Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC) is a webcomic by Zach Weinersmith. The gag-a-day comic features few recurring characters or storylines, and has no set format; some strips may be a single panel, while others may go on for ten panels or more. Recurring themes in SMBC include science, research, superheroes, religion, romance, dating, parenting and the meaning of life.[3] SMBC has run since 2002 and is published daily.[4]

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
SMBC comic #1127, published on 25 March 2008
Author(s)Zach Weinersmith
WebsiteSaturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Current status/scheduleUpdated daily
Launch dateSeptember 5, 2002[1] (an earlier incarnation debuted January 28, 2002[2])
Genre(s)Humor

Weinersmith's webcomic was recognized in 2006[5] and 2007 with the Web Cartoonists' Choice Award for Outstanding Single Panel Comic,[6] and received nominations in 2003[7] and 2008.[8]

History
Zach Weinersmith in 2011

Weinersmith's first version of SMBC was a character-based three-panel strip done while he was in college.[4] This version of the comic focused on the romantic and academic endeavors of several college students. This version (referred to as Classic SMBC on the site's archives) ran from January 28, 2002 to September 3, 2002. Weinersmith then switched to single-panel and gag comics.[4] The current version of the strip began on September 5, 2002. The first 480 comics were originally removed from the main SMBC archives but were later returned as a hidden section and then made officially publicly available on September 22, 2008.[9]

In 2005, Weinersmith wanted to work on SMBC full-time, and around this time moved to daily updates. By 2007, he was able to earn a living from the comic.[4] Weinersmith also returned to study around 2006 to provide inspiration for the comic, and studied physics, and considers that the rise in the geekiness of the comic happened at that time.[4]

As of 2012, SMBC received a quarter-million visitors a day and was described as one of the most popular webcomics.[4]

Weinersmith has published a number of books collecting SMBC comics. He has also produced new comics to illustrate Soonish, a book he co-authored.

Themes

In a 2016 interview, Weinersmith described the themes of SMBC as including science, philosophy, and economics, and has done enough comics on religion to release a book only of those comics.[10]

All comics after March 22nd, 2015 have a humorous tooltip that appears when the reader hovers their cursor over the comic. This tooltip is usually an extension of the joke in the comic itself. Older comics from September 5th, 2002 to April 4th, 2004 also have this humorous tooltip, but these are largely retrospective comments on the comics.

In most comics the reader can see a bonus joke called a "votey" by clicking on a red button with the mouse. These bonus panels were a motivation to vote for SMBC on comic ranking sites, but were kept up after these sites became rarer.[10] The earliest votey released is for the comic dated November 27, 2006; however, he has since started drawing new voteys for his earliest comics, as part of a Patreon goal.[11]

SMBC Theater

Weinersmith launched a side project linked with SMBC called SMBC Theater featuring skits and short videos put up on YouTube. This was normally updated once a week on Mondays with one or two short sketches and as of February 24, 2018 the channel had about 80,000 subscribers.[12] Certain holiday clips are marked "part one," although very few have a second part. Despite its one-shot style there were certain characters who have received multiple storylines, such as James Ashby as president, J.P. Nickel's news stories, Jon Brence's dating shorts, and Weinersmith as Jesus/James Ashby as God. All the videos are satirical.

In August 2011, a project was successfully crowdfunded on Kickstarter called "SMBC Theater Goes TO SPACE!". This became Starpocalypse, a space opera webseries, which was released on 25 December 2013. It was released on their Youtube channel on May 3, 2015.

The channel stopped producing content between 2015 and 2020 when James Ashby started making Hand to Mouth skits.

Reception

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal was recognized in 2006,[5] and 2007 with the Web Cartoonists' Choice Award for Outstanding Single Panel Comic.[6] It has been twice nominated for the Award, in 2003,[7] and in 2008.[8] Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal has been featured on a variety of websites and blogs, including The Economist,[13] Glamour,[14] Boing Boing,[15] Bad Astronomy,[16] Blastr,[17] Blues News,[18] Joystiq,[19] and Freakonomics.[20]

In a YouTube video on the SMBC website, Zach Weinersmith addressed accusations that the comedian Sarah Silverman stole a joke from one of his strips at a Spike video game awards ceremony. In the satirical video, he claimed that the joke must have been stolen because he was "the only humorist ever to write on the topics of Africa, AIDS, or video games",[21] in addition to pleading with Sarah Silverman to go on a date with him.

In response to a criticism of his focus on academia, in July 2010 Weinersmith discussed his ideas concerning webcomics in an open forum with critics.[22]

Awards and nominations
Year Award Work Category Result
2003 Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Outstanding Short Form Comic Nominated[7]
2006 Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Outstanding Single Panel Comic Won[5]
2007 Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Outstanding Single Panel Comic Won[6]
2008 Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Outstanding Single Panel Comic Nominated[8]

Collections
  • Save Yourself, Mammal! (2011) ISBN 978-0982853702
  • The Most Dangerous Game (2011) ISBN 978-0982853719
  • Science: Ruining Everything Since 1543 (2013) ISBN 978-0982853733
  • Religion: Ruining Everything Since 4004 B.C. (2016) ISBN 978-0997452204

References
  1. Weinersmith, Zach (September 5, 2002). "1st SMBC Comic". Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. www.smbc-comics.com. Retrieved February 22, 2012.
  2. Weinersmith, Zach (January 28, 2002). "First "Classic SMBC" Strip". Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. www.smbc-comics.com. Retrieved February 22, 2012.
  3. Brin, David (June 7, 2011). "My Top Choices in Science-Oriented WebComics". Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. ieet.org. Retrieved 6 February 2012.
  4. Lynley, Matt (March 4, 2012). "This 29-Year-Old Entrepreneur Built A Hugely Popular Website By Reading Textbooks And Drawing Geeky Comics". Business Insider.
  5. Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards; Presenter: Josh Rosen (2006). "Outstanding Single Panel Comic by Josh Rosen of Edwitch". 2006 Ceremony. Retrieved February 21, 2012.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  6. Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards (2007). "The 2007 Cartoonist's Choice Awards". 2007 Ceremony. Archived from the original on April 21, 2010. Retrieved February 21, 2012.
  7. Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards (2003). "The 2003 Cartoonist's Awards". 2003 Ceremony. Archived from the original on February 4, 2012. Retrieved February 21, 2012.
  8. Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards (2003). "The Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards – 2008 List of Winners & Finalists". 2008 Ceremony. Archived from the original on March 10, 2009. Retrieved February 21, 2012.
  9. Weinersmith, Zach (September 22, 2008). "Comic for September 22, 2008". Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. www.smbc-comics.com. Retrieved February 22, 2012.
  10. Zach Weinersmith: "Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal" | Talks at Google, retrieved 2019-08-25
  11. Weinersmith, Zach (November 27, 2006). "Comic for November 27, 2006". Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. www.smbc-comics.com. Retrieved February 22, 2012.
  12. "SMBC Theater". YouTube. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
  13. F., G. (December 29, 2010). "Online cartoons: Pease porridge hot". The Economist. www.economics.com.
  14. Stanley, Caroline (January 12, 2011). "Just a Thought About Silly Impressions During Sex". Glamour. www.glamour.com. Retrieved February 22, 2012.
  15. Doctorow, Cory (August 30, 2009). "How Science Reporting Works". BoingBoing. boingboing.net. Retrieved February 21, 2012.
  16. Plait, Phil (March 18, 2009). "Always look for the mundane explanation". Bad Astronomy. Discover Magazine. Retrieved February 21, 2012.
  17. Edelman, Scott (January 24, 2011). "Image of the Day: How the Cylons were REALLY born". Blastr. SyFy. Retrieved February 21, 2012.
  18. "Out of the Blue – Blue's News Story". Blue's News. www.bluesnews.com. September 17, 2010. Retrieved February 21, 2012.
  19. Miller, Ross (November 5, 2005). "Webcomic Roundup: October 30 – November 5, 2005". Joystiq. www.joystiq.com. Retrieved February 21, 2012.
  20. Dubner, Stephen J. (June 18, 2010). "Reliably Predicting the Future". Freakonomics. Retrieved February 21, 2012.
  21. WizToast (December 18, 2006). "An Open Letter to Sarah Silverman". YouTube. www.youtube.com. Retrieved February 22, 2012.
  22. Strunk, Trevor; Michael Taggart (July 19, 2010). "New Directions: An Interview With Zach Weiner". Kirby Dots. Retrieved February 22, 2012.

Further reading
  • Marcotte, John (April 16, 2010). "Interview". Badmouth. www.badmouth.net.
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