http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/august-2025-book-reviews
Crossing another webcomic off my list, I guess.
Zach was a lot funnier before he thought he was qualified to have thoughts on anything. I understand he did a bunch of research for his book on Mars that I’m told isn’t too bazinga brained, but I think him getting into that mindset combined with the rise of AI (and it being the only other thing he seems to think about) aligns perfectly with SMBC going to shit over the last couple years.
He strikes me as one of those guys who assumes he can’t possibly be falling for propaganda (political, tech hype, you name it) because he knows how to spell it, so you couple that with a smug belief I can only describe as “if you’re making any kind of definitive statement about history you must be oversimplifying”, a belief that we can’t simply “know” things, I think that’s how you get to where he is now.
Which is mostly sad bc he put out a lot of bangers in the past and now he’s boring
I’ve read Soonish when it came out and it was pretty bad back then, too. It just didn’t shine through in the comics so much.
I’d completely forgotten about Soonish, never read it but I’d bet you’re right and that’s a more accurate start to his trajectory
late to the party but I just remembered this one: https://smbc-comics.com/comic/healthcare which came out about 2 months after the book
He still makes me laugh from time to time, but I think this is the reason to finally give it up. I’ve been reading a bunch of webcomics (including smbc) as part of my morning routine for like 20+ years now. But I’ve shed so many of them because they’re just so insufferably
and that’s if I’m lucky enough that they didn’t go full right wing like sinfest did. I think I’m reading less than 10 now when I used to read closer to 50-70. 
That’s basically been my trajectory! When I was a kid I had dozens of bookmarks organized by update day, then I learned about RSS. But now I’m down to maybe 10 comics still in my reader, the ones that survived my political awakening and, frankly, just my expectations of narrative and comedy changing. Half of what’s left barely updates. It’s very sad. xkcd wins by doing nothing.
In the interest of sharing, I’ll leave you with a rec to my current favorite narrative web comic, Runaway to the Stars. Spec bio sci fi, very queer, can be a bit lib at times but nothing egregious and you can tell their heart is in the right place. Still somewhat early days of it so it’s a little slow but the creator’s been world building for years
When I was a kid I had dozens of bookmarks organized by update day
Same. I think it’s also because new artists are more likely to publish their work only on big social media sites. And those all enshitify over time and do everything to enclose content in their gated “echo systems”. So you need to have accounts on many platforms to even find the comics. Plus, artists face increasing economic pressure and are forced to monetize or drop out of the game.
