Sabrina Online

Transformers, Amiga, Furries and an adult film studio

I thought it fitting that the first comic reviewed by me should actually be the one webcomic that started it all for me: Sabrina Online by Eric Schwartz.

Quite some years ago I stumbled upon this comic and I liked it from the start.

The main protagonist of this comic is (of course) Sabrina, who is a graphics designer – and also a skunk furry. For those who don’t know what furries are, here’s one definition of the term:

“Furry fandom is a category (or sub-genre) of fantasy dedicated to anthropomorphics: fictional animal characters given human personalities and characteristics.” (www.urbandictionary.com, one of many entries)

I won’t go into length at discussing furries here, mostly because then I’d have to write a couple hundred pages of essay, and also because this is about Sabrina now.

Sabrina has it all: Good art (though some may think the b/w line art, self-written texts a little “retro”), a loveable cast of characters, good plots, punch lines and covers a lot of things other webcomics don’t. There may be a lot of gamer comics out there (we’ll get to those later), but I can think of no other comic that revolves around Amiga (a computer system nowadays not known anymore … I actually owned one back in the late 80’s, where it was one of the best computers for games) or Transformer toys (as Sabrina collects them, and the little toys also feature in some comics, even interacting with the people).

Of course many people will soon remember Sabrina through the very frequent appearances of Zig Zag (created by Max Black-Rabbit), a skunk/white tiger hybrid who has her own adult film production (called Z. Z. Studios), where Sabrina starts working early on in the comic, constantly struggling to stay normal in a rather raunchy and sometimes insane environment.

Sabrina’s struggle to stay normal and, sometimes, to rebuff the advances of Zig Zag continues on to this day, although you never get the feeling you’re in a plot stalemate as their relations change over the years.

Also, Sabrina’s life advances throughout the comic, and there has been a steady (but not unreasonable) stream of new cast to the comic throughout. I highly recommend you enjoy Sabrine the way it’s meant: From strip 1.

And, if you want to support Eric, you should simply buy the Sabrina books (details to that on his site).

Sabrina Online stays SFW (safe for work) though, although the adult atmosphere makes me suggest it to be PG 12.

And now it’s time to rate this first comic:

• Updates: Monthly (2-5 strips)
• Safe for work: Yes

• Art: 7/10
• Plot: 9/10
• Originality: 9/10
• Overall: 8.5/10

• Fun: 8/10

(More to the ratings here)

Rating system

Just before posting the first actual review, here's a litte something about the rating:

There are many, many relevant things in a web comic. Of course, if I try to rate everything, everybody would just skim to the bottom of the list. So I narrowed it down to the following:

Updates: daily (mo-fr), daily, bi-weekly, weekly, etc. (just an info on how often the comic is updated)

Safe for work: yes/no (yes means usually nudity or very coarse language. I might include extra warning if the content is for mature readers only.)

Art: 1-10 (pretty self-explanatory)

Plot: 1-10 (this can be a tough cookie sometimes, but many writers try to make solid plots and thus I included it in the rating)

Originality: 1-10 (this reflects if the comic stands out, if the characters are well-made, if the comic revolves around topics that no other comic does, etc.)

Overall: 1-10 (this is the important one - and yes, one could get a 10 here whilst only having a low score in one of the others. this score says how much I like this comic - and remember, your opinion might differ!)

Fun: 1-10 (Last score and outside of this rating, fun doesn't mean if the comic is fun to read but rather if it's actually a "funny" or "silly" comic. Some webcomics try to tell a story, build tension, etc. A horror/thriller webcomic might have a good overall score but a very low "fun" rating. As this doesn't reflect the quality of the comic I put it under "overall".)

That's it - more would probably only confuse people ...

Have fun

Rhadan, RJ

In the beginning ...

... WoMan created pictures. And people would look at those pictures and it was good.

And then someone (ingeniously) created speechbubbles and lo! comics were created. And others read those comics and laughed and it was good.

And then WoMan created the internet and more people put comics on the internet. And other people saw them and laughed heartily at what they had discovered - if they could find it.

-

However, it isn't as simple as typing "webcomic" into google, and go through them.

And thus I'll try to review some webcomics, especially the ones I like (at least those come up first, which, incidentially, will lead to the problem that the good comics are in the oldest posts), and I hope you'll find some comics to your liking.

Most comics I found on the internet I found via links from other comics. And those new sites also featured links ...

The problem often is that when you see a comic for the first time you get an impression about that comic - sometimes you don't have a clue what this is about, because the comic is trying to spin a good storyline and you're right in the middle. I mean, who wants to watch a movie where you've missed the first hour?

So you click back to that very first posts and ugh! behold! ugly drawings. And you close the comic.

And sometimes you're missing out on something really good.

I hope I can help some people to sort through the webcomics to find some rare jewels they might have missed. Stay tuned. :)

Rhadan, RJ