Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

History

Weinersmith's first version of SMBC was a character-based three-panel strip done while he was in college. 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. 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.

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. 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.

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

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.

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. 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, and 2007 with the Web Cartoonists' Choice Award for Outstanding Single Panel Comic. It has been nominated for the award two other times, in 2003 and in 2008. Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal has been featured on a variety of websites and blogs, including The Economist, Glamour, Boing Boing, Bad Astronomy, Blastr, Blues News, Joystiq, and Freakonomics.

Awards and nominations

Collections

• Save Yourself, Mammal! (2011)
• The Most Dangerous Game (2011)
• Science: Ruining Everything Since 1543 (2013)
• Religion: Ruining Everything Since 4004 B.C. (2016)

References

References

1. Weinersmith, Zach. (September 5, 2002). "1st SMBC Comic". www.smbc-comics.com.
2. Weinersmith, Zach. (January 28, 2002). "First "Classic SMBC" Strip". www.smbc-comics.com.
3. Brin, David. (June 7, 2011). "My Top Choices in Science-Oriented WebComics". ieet.org.
4. Weinersmith, Zach. (September 22, 2008). "Comic for September 22, 2008". www.smbc-comics.com.
5. (March 4, 2012). "This 29-Year-Old Entrepreneur Built A Hugely Popular Website By Reading Textbooks And Drawing Geeky Comics". Business Insider.
6. (7 March 2016). "Zach Weinersmith: "Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal" {{!}} Talks at Google".
7. "SMBC Theater". YouTube.
8. F., G.. (December 29, 2010). "Online cartoons: Pease porridge hot". www.economics.com.
9. Stanley, Caroline. (January 12, 2011). "Just a Thought About Silly Impressions During Sex". www.glamour.com.
10. Doctorow, Cory. (August 30, 2009). "How Science Reporting Works". boingboing.net.
11. Plait, Phil. (March 18, 2009). "Always look for the mundane explanation". [[Discover (magazine).
12. Edelman, Scott. (January 24, 2011). "Image of the Day: How the Cylons were REALLY born". [[SyFy]].
13. (September 17, 2010). "Out of the Blue – Blue's News Story". www.bluesnews.com.
14. Miller, Ross. (November 5, 2005). "Webcomic Roundup: October 30 – November 5, 2005". www.joystiq.com.
15. Dubner, Stephen J.. (June 18, 2010). "Reliably Predicting the Future". [[Freakonomics blog.
16. [[Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards]]. (2003). "The 2003 Cartoonist's Awards". 2003 Ceremony.
17. [[Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards]]; Presenter: Josh Rosen. (2006). "Outstanding Single Panel Comic by Josh Rosen of Edwitch". 2006 Ceremony.
18. [[Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards]]. (2007). "The 2007 Cartoonist's Choice Awards". 2007 Ceremony.
19. [[Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards]]. (2003). "The Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards – 2008 List of Winners & Finalists". 2008 Ceremony.