Sci-Fi Webcomics to Devour All At Once

Not so long ago, there weren't enough great sci-fi webcomics to shake a ray-gun at. Now, you've got serious options for pretty much every sub-genre you can imagine, from hard sci-fi to space opera to satirical speculative space fantasy. Here's my list of the best sci-fi webcomics to make you laugh, make you think, and feel like a kid again with the best Sunday paper in the galaxy.

Narbonic

The art of Narbonic may be simple, but its story is too fun to miss. When slacker geek Dave Davenport graduates college, he doesn’t expect to get a job working for Helen Narbon, a mad scientist obsessed with gerbils, and her (probably psychotic) intern Mell. The humor is smart and silly at the same time - really, it’s the only strip cartoon I’ve seen since Calvin and Hobbes that’s actually made me laugh out loud. Helen Narbon is up against various villains, including a Forensic Linguist, Professor Lupin Madblood (who Helen is secretly in love with), and a rampage of superintelligent rebellious gerbils, but her worst enemy is her mother, an evil doctor/scientist in her own right. My favorite is RT-5478, known as Artie, a super smart gerbil created by Helen; he considers himself the rational one of the group, but sometimes conducts unauthorized experiments on other lab animals or members of the staff. You know you want to read that; it’s just way too good not to.

Power Nap

Power Nap has been my absolute favorite from the moment I started reading. Every page sucks you into the story, and you definitely care about the protagonist, Drew Spencer, from the beginning. Poor Drew lives in a world where nobody sleeps - and he’s allergic to the pills that let everyone else stay awake 24/7. His job is stapling papers together, he’s beyond in need of a nap, the city’s giant 3D movie ads are startling the heck out of him, and to top it off, something truly sinister seems to be happening - and he’s a part of it. Truly clever illustrations and a plot that speeds along make this a solid, satirical sci-fi comic with lots to think about.

Drive

Drive is a fast-paced end-of-days story with a unique setting - the second Spanish empire’s place in a much larger galactic empire and a coming war with the Continuum of Makers (how’s that for an awesome title). Humanity’s main problem is that their empire is built on technology stolen from...you guessed it...the Continuum of Makers. They want it back so bad they can hardly stand it, and it looks like curtains for the human race when hope arrives in the form of a crack pilot alien. Drive’s story follows the crew of a scout ship searching for the alien’s home planet so they can find more pilots just like him and save the world. Drive is seriously funny, especially in depicting the captain’s exasperation, and you’ll love the secret identities and galaxy-wide conspiracies.

Starslip

Starslip is made up of simple black-and-white illustrations with hilarious jokes right and left. It tells of a military starship turned spacefaring museum whose crew is pretty darn funny. Most of the humor comes from the commander, Memnon, and his lack of leadership ability (to be fair, it IS a warship being commanded by a museum curator); though he’s not really cut out for the job, he somehow gets by with the help of his crewmembers and friends. As the strip goes on, the art becomes more grand and the characters deepen and round. Time and universe travel sometimes make for a weird and paradoxical plot, but riding through space with the zany characters is worth the ride.

O Human Star

If you really, actually care about cyborg politics and are a sucker for strong writing, O Human Star is going to knock your grafted-on biomechanical socks off. It tells the strange story of Alastair Sterling, inventor who sparked the robot revolution yet missed it because of his sudden death. The catch is that he wakes up 16 years later - in a robot body, in a city filled with robots and humans peacefully coexisting. Al tries to track down his friend Brendan, but his search raises even more questions, like why Brendan is living with a robot, and why that robot looks a lot like Al. When humans develop artificial intelligence, there will unquestionably be many complications. O Human Star makes a fascinating guess at what those complications will look like.

Schlock Mercenary

Writing a webcomic is hard; writing a daily webcomic is even harder. It’s a testament to Howard Taylor’s superhuman abilities that Schlock Mercenary has run daily for more than 14 years (credit is also due to Travis Walton, who’s done the color since late 2009, and Sandra Taylor, its manager). It’s been nominated for the Hugo Award many times (though it’s always lost to Girl Genius). If you’ve somehow never encountered it before, the story revolves around Schlock and his fellow mercenaries who encounter aliens, new worlds, wormholes, artificial intelligence, assassins, and lots of bullets and destruction, all in the course of a normal day. It’s character-driven hard sci-fi that never fails to be funny. If you don’t have the time to go back and read the more than 4,600 entries that Howard Taylor has created, you can start somewhere in the middle and still get a pretty good feel for what’s going on.

Dark Science

The talented comic artist Aaron Diaz uses his established, long-running Dresden Codak as a vehicle to produce the storyline Dark Science, a work of multi-level narration and professional, high-quality art (think light shining through windows and reflections). Dark Science tells the story of Kimiko Ross, daughter of a robotics genius, and her discovery of a mysterious conspiracy, a secret war, and some robots. It all begins when the bank destroys Kimiko’s house - with a BOMB - when she can’t pay her mortgage. It’s sometimes ridiculous, sometimes dark, and always very, very smart. Seeing a strong Asian female character in the lead is also very rewarding (yay diversity!). If you’re a science nerd, you’ll enjoy clever jokes about the balance between science and funding. Dark Science is some of Aaron Diaz’s strongest work yet in the Dresden Codak series and well worth taking a look.

Dicebox

Jenn Manley Lee's Dicebox tells the story of Molly and Griffen, a married couple of blue-collar factory workers who live in a future of space-travel. Griffen’s complicated past is coming back to haunt her; Molly is level-headed but has strange visions. No matter what, they’re always there for each other. The world is complex, and characters various in their pasts, interests, and genders. The story is funny, yet deep. The author explores the many ways in which the characters express their sexuality in this universe (in a casual conversation, one character mentions having two husbands; Molly and Griffen, though committed, only have sex with other people). Dicebox is criminally underrated for being such an engaging read with such well-drawn illustrations - every page shows stunning attention to detail. Though the plot can meander at times, it’s a slow-paced trip worth taking. You’ll definitely stay for the richly conceived characters, who make their way into your heart from the very first page.