427: Bad Timing
| Bad Timing |
 Title text: Protip: Even without the red spiders, never have that conversation halfway through a balloon ride. |
Explanation
Cueball breaks up with Megan in the middle of a hot air balloon ride. Then the red spiders attack.
The red spiders are among the earliest xkcd characters, first appearing in 8: Red spiders.
As the protip in the title text states, a break-up conversation while you are stranded in an inaccessible location is very poor manners. Also, the suggestion may be interpreted that breaking up in a hot air balloon is a very dangerous way to do it; the reaction may result in one or both parties falling out of the basket, or at least make the remainder of the flight very awkward.
This was the first comic to give a protip in the title text, but several have followed, as can be seen in the protip category.
The full series of Red Spiders comics:
- 8: Red Spiders, the first one.
- 43: Red Spiders 2, in which the spiders begin building.
- 47: Counter-Red Spiders, in which the humans begin a counter-offensive.
- 126: Red Spiders Cometh, in which the spiders attack a city.
- 427: Bad Timing, this one.
- 442: xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel, in which it appears briefly in the 14th panel crawling over a cube.
Transcript
- [Cueball and Megan, flying in a hot air balloon that takes up most of the panel.]
- Cueball: I like you. I'm just not feeling the relationship.
- [The hot air balloon is now further away, and a rough sketch of the ground below is shown.]
- Cueball: I'm sorry.
- [Only the basket of the hot air balloon is shown, with the rest being cut off by the edge of the panel.]
- Cueball: It's just bad timing. Me with my classes, you with your work, the spiders...
- Megan: The what?
- [Red Spiders crowd onto the balloon, causing it to begin to fall. Cueball and Megan look panicked.]
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Here, the red spiders appear to be able to fly, whereas in previous red spiders comics they consistently relied on the floating blocks, cooperating in forming chains to get from one to the other. Even in 126: Red Spiders Cometh, the spiders are still just riding on the blocks. Richmond tudor (talk) 05:13, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
- they're jumping from a place we can't see 173.245.54.20 18:10, 27 November 2015 (UTC)
- as the guy above said, they're not flying, they're falling which is pretty clear from what's happening to the hot air balloon stevethenoob 11:08, 27 June 2024 (UTC)
The background looks like XKCD #4 4: Landscape (sketch) 162.158.255.136 16:38, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
