British Map
British Map
[A black-and-white map of Great Britain. The detail on the map is minimal, showing mainly the outlines of the land, upward-pointing angles representing mountains, and points representing cities. The only other features are a small drawing of a protractor south of one peninsula, and a lake with two small sailboats on the west side of the largest landmass. The caption in the upper-right states in large letters "A BRITISH MAP," then in smaller letters underneath, "LABELED BY AN AMERICAN." Most of the map's area is covered by labels for various features, which are listed below.]

This comic is a joke similar to "How Americans see the world" showing how the average American has opinions on the world, often including jokes such as a lack of Africa , etc. This has been used before in 850: World According to Americans . The map also plays with the joke by noting it has been labeled by a specific American rather than "Americans".
Many areas of the UK are most familiar to foreigners thanks to their depiction in various fantasy novels and TV series. This map labels some of these, as well as including many silly names that simply sound like real British towns to an American ear. A protractor is shown off the coast of the Mull of Kintyre in reference to the " Mull of Kintyre test " - according to urban legend, the angle of the Mull defines the maximum allowed erectness for a man on films and home video releases in the UK.
Randall previously posted a map of Great Britain on his blog as part of the promotion for his book What If? . This map is from a very similar position and appears to have been traced from the same source, although there are some slight differences. Both maps include a sketch of Lake Windermere with boats on it, and both have the locations of London, Oxford and Cambridge labeled (the blog map also shows Edinburgh and Bristol - in this comic, these are labelled Eavestroughs and Minas Tirith). Both also contain references to Stonehenge and Watership Down .
Note that in British English, the correct spelling of “labeled” is ‘labelled’.
The title text plays around with the concept of the compass directions and how numerous regions (such as South "Sussex" and West "Wessex") incorporate such literal names in their description. Randall is creating similar sounding names which are nonsense-ish ("Norsussex" would be the region of the Northern-Southern Saxons), and placing them in relation to each other in ways which would be geographically implausible, similar to this old joke about Boston . However, in Germany there exists the region called Westphalia ( Westfalen ), and the eastern part of it is often referred to as East-Westphalia ( Ostwestfalen ), which sounds somewhat ridiculous. Part of the joke in the title text could be the fact that while three of the locations are fictional, Middlesex does actually exist.
[A black-and-white map of Great Britain. The detail on the map is minimal, showing mainly the outlines of the land, upward-pointing angles representing mountains, and points representing cities. The only other features are a small drawing of a protractor south of one peninsula, and a lake with two small sailboats on the west side of the largest landmass. The caption in the upper-right states in large letters "A BRITISH MAP," then in smaller letters underneath, "LABELED BY AN AMERICAN." Most of the map's area is covered by labels for various features, which are listed below.]
