LOVE: Ruining Everything Since 1.2 Billion BC

SMBC: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

by Zach Weinersmith

A collection of favorite comics on love, sex, dating, and relationships, from the entire run of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC).

Genres: Comics, Webcomic, Humor

224 pages, Hardcover

First published December 21, 2018

About the author

Zachary Weinersmith (born Zachary Alexander Weiner) is an American cartoonist, who is best known for his webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC). He is the author of two other webcomics, the completed Captain Stupendous with artist Chris Jones, and Snowflakes, co-written by James Ashby and also illustrated by Chris Jones. He also founded the sketch comedy group SMBC Theater with James Ashby and Marty Weiner in 2009.

Weinersmith has been involved in writing and drawing comics since his high school years, but he first published on the internet in the late 1990s. His early comics usually had three or more panels, but after 2002, he switched to drawing predominantly one panel comics. He stated in a 2009 interview that he was glad to have decided to draw one panel comics because he felt three panel webcomics had become a webcomic cliche by that time, and that there were almost no decent one panel comics on the internet. More recently, he has drawn a mixture of single and multi panel comics for SMBC.

Weinersmith's webcomic was recognized in 2006, and 2007 with the Web Cartoonists' Choice Award for Outstanding Single Panel Comic,[3] and received nominations in 2003,[4] and 2008.[5]

SMBC is at heart a geek comic, which nevertheless addresses a broad range of topics, such as love, relationships, economics, politics, religion, science, and philosophy. As shown by the diverse range of blogs listed above, it appeals to many different groups.

SMBC has around 250,000 daily readers, served over 300,000,000 comics in 2010, and is one of the fastest growing comics online (has sextupled in readership since 2008). The comics have been featured on many important blogs, including The Economist, Glamour, BoingBoing, Bad Astronomy, Blastr, Blues News, Joystiq, Washington Post, Freakonomics, and more.

Zach has a degree in Literature and 3/8ths of a degree in physics. He enjoys reading about math, logic, science, history, fiction, and philosophy. His hobbies are space travel, dinosaur riding, and wishful thinking. He currently lives in southern California with his beautiful and brilliant wife.

Note: Zach publishes SMBC and SMBC material under both "Zach Weiner" and "Zach Weinersmith".

Reviews

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I absolutely love SMBC in general, but this collection mostly didn't do it for me. I think the format was surprisingly disruptive: I like that on the web, the longer form comics are all on one page and are scrollable. I also didn't like as many of the single-panel comics in here. Maybe the punch lines aren't as satisfying without sufficient build-up?

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just love Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It's always fun to find someone who thinks about things interestingly and is willing to view the same situation from multiple perspectives. There is a certain absurdity to the style (and quite a bit of nerdery), so consider that.

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another fun collection from SMBC. As with the daily comic (which this collects based on the theme) there's no plot or story to it, but each comic is funny in its own right.

[Doug Cornelius · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great collection of comics from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal about love. Okay... they are more about sex than love. Laugh-out loud funny.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another funny SMBC collection. Honestly, these love-themed comics aren't as funny to me as the ones in the science and religion collections. Still pretty damn funny though.

[LPF · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5–out of 200 or so comics, 10 of them were funny…