https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=feedcontributions&feedformat=atom&user=TobyRush 2026-04-11T00:40:41Z User contributions MediaWiki 1.30.0 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=381:_Mobius_Battle&diff=55861 2013-12-24T14:33:51Z

<p>TobyRush: /* Explanation */ felt like Randall's careful typographic symmetry deserved some attention.</p> <hr /> <div>{{comic<br /> | number = 381<br /> | date = February 8, 2008<br /> | title = Mobius Battle<br /> | image = mobius battle.png<br /> | titletext = Films need to do this more, if only to piss off the people who have to feed it into the projector.<br /> }}<br /> <br /> ==Explanation==<br /> [[File:mobius battle.gif|right|frame|The Möbius comic strip as an animated GIF.]]<br /> A {{w|Möbius strip}} is an object with only one surface and one edge. It can be created by taking a strip of paper and twisting it 180 degrees before attaching both ends together.<br /> <br /> The idea of the Möbius strip has been used here to create a comic strip that could potentially loop forever. In it, a man is standing in front of a ball. Then another man runs in and kicks the first man out of the panel. The second man then turns away, retaining the first man's original position, only flipped horizontally. Because of the nature of the Möbius strip, if the comic strip were to be printed out in such a way that the comic could be seen on both sides of the paper, the comic would repeat, so that the second man would become the first man, and someone else, potentially the original first person, would push them out of the comic becoming himself the first man.<br /> <br /> The comic's viability as a Möbius strip is preserved the use of symmetrical letters in a palindromic word to denote laughing (&quot;HAHAHAH&quot;) as well as using symmetrical punctuation for the other character's [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/grawlix#English grawlixes.]<br /> <br /> Finally, at the title text, [[Randall]] jokes that he would like to see actual films do this solely as a joke on projectionists, who would have no way to feed a Mobius strip film reel properly into a normal projector.<br /> <br /> ==Transcript==<br /> :[A man is standing next to a ball, a flash appears on the left side of the panel.]<br /> :[Another man comes in from the left, preparing to kick the ball.]<br /> :[The other man kicks the ball into the first man's head.]<br /> :[The first man is lying outside of the frame, second man points and laughs.]<br /> :Second man: HAHAHAH<br /> :First man: &lt;nowiki&gt;!#^*!*&lt;/nowiki&gt;<br /> :[Second man is now standing next to the ball.]<br /> :[To the right, the strip above is looped around like a film strip, but a one-half-turn is put into the loop to make it a Mobius strip.]<br /> <br /> {{comic discussion}}<br /> [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]</div>

TobyRush