonishing amount of effort into a creating a story about a possible geological event on Earth in the far future, but whatever. Tastes differ. I like xkcd’s “normal” strips as well, but they’re basically insightful gags at best. I smile and almost immediately forget about them. xkcd’s best stuff (which includes the poster-style stuff like gazpacho mentioned) sticks with me well after the fact–it has enough meat to keep me thinking about it. Frankly, that’s my metric for evaluating the worth of just about any creative work.
I’ve always found xkcd to be hit and miss and it’s currently no different.
Not going to debate that here, but I will simply link you to SeinfeldIsUnfunny.
'Ja miss the part where it says ‘Not to be confused with the opinion that Seinfeld wasn’t funny even when it was original’, because that is a key point.
And Seinfeld has never, ever been funny. Seinfeld is aggressively, offensively, unfunny.
But this is brilliant: http://www.xkcd.com/1370/
And I also liked screenshot, urn, and exoplanet.
Also, for everyone positing that he’s working on something big, he finished it.
I think Munroe is still a little burnt out from the massive “Time” project he finished last year.
I just read through the last 5 of them or so, and I’ve enjoyed all of them and don’t see any decrease in quality from “the good ol days”