427: Bad Timing

Bad Timing

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Title text: Protip: Even without the red spiders, never have that conversation halfway through a balloon ride.

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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.

Transcript

[Cueball and Megan, flying in a hot air balloon.]

Cueball: I like you. I'm just not feeling the relationship.

Cueball: I'm sorry.

Cueball: It's just bad timing. Me with my classes, you with your work, the spiders...

Megan: The what?

[Red Spiders crowd onto balloon, causing it to fall.]

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Discussion

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)

E V O L U T I O N Caliban (talk) 08:50, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

The background looks like XKCD #4 4: Landscape (sketch) 162.158.255.136 16:38, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

The spiders here and in 442: xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel have shorter legs and lighter colouration than in the previous comics. The one in 442 is more brightly coloured than these ones, but I think that's just an accident. My guess is that there are two types of red spider, or the spiders have rapidly evolved. [Edit: I think the ones in previous comics are builder spiders, and these are a type of red spider specialized for combat. In 126: Red Spiders Cometh, the spiders are assembling an attack fleet of mobile blocks that the combat spiders will ride over the city and then jump off of to deploy spider-silk parachutes and attack the city.] PDesbeginner (talk) 17:09, 31 December 2025 (UTC)
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