8 popular web comics that give a fresh perspective on education

Reading comic strips in the newspaper was one thing I loved to do in my school days. However, growing up, I found myself almost always rushing to make it to college and then finish work on time and this forced me to let go of my first love – reading these awesome comic strips. But now I can access these fun laughter pills whenever and wherever I want, primarily because the Internet is full of these comic strips whose humour may range from laugh-at-your-life silly jokes to slapstick and even sarcasm filled bitstrips.

Yes, there are thousands of colourful, wonderful, short comic stories on the web which have an extremely creative and fun way of storytelling but scouting for them on your own can be a daunting task.

So, if you like reading education related funny stuff then consider going through any one or maybe all of the below mentioned strips to start or end your day with a smile.

xkcd

Having the tagline – A web comic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language – xkcd was created by Randall Munroe in 2005. These comic strips cover topics such as love and life, mathematics and science related jokes. The strips mostly use stick figures for storytelling but occasionally these also feature landscapes as well as mathematical patterns such as graphs, charts and fractals. A new section was launched on the xkcd website in 2012 which was called “xkcd what-if”. This section is updated every Tuesday and here science questions submitted by readers are explained in a humorous yet mathematical (sounding) manner. However, the format of explaining is more like an article rather than short comic strips.

Dilbert

Created by Scott Adams in the 1990s, this comic strip till date has appeared in 2,000 newspapers in 70 countries. Considered to be one of the first syndicated comic strips to go online, Dilbert ventured over the web in 1995. This comic strip mostly talks about the social and mental landscape of white collar workers/jobs in large modern day enterprises. Its tone of writing is mostly satirical or sarcastic in nature.

Calvin and Hobbs

Conceived, written and illustrated by Bill Watterson, this comic strip ran in newspapers from 1985 to 1995. The strip follows the life and times of the mischievous six year old boy, Calvin and his stuffed tiger Hobbes. The comic strip series covers topics such as public education, environmentalism, flaws of opinion polls and philosophical quandaries.

SMBC

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC) was created by Zach Weinersmith in January, 2002 but that is considered to be an earlier incarnation of the current version of this comic strip which focused on the academic and romantic endeavours of some college students. These strips still feature on smbc’s website archive under the heading of Classic SMBC. However, in September 2002 the current version of this comic strip began and it is updated daily since then.

SMBC does not feature recurring characters and has no set format as such; some of the strips run in a single panel whereas others run for as many as 10 panels or more. Dating, romance, gods, superheroes, research, science, parenting, atheism are recurring themes of this comic strip.

PhD comics

Piled Higher and Deeper, commonly known as PhD comics are conceived, written and drawn by Jorge Cham. He first published these comic strips in 1997 when he himself was a graduation student at Stanford University. The strip covers issues which most students face in graduation school such as perils of procrastination, difficulty in conducting and submitting scientific research, the complex student-professor/supervisor relationship and the never ending search for free food.

Abstruce Goose

Clearly influenced by xkcd, Abstruce Goose covers subjects such as romance, mathematics, science and computers. Created by an anonymous person, this comic strip is sure to leave you in splits with something or the other to think about.

Brown Sharpie

Drawn by Courtney Gibbons, this comic strip brings to light the funny side of grad school. Full of math jokes, anthropomorphized numbers along with many puns, you will love this strip if you love all things numerical.

Exocomics

Extra ordinary comics or exocomics is a comic strip which revolves around adventures that take place in the life of its central character Li Chen. Other characters in this comic strip are Li’s boyfriend and her cat.

Have a favorite web comic which is not listed here? Tell us more about it in the comments sections.