Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is a name we all probably recognise. Created by Zach Weiner in practically prehistoric 2002, SMBC is, along with XKCD and Penny Arcade, one of the elder statesmen of the web comic format.  The comic’s subject matter; politics, science, relationships and nerd culture catapulted the comic into worldwide success. What makes SMBC interesting for us here at the Comedy TV is Dead palace is that since 2010, SMBC has been making its very own live-action sketch show.

Getting attention left right and centre from sites like Funny or Die, Kotaku and College Humor, SMBC Theater has not missed out on its comic strip running mate’s popularity. Written by Weiner and James Ashby, the show mirrors the comic in that it is a series of unconnected sketches. Despite self-funding up until last year, the SMBC Theater team has managed to fit decent special effects and props and a talented cast of regular actors into their weekly episodes, as well as create some damn funny sketches in the process.

A New Direction

With the launch of their Kickstarter in 2011, SMBC signaled that they were looking to move toward a more episodic, narrative driven direction. Planning 3 new web series, the team wanted to raise a modest $15,000 on Kickstarter for a self-styled “space opera” project – however, as we have mentioned on this website before, never underestimate the power of a committed fanbase. By the time the time ran out, SMBC Theater had raised a massive $76,918, more than 5 times what they were asking for. What followed in 2012 was a more technically ambitious season of SMBC Theater, better cameras, better green-screening, better special effects and some new cast members. However the new space opera series itself, due to be released this year, has only an online teaser to show for it so far.

If the teaser is anything to go by, fans of SMBC are in for a treat. Special effects, neat sets, sci-fi costumes and props abound, and their usual approach of nerdy humour about sex, sci-fi and society looks like its not going anywhere. You could perhaps criticise the team for playing a little too close too their strengths thematically, but that would be a stretch. The fact is that its a successful format, its a funny format and for a sketch show team to up and write a character-driven episodic series, you can’t deny that they’re pushing themselves.

Are SMB Spreading Themselves Too Thin?

As it happens, I do think that the regular SMBC Theater season throughout 2012 did suffer somewhat from no longer being the baby of the production company. When creators start dividing their attention between a number of projects, it’s usually the newest that gets the most attention (for example, Joss Whedon was making the first season of Angel at the same time as the slightly wobbly fourth season of Buffy). Whilst Zach Weiner had been dividing his attention between his daily comic and the Theater episodes for a while already, the space opera may have been stretching him more than he was used to. This isn’t even necessarily a bad thing, it shows that the creators are trying to get out of their comfort zones, and as one would expect, are struggling somewhat. I should stress here that the regular skits from 2012 are still funny. The only problem was a lack of the truly great sketches that dominated their first two seasons. Because of this effect, I can only expect the new “space opera” Starpocalypse to be solid gold. After getting that much money, holding back a little on the last season of Theater I think it’s what a lot of the fans will expect too. And to be honest, I think they’ll get it.

The basis of the success of SMBC is that they played the long game, it took nearly a decade to build up the fanbase of SMBC. They know how to pace themselves and I think budding internet comedians could learn a lot from this. Don’t get too impatient, keep plodding away and what you love to do, build your audience, and eventually you’ll get to do the really cool stuff. However, SMBC grew up as a comic before web 2.0, it built up a solid base before everyone and their dog was a “content creator”, so it’s difficult to imagine quite how this success story could be replicated, except on a smaller scale. The possibility of mass audiences on the Internet is still there, but you have a lot more competition for attention now than you ever did in 2002. So take what you can from SMBC’s story, but remember that it’s a new world for content creators and building an audience is only going to get harder in the future.