Article By Sophie Wiener
Abby Howard is one of my favorite webcomic creators, period. She’s witty and absolutely hilarious, with a very abrupt, nonsensical style that tends to get pretty dark. Her chosen art style goes well with this: simple, attractively cartoonish black-and-white drawings. And when she decides to go for something dark or epic, that art style makes the easy transition to something gorgeous with the aid of plentiful cross-hatching. The end result is usually creepy, gothic, and absolutely stunning.
Her ability to easily move between cartoonish and horror in the same comic is a common theme for her work, and probably the best thing about it, actually. In most aspects of her comics (writing, characters and character development, plot-structure, art and humor), Howard gracefully navigates the thin line between dark and wacky like she was born walking it. Basically, when she tries to do something with a pen and paper, she does it. Also, she’s a great person, from what I can see. She’s hardworking, funny, a little awkward, and has some very strong views on body positivity that don’t pop up incredibly often. But when they do, wow, it’s a delight.
And that’s why I ended up doing an entire month or so of articles on her—she’s attending a convention at the end of the month as a vendor, and with any luck, I’ll be doing a write-up on my meeting with her, as well as an interview. I’m looking forward to it! Anyway, time to get on topic – my review/recommendation of one of her two webcomics: Junior Scientist Power Hour. It’s a semi-autobiographical series of comics on…well, basically whatever Howard thinks is funny and feels like drawing.
The end result is a glorious, glorious mess of random stuff, featuring such gems as that time she went on a paleontology dig (which apparently included a coyote infiltrating her group, getting married, and living life as a human), the time that she chased Santa Claus out of her house because she thought it was a possum (and it was actually a possum), and advice on beating the summer heat (that goes into gothic horror territory much, much faster than is necessary). This doesn’t mention a tenth of what lives in these strange archives, but it would be difficult to encapsulate the full randomness. (Yes, that is a tattoo of three comic panels that she drew on her arm.)
It’s always funny, always incredibly weird, and it allows you to become oddly familiar with a random lady on the Internet you’ve never met—but who you’ll probably want to meet by the time you finish reading through the archives. And because it’s autobiographical-ish, you have the fascinating experience of watching someone live and grow through four-and-counting years of cartooning.
Howard’s art style has improved, yes, but it’s also cool to see how far she’s come in other regards. At the beginning of Junior Scientist Power Hour, she was in college, studying to be a scientist. But four years later, she dropped out in order to have a full-time job as a cartoonist and succeeded. Reading webcomics about the thoughts and life of someone whose worked so hard and is doing so well is a very fortifying experience (and yes, I guess you could just read her Twitter, BUT WHERE’S THE FUN IN THAT.)
It’s difficult to describe the webcomic any more than this. Basically, Junior Scientist Power Hour is absolutely hilarious. Note, though: It does contain some sexual content and a pinch of fairly gross stuff. Still, I’d absolutely recommend it to anyone who needs something incredibly random to brighten their day.