Jacob, lazy bum that he is, said he couldn’t post today because he’s getting married or some nonsense. The wedding isn’t even today for crying out loud! Whatever, I’m stepping up to fill in with a brief post on some web-comics that serve up a dose of science (… sort of)!

1)      Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC) – This strip has really been climbing the charts (as much as these charts exist) in online science comic circles (i.e. a few nerdy blogs) because more often than not Zach Weiner hits the nail on the head capturing the hilarity inherent in the culture of science itself. This doesn’t stop him from tackling other topics like religion and superheroes (yeah, I know, it’s like it’s made for me). It’s updated daily and is formatted vertically which goes against traditional comic strip convention but makes more sense on screen and allows for a greater impact on the punch-line since you can’t actually see the final panel until the end. The crew also does funny videos to boot. Definitely worth adding to your daily reading list.

2)   XKCD – This is an old standby and something most people are probably already very aware of but maybe there are a few of you out there not reading it. Randall Munroe trained as a physicist but he’s happy to tackle many other branches of science (he claims to just read Wikipedia to get his information) and manages to distill that bit of knowledge into some wickedly intelligent strips. Sometimes I don’t even get it, which is frustrating cause I know it’s probably my fault, not Munroe’s. If you are a regular reader maybe the one piece of advice I can give is to always remember to read the text that appears when you hover over the image, it always adds a delightful post-script to each strip.

3)      The Abominable Charles Christopher – This one isn’t really about science, but it is about a Yeti-like creature which our show tackles often enough that I wanted to include this strip. This one maintains a stronger narrative thread than the rest and is worth reading from the beginning through to the present. You’ll get engrossed in the myriad characters before you know it, each of whom have their own story-line separate of Charles Christopher, but it seems like a wider tapestry is being woven. Karl Kerschl brings this world alive with expressive pencils, inks and grey tones in what has to be one of the best examples of high caliber art used in a web-comic format.

There are more web-comics out there on the internet just waiting to be enjoyed and I may reserve a few I already know of in case I need a quick post like this again. Tell us in the comments if you’re a fan of any of these already, excited to have learned of them, or which amazing strip you love that I didn’t mention!