Webcomics You Should Be Reading: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
I recommended this comic to a friend of mine. She wrote back that her office’s content filter blocked it as "tasteless and offensive."
This is an entirely accurate statement about Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. What they fail to mention, however, is that it’s also hilarious.
SMBC is a daily single-panel comic, in the vein of an R-rated The Far Side. The humor is primarily based on taking the punchline in a completely different direction than expected. It’s not suitable for kids. (Or adults who want any claim to maturity, for that matter.) It’s also not suitable for people who are sensitive about sex, death, religion, fetishes, cheesecake, herpes, dolphins, politics, or your mom.
There’s a SMBC store, though it’s currently closed for renovations and expected to reopen in November.
Notable moments:
- The Socratic Method
- Space Ace
- The bad pun isn’t the punchline.
- "Agarn, I don’t know why everyone says you’re so dumb."
- Superdickery
- Life goals
- Suspiciously specific disclaimers
- Funnier than All-Star Batman and Robin (maybe not by much)
Drama: Nope. Black comedy, maybe. Not the slightest hint of drama.
Humor: Imagine Gary Larson’s sense of humor melded with Kevin Smith’s potty mouth and you’ll pretty much have Zach Weiner. As noted, what lesser cartoonists would use as the entire joke, he uses as a set-up to something unexpected and much more disturbing.
Continuity: None. There’s a "random" strip button on the site, and it’s one of the few comics where that’s actually a worthwhile idea.
Art: Reasonable; it gets the job done. All the people look pretty much alike, and Weiner probably won’t be winning any awards, but he’s conscious enough of his own skill that you never find yourself missing a joke because you can’t figure out what that blue thing is.
Archive: Six years, about 1325 single-panel or two-panel strips. (Don’t let that scare you, though: There is absolutely no need for an archive trawl. You can read as many or as few strips as you want.)
Updates: Daily, consistently.
Risk/Reward: Reading too many of these in a row may make you realize you’re a horrible person. (There’s no ongoing storyline, so there’s no risk should the comic suddenly cut off.)
For people who like that sort of humour, but somewhat more subtle and sophisticates, may i recomment "Truck Bearing Kibble" – seems to update irregularly, and somewhat hit or miss at times, but when they're funny they're *funny*.
I am a fan of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, but my favorite webcomic is Circle Versus Square. It is surprisingly complex for such a minimalist comic and is a webcomic you really, really should read in my estimation. "I take umbrage" that it is not included here.Jasonjasonzuckerman.com
I'd estimate that there are about 50 webcomics that you really should be reading. It'll take me a while to get to all of them.
The comic you should be reading is called Circle Versus Square (http://www.circleversussquare.com/) It's witty and positively excellent.
SMBC is one of the best. I like to save them up and read them a week at a time. It becomes like a really good stand-up comic routine with 7 rapid-fire jokes in a row.Zach's also a nice guy and helped me out a few years back when I restarted my comic.
I too take umbrage! Circle Versus Square is the best. Always funny, rarely offensive.http://www.circleversussquare.com/?ID=1
Thanks for the kind words!