Zachary 'Zach' Alexander Weinersmith (born March 5, 1982 as Zachary Alexander Weiner), is the author and illustrator of the webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is a humorous webcomic by Zach Weiner. SMBC is "at heart a geek comic, but it nevertheless addresses a broad range of topics, such as love, relationships, economics, politics, religion, science, and philosophy." It has been featured on a variety of websites and...

 (SMBC), currently residing in California. He is the writer of two other webcomics, the completed Captain Excelsior with artist Chris Jones, and Snowflakes, co-written by James Ashby and also illustrated by Jones. He also founded the sketch comedy group SMBC Theater with Ashby and Marty Weiner in 2009. Weiner has been involved in writing and drawing comics since his high school years, but he premiered on the internet in around 2000. His early comics usually have three or more panels, but after 2002, he switched to drawing predominately one panel comics. He stated in an interview that he is glad to have decided to draw one panel comics because he feels three panel webcomics have become a cliche and there are almost no decent one panel comics on the internet.

Studies

His first degree was in literature.

With the success of his web strip, Weiner decided to go back to university

University

A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...

 to study science in order to satisfy his personal interests while also creating stress and creative ideas for his comics; initially planning on biochemistry

Biochemistry

Biochemistry, sometimes called biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes in living organisms, including, but not limited to, living matter. Biochemistry governs all living organisms and living processes...

, he opted to pursue physics

Physics

Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...

. Weiner continues to produce SMBC, and fits it into his college schedule: he studies during the day and spends evenings on his strip.

Other projects

While the mainstay of the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic is the archive of over 2000 strips, Weiner has also branched into numerous side projects, often related to the comic. Some of these are available on the SMBC website's bonus section and movies section.

• Vince Invincible is a multi-panel adventure, which ran from September 26, 2003 to November 13, 2003, with three later installments in April 2005. It was a departure from Weiner's previous work, both in that it was entirely hand-drawn on lined, yellow paper, and in that the storytelling techniques for each strip didn't always conclude with humor. The comic was about a boy named Vince, who as seen in the title, is impervious to any form of harm. He is shown doing dangerous things, such as smoking, getting an axe thrown at his head, and having a ruler cracked over his head. The comic is shown as a few panels with subtitles for some of the panels. The story remains, presently, unfinished at 25 strips.
• Baby Moloch is a six-part mini-series. The work is an origins story for the character Moloch, who featured in several of the earlier SMBC single-panel strips. Five of the six strips have currently been completed.
• Chason, a character from the multi-panel days of SMBC, has been expanded into an independent comic called Chason!, also written by Zach Weiner, but illustrated by a new artist since the 20th episode.
• Captain Stupendous (formerly Captain Excelsior until the name was changed for legal reasons) is a comic project written by Weiner. The comic is about a superhero (Captain Stupendous) who was recently divorced from his superhero wife, Mrs. Mind. Thus far, he has tried going on a blind date, but failed after listening to his friend's advice. His ex-wife is getting remarried to a regular non-hero guy, causing strife with her mother. He has three children, a gawky teenage daughter, a superhero son and an ordinary son to whom he acts totally indifferent, at best. It launched to the public on 19 January 2007, and features Chris Jones (who also runs his own webcomic, Grumps) as the illustrator. It was completed after 95 pages in 2008.
• The Jerry Simpiro Project is a four part mockumentary
  Mockumentary
  A mockumentary , is a type of film or television show in which fictitious events are presented in documentary format. These productions are often used to analyze or comment on current events and issues by using a fictitious setting, or to parody the documentary form itself...
  
   of a fictional webcomic creator. The eponymous main character of the series is the subject of unspoken derision for his lack of commitment to updating, and lack of originality. The series provides commentary on common complaints with modern webcomics. It can be found in the movie section of SMBC, along with another movie titled, "Brushing Teeth".
• SMBC-Theater is the latest project taken up by Zach Weiner. With the help of Marty Weiner and James Ashby, Zach has been producing and acting in short films that release every Monday. There has so far been no recurring plot line within the films, though many of them are labeled as "part 1".
• Weiner is apparently working on another comic project. On July 3, 2008 he stated in a comic comment that he was looking for an artist for a sci-fi script he had. A couple of days later he said he had found an artist in another comment, but there have been no developments since then.

External links

• Zach Weiner, @Google Talks
• Captain Excelsior
• Snowflakes