http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/august-2025-book-reviews
Crossing another webcomic off my list, I guess.
“We are in a time of open acceptance of fascism and Nazism by large parts of the population and most of the US government, what better time to recommend a book about how commies are just as bad?”
“Why yes, I am very smart, why do you ask? Was my attempt at being a centrist not enough?”
Zach was a lot funnier before he thought he was qualified to have thoughts on anything. I understand he did a bunch of research for his book on Mars that I’m told isn’t too bazinga brained, but I think him getting into that mindset combined with the rise of AI (and it being the only other thing he seems to think about) aligns perfectly with SMBC going to shit over the last couple years.
He strikes me as one of those guys who assumes he can’t possibly be falling for propaganda (political, tech hype, you name it) because he knows how to spell it, so you couple that with a smug belief I can only describe as “if you’re making any kind of definitive statement about history you must be oversimplifying”, a belief that we can’t simply “know” things, I think that’s how you get to where he is now.
Which is mostly sad bc he put out a lot of bangers in the past and now he’s boring
I’ve read Soonish when it came out and it was pretty bad back then, too. It just didn’t shine through in the comics so much.
I’d completely forgotten about Soonish, never read it but I’d bet you’re right and that’s a more accurate start to his trajectory
late to the party but I just remembered this one: https://smbc-comics.com/comic/healthcare which came out about 2 months after the book
He still makes me laugh from time to time, but I think this is the reason to finally give it up. I’ve been reading a bunch of webcomics (including smbc) as part of my morning routine for like 20+ years now. But I’ve shed so many of them because they’re just so insufferably
and that’s if I’m lucky enough that they didn’t go full right wing like sinfest did. I think I’m reading less than 10 now when I used to read closer to 50-70. 
That’s basically been my trajectory! When I was a kid I had dozens of bookmarks organized by update day, then I learned about RSS. But now I’m down to maybe 10 comics still in my reader, the ones that survived my political awakening and, frankly, just my expectations of narrative and comedy changing. Half of what’s left barely updates. It’s very sad. xkcd wins by doing nothing.
In the interest of sharing, I’ll leave you with a rec to my current favorite narrative web comic, Runaway to the Stars. Spec bio sci fi, very queer, can be a bit lib at times but nothing egregious and you can tell their heart is in the right place. Still somewhat early days of it so it’s a little slow but the creator’s been world building for years
In the interest of sharing, I’ll leave you with a rec to my current favorite narrative web comic, Runaway to the Stars.
Oh, word, thanks! I’ll check that out.
Yeah I think I’m down to Penny Arcade (super lib, but keeps me up on the crap gamers in my life whine about), Sam and Fuzzy (which is over), Something Positive(barely alive), Questionable Content (I still enjoy), xkcd(I just check out of habit), and oglaf on sundays(I’m a pervert. lol)… I think that’s it now. dang. I mostly just read manga, really. Did you ever use the page that was just like a fifty webcomic images on a single page? I think it was high5.net or something like that?
edit: lol, I got curious and checked the wayback machine.
https://web.archive.org/web/20050320111217/http://high5.net/comic/
at least we’ll always have https://www.jerkcity.com/
When I was a kid I had dozens of bookmarks organized by update day
Same. I think it’s also because new artists are more likely to publish their work only on big social media sites. And those all enshitify over time and do everything to enclose content in their gated “echo systems”. So you need to have accounts on many platforms to even find the comics. Plus, artists face increasing economic pressure and are forced to monetize or drop out of the game.
I keep my copy of this prominently displayed on my shelf.
What webcomic is this?
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal judging by the art, mostly known as SMBC. It’s pretty much one of the ur-liberal-techbro webcomics as far as I’m concerned, all but identical in nature to Kurzgezacht in terms of content just in webcomic form.
SMBC is and has been libbed out as fuck for forever but compared to Kurzgesagt it has the advante of actually putting out some bangers
I just pray that the minds behind Oglaf and I Roved Out In Search Of Truth And Love don’t go down this path.
I Roved Out In Search Of Truth And Love
lol, I guess it’s time to catch back up on that. I binge it whenever someone reminds me of it every few years.
Oglaf
idk, it’s been so long since we’ve had a narrative or anything. Bring back the cumsprites!
all three of these books look like garbage
Mary Roach writes fun pop science. Her politics may not be great (I don’t know them), but she has fun premises and she writes ok. I would have expected him to recommend her book on war (Grunt) given the others though.
taking a second look at that one I was probably a little ungenerous, you’re right. my patience is just so thin these days
Not saying I would’ve predicted it, but I’m not surprised that Zach is having a WWII dad arc
Brutal
Fun fact: every claim made in Bloodlands is verifiably wrong
Unfun fact: most people who read Bloodlands don’t give a shit whether it’s factual or not.
Reminds me of when Solzhenitsyn’s wife admitted he was relaying “camp folklore” (ℹ️ inventing and relaying folklore is also known as confabulation) rather than being a historian.
Existential Comics is funnier than smbc and the author frequently posts extremely based takes
The artist has even been on revolutionary left radio. I also like falseknees, a webcomic about birds.
Lol very true. I need to add them to my routine.
“Sites” wow and this guy’s published huh
I read a bit of his Mars book and honestly the politics were just so terminally Democrat it was physically painful.
He even admitted that they realized only after being almost finished with the book, that colonizing Mars is a bad idea actually.
Buttersafe will never fail me
Is anyone reading “kill six billion demons”? It’s about reaching heaven through violence and it has awesome wimmelbilder.
Can confirm that it slaps.
