Question - 686

There is an age-old legend about this English town X. The rhyme in the first visual is one example of this legend. A famous writer used X as a nickname for another city in the magazine shown in the second visual. This nickname came to refer to the city itself in the early 20th century and even now, there are many shops in the city with this name. Shown in the third visual is one such famous one. X is also famous in another context. Identify X.

Aside: Sporadic updates shall be the norm for a while since things are a bit crazy at work.

Question - 614

Identify and connect.

Answer: The character Bane (left) in the upcoming Christopher Nolan movie Dark Knight Rises will be portrayed by Tom Hardy (right). Ameya, Hari, matti tapaninen, cobra 2020 fan, Kate Spartan, and Iam.

Question - 609

Two different art forms dramatically depict what historical event?

Answer: The surrender of Vercingetorix, who tried to unite the Gauls against the Romans, to Julius Caesar. It is a central element in the Asterix comics plotline. Saket, Sameer Gauria, Mohan Phadnis, Dinesh, matti tapaninen, and Manix got it.

Question - 600

What began this way?

Answer: DC comics. Manasi, Saket, Riskit got it. Dinky cracked the meta connect (DC=600). matti tapaninen and Ameya came close by identifying the protagonist of the first DC comic, Jack Woods.

Question - 584

Who is the guy in the middle upending the table?

Question - 558

Connect.

Answer: The connect is Toutatis, a Celtic God (bottom right) worshiped in Gaul and Britain, popularized by the exclamation "By Toutatis" in Astrix comix (top). The asteroid, 4179 Toutatis (bottom left), is named after him. Iam, Dinesh, Firebringer, and Hirak got it.

Question - 557

Identify the character.

Answer: This is Tek Jansen, a fictional character featured on the Colbert Report. mekie got it. Awesome!

Question - 519

Who is being commemorated in these cartoons?

Answer: Gary Gygax, the guy behind Dungeons & Dragons and the father of role-playing games in general. Many understandably went for Ingmar Bergman. I had the comics tag as a disambiguating hint for that reason. In the future, be sure to check the question tags for occasional hints. Hari, Jaggi, Raghu, White Jack and Black Lagoon, Adi, tsp, nice try and Sreekanth got it. Well done.

Question - 502

Today's question is courtesy Krish. Identify the blanked out portion of the first visual. For bonus points, connect the answer to the second visual.

Answer: Bibendum is the Michelin man. In the French version of Asterix in Switzerland, the man holding the chariot wheel is the logo of the oil company Antar. It was replaced by the Michelin man in the English translation. Obelix says in the next panel, "Call me fat! Did you see HIS spare tyre?". Priceless!!! Karthik, White Jack and Black Lagoon, Anirudh Patil, Semisimplicity, Kamal Rathi, Lt Col Shankar, Jamie, anon, Krithi, Pranav, Hirak, AJ, Manix, Adi, Mainak and Ramki got it. Well done.

Question - 497

A controversial strip that led to a famous book whose cover is shown on the right. Identify all and also the resulting storyline changes.

Answer: This panel shows Batman and Robin and the homosexual overtones are hard to miss. This and other similar issues in the comics industry (such as the bondage subtext in Wonder Woman) led to an outraged polemic called Seduction of the Innocent by a psychiatrist called Fredric Wertham in which he claimed that such comics corrupt America's youth. In response, the batman franchise introduced Bat-woman and Bat-girl into the Batman universe. AJ, White Jack and Black Lagoon, Kamal Rathi, Ramki, Jamie, anon, Manix and tsp got it. Well done.

Question - 486

This is the procedure for doing what?

Answer: Harvesting the Mandrake root. According to legend, the screams of the Mandrake root could kill the person uprooting it. So an elaborate procedure was devised involving a sacrificial dog. Of course, J. K. Rowling used the more animal-friendly "earmuffs" approach in her books. Dinesh, Ameya, Anon, Adi, Jaggi, and Mekie answered correctly. Well done.

Question - 473

Some captions in the comics have been edited out. What comes in the blanked space denoted by the question mark? Connect it to the event shown on the right.

Answer: The first visual is a Pogo strip commemorating Earth day. The blanked quote at the end is "We have met the enemy and he is us" - a take on the message commander Perry sent to the headquarters after defeating the British in the Battle of lake Erie ("we have met the enemy and he is ours"). Nemani, Raghu, Karthik and Ramji got it. Well done.

Question - 439

Identify the building.

Answer: This is the latest incarnation of Superman's Fortress of Solitude. buckingfastard, Raghu and Krithi got it. Well done.

Question - 427

This is the cover of a French comic book. Something depicted fictionally in this book inspired people to simulate it in reality and it is now gaining popularity. What?

Answer: Chess boxing came into being thanks to this comic. The sport alternates rounds of chess and boxing and an opponent can be beat in either sport. Truly weird stuff. The boxer's gloves in the foreground serve as a clue. Anand, P, Debasish, Kaushik, anon, Schmetterling, Raghu, Shweta, Aparna, Rajesh, Rithwik and Abhinav Kadambi got it. Well done.

A special dry question

He is a brilliant academic who disproved all the theories of his advisor Professor Emeritus Zekowsky. He is the Arthur C. and Caroline J. McCallister Distinguished Chair Professor and Anderson Faculty Scholar, and the Director of the Center for Computational Research and the National Institute of Dynamical Physics. He is the recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Prize of the Netherlands, the National Science Foundation Presidential Investigator Award, the Exceptional Achievement Medal from the International Society of Engineers, the Pi Gamma Tau Industry Excellence Professorship, the National Medal of Engineering, and the Medal of Honor from the Royal Academy of Scientists. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Advanced Dynamics, the Journal of Nano-Particle Computation, Physik-Publication and several other journals, and on the advisory boards of many industry consortia. He holds honorary doctorates from the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Tsing-Chua Beijing University and the Universidade de São Paulo, among others. Who is he? Google away, people.

Answer: Professor Brian S. Smith of PhD comics. Kaushik, Mekie, Anand, Raghu, Arvind, Soubhagya Jena, Vetti, Chithananda, Karthik, Hirak, Amresh, Ramki and Rithwik got it. Well done.

Question - 295

Connect the two comic strips to the guy in the right.

Answer: The humor in both strips is based on Pascal's wager - a reasoning developed by Blaise Pascal (on the right) to convince agnostics/atheists of the logic of believing in God. For more details on the wager and the atheistic rebuttals, go here. Anon, Raghu, Kr!sh, Trevor Burnham, Rajesh, tsp and Rajeev got it. Well done.

Question - 253

The xkcd strip is a reference to what?

Answer: This is a reference to everyone's favorite encyclopedia Wikipedia where "citation needed" is a frequently used disclaimer in many articles. The comic strip doesn't satirize any particular speaker as far as I know. Srivats, Vetti, nice try and Trevor Burnham got it. Well done.

Question - 249

Identify both.

Answer: The giant rat is splinter, the sensei of the teenage mutant ninja turtles. The man in the visual is Hamato Yoshi, a martial arts expert who taught splinter his skills. In one version of the comics, Yoshi himself mutates into a giant rat (splinter) while in another, he is just the owner of splinter who gets killed in a gang fight and whose death splinter avenges using the turtles. Trevor Burnham, Raghu and vs got it. Well done.

Question - 103

Couldn't resist yet another xkcd question. Solve for X,Y and especially Z.

Answer: X - Bertrand Russell, Y - Alfred North Whitehead, Z - Kurt Godel. The pun is this: Russell and Whitehead set out to derive mathematics rigorously from axioms and spent more than 10 years in such an attempt producing the famous Principia Mathematica. Godel came along and proved that any such system of mathematics is necessarily incomplete. Rahul Trivedi, Raghu, Mekie, Adi, Rajesh, 3001, Swapnaa and Rajeev got it. Well done.