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I'd like to point out that a considerable number of on-line graphic stories (and sometimes they are also very comical) have been published by their authors as dead-tree editions. Therefore those stories, at least, can be enjoyed either way. Some of them have been getting produced for enough years that multiple volumes are available, while the complete archive is usually also accessible on-line.
Since personal tastes differ, I'm not going to especially recommend particular comics. However, here are a few that I personally have enjoyed (in no particular order):
SchlockMercenary
Questionable Content
Sluggy Freelance (you might want to turn off Javascript for this archive)
A Girl And Her Fed
Girl Genius (has won multiple Hugo awards)
Freefall
Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic
The Monster Under The Bed
Grrl Power
General Protection Fault
Be warned, some are not particularly safe for work, and some have archives large enough to keep you busy reading for months.

There's a lot of really good stuff out there (and another 90+% of horrible crap, but the good stuff is enough to keep you busy for a while):

Naver has been betting strong on infinite-canvas style, both eastern translated works and english-original ones (check the page out, there's A LOT of webcomics there, a bit of everything for everyone)

Girl Genius got most of the Hugo awards for graphic story in the first years of the category

uhm, I'm a bit busy at the moment so I'll just list a bunch of webcomics I liked below, if you look at what the authors of each of those recommend you'll find lots more, and these cover a fairly wide range of styles, themes and tones:

http://www.samandfuzzy.com/new...
http://www.johnnywander.com/
http://www.egscomics.com/
http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/
http://flipside.keenspot.com/
http://www.somethingpositive.n...
http://oglaf.com/latest/
http://www.happletea.com/
http://www.errantstory.com/

Probably Wulfenbach did not think that there would be comic artists around, but there are devices sneakingly looking like a tablet computer but in reality being an etch-a-sketch.

Can their "perfect" cup of coffee do this?

I thought not.

Dan Aris

I can only support this idea if the drones are redesigned to look like gargoyles - now, that would be cool!

Ah, The Watchmen!

I've never heard of mass killing done in the name of science, no.

Science implies absolutely nothing about morals.

Abducting people, infecting them with Ebola, and taking detailed and accurate notes as they die would be "good" science.

This isn't a hypothetical. There is useful science collected by such immoral means.

What's wrong, from a scientific point of view, of nuking a city as a science experiment, as long as you don't mess with the control group?

DOST THOU EVEN LYFT?

Phil and Kaja Foglio made their own report of the Hugo Awards: http://www.girlgeniusonline.co...
They take good note of the award for Time, by the way.

when you could have something designed by a spark.

--Agatha Heterodyne

I don't know if she was the first source for this, but it's a fun series to follow, for those who don't know :-)

Look up "heterodyne ".

Nah, I've just read all of Girl Genius. Why would I need to look it up?

Seriously?

Who the fuck is dumb enough to envision a suicide run to Jupiter?

And, more telling, who the fuck is dumb enough to actually GO on one of these suicide runs?

Not quite sure where people's heads are at on this one.

If people die in the scientific endeavor of space exploration by ACCIDENT or misadventure? It happens. It's tragic.

But going out there knowing you're going to die, "FOR SCIENCE!"?
GET YOUR FUCKING HEAD CHECKED!

Oh yes. I agree. xkcd for best single strip for sure.

Best serial strip is Girl Genius: adventure, romance, Mad Science!

Wasted Talent is about an girl getting through engineering school and then in the real world. It's great art and really funny! My personal favorite is hugo-nominated Schlock Mercenary, which I consider the best overall. It's been around a while, and is always funny, and always updates (no missed comics in over 12 years, even when his datacenter exploded). For best artwork, and a great story, I agree with many other posters in saying that multiple-Hugo-winning Girl Genius wins hands down. I do love xkcd, and most of the other ones mentioned. I should also mention Foxtrot, which is not strictly a webcomic (it's also in newspaper syndication). I also read Sluggy Freelance, another really long-running webcomic. Lastly, I like Free Fall, a little less well-known comic about a genetically modified wolf who gets a job as an engineer for a petty crook, and tries to stop the robot apocalypse.

funny science fiction which tries very hard to get the physics right:

http://freefall.purrsia.com/

Honorable mention to Girl Genius by Kaja and Phil Foglio

Begin here:

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20021104

Be sure to buy the printed books (if you pre-order you can pay extra and get hand drawn art). Victorian steampunk science fantasy suitable for teens and younger children.

William

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20031017
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20050808
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20070209

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20031017
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20050808
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20070209

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20031017
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20050808
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20070209

1 Best: Basic Instructions http://basicinstructions.net/ 2 Single Best: too many to choose from 3 Best Art: Girl Genius http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/ 4 Most Relevant: Dilbert http://dilbert.com/

If Dilbert is most relevant, time to change employers.

After discovering that I was living a Dilbert cartoon, I left that job, and once I'd healed, vowed that if my life ever again imitated that particular piece of art, it was time to leave. Thus far I'm pleased to say I've been OK.

1. Best overall: Schlock Mercenary
2. Funniest: Girl Genius
3. Best art: Gunnerkrigg Court
4. Most revelant: xkcd

Schlock has become a lot more kid-friendly since Tayler quit his job at Novell and now works surrounded by his children, but it's still entertaining. And he has kept its schedule for a pretty long time. Several other webcomics of that age gradually turned to weekday only, to Monday-Wednesday-Friday, to once weekly, but Schlock Mercenary keeps on updating every day.

Girl Genius has pretty good art, but what I like best is its large ensemble of delightfully inhuman characters. Every time I find a new favorite character, the Foglios introduce another crazy awesome character.

Gunnerkrigg Court doesn't have the very best art, but it's gradually getting better, and the story is intriguing.

xkcd is a comic by a nerd about nerds being nerdy.

1. Best overall: Schlock Mercenary
2. Funniest: Girl Genius
3. Best art: Gunnerkrigg Court
4. Most revelant: xkcd

Schlock has become a lot more kid-friendly since Tayler quit his job at Novell and now works surrounded by his children, but it's still entertaining. And he has kept its schedule for a pretty long time. Several other webcomics of that age gradually turned to weekday only, to Monday-Wednesday-Friday, to once weekly, but Schlock Mercenary keeps on updating every day.

Girl Genius has pretty good art, but what I like best is its large ensemble of delightfully inhuman characters. Every time I find a new favorite character, the Foglios introduce another crazy awesome character.

Gunnerkrigg Court doesn't have the very best art, but it's gradually getting better, and the story is intriguing.

xkcd is a comic by a nerd about nerds being nerdy.

1. Best overall: Schlock Mercenary
2. Funniest: Girl Genius
3. Best art: Gunnerkrigg Court
4. Most revelant: xkcd

Schlock has become a lot more kid-friendly since Tayler quit his job at Novell and now works surrounded by his children, but it's still entertaining. And he has kept its schedule for a pretty long time. Several other webcomics of that age gradually turned to weekday only, to Monday-Wednesday-Friday, to once weekly, but Schlock Mercenary keeps on updating every day.

Girl Genius has pretty good art, but what I like best is its large ensemble of delightfully inhuman characters. Every time I find a new favorite character, the Foglios introduce another crazy awesome character.

Gunnerkrigg Court doesn't have the very best art, but it's gradually getting better, and the story is intriguing.

xkcd is a comic by a nerd about nerds being nerdy.

1) Paranatural for overall besties
2) WHOMP! brings the funny
3) Lackadaisy Cats because whoa
4) and Girl Genius builds the stuff I wish I were building

best online only

1. http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php
2. http://questionablecontent.net/
3 http://www.smbc-comics.com/
4. http://xkcd.com/

and these two are the best of the newspaper comics

1. http://www.uclick.com/client/wpc/nq/ nonsequitur
2. http://www.uclick.com/client/wpc/db/ doonesbury

Girl Genius

Great art and story

In no particular order:

The Oatmeal http://theoatmeal.com/comics
Schlock Mercenary http://www.schlockmercenary.com/
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal http://www.smbc-comics.com/
Girl Genius http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php

Did someone say corsets? :-)

Obviously, you've never tried Girl Genius

Give it a whirl.. come back.. and let us know what you think.

The start of the Girl Genius comic is here: http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20021104

... Life catches up with Girl Genius.

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20071126

My 8 year old has been reading Girl Genius comics for over a year now. She can't get enough of them. The comics are free online, you only pay for print versions and merch. She has all of the print copies, and rereads them regularly.

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/

For those who may not be familiar with Girl Genius

...so was anyone else expecting the OP to be making a sexist joke about what the phrases "girl genius" and "mini mammoth" have in common?

For those who may not be familiar with Girl Genius:
Mimmoths are tiny verminous mammoths. Originally somebody’s experiment, they escaped and quickly populated most of Europe. They fill the same niche as mice and tend to live alongside them. They get into machinery and push things around with their tusks, wreaking havoc.

Any sufficiently analysed magic is indistinguishable from technology. (C) Foglio Studios

I'm quite fond of Girl Genius, myself.

Impossible. :)

(For those who don't know, and might be interested: http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php is the Girl Genius webcomic. It's steampunk, with a good storyline, etc etc. The art is phenomenal, and the Foglios have online versions of several others of their works too (Mythadventures and Buck Godot, both of which were entertaining as well). The art in Girl Genius is so good that I would totally love to have the printed versions ... though I can't justify the cost of them yet.

Let's just say that the comic is Awesome.

To say nothing of their three (count them, Three) Hugos...

Impossible. :)

(For those who don't know, and might be interested: http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php is the Girl Genius webcomic. It's steampunk, with a good storyline, etc etc. The art is phenomenal, and the Foglios have online versions of several others of their works too (Mythadventures and Buck Godot, both of which were entertaining as well). The art in Girl Genius is so good that I would totally love to have the printed versions ... though I can't justify the cost of them yet.

Let's just say that the comic is Awesome.

Definitely. (http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/, Wikipedia entry, and Girl Genius Wiki @ wikia)

Clearly. I thought of Agatha Heterodyne immediately when I saw the post.

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php for those unfamiliar with the Folios' genius.

Clearly. I thought of Agatha Heterodyne immediately when I saw the post.

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php for those unfamiliar with the Folios' genius.

Do you mean Agatha Clay?

I'd certainly choose to opt out of illiteracy on Slashdot. Is there an app for that?

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20100910

The physics is undoubtedly good for a one-off run, but it is the chemistry that will determine whether steam engines can be brought to market.

The physics are limited by Carnot equations, but current automobiles perform well below the theoretical limits. Steam engines have effective torques at very low RPMs and have much higher limits on RPMs than ICEs: they can come a lot closer to the theoretical limits. They also reduce the need for a complicated, and heavy, transmission. The power band is, IIRC, very similar to electric motors.

But the problem is the chemistry of water, which is not even touched upon in this story. Water, when put under high temperature and pressure, is THE universal solvent. To make heating coils that will survive long enough to be economical requires some pretty fancy metallurgy. Almost certainly too expensive for the market. And the standard automotive engine that is being used in this race car will be destroyed very quickly. It will be interesting to see what the initial point of failure will be. I'm guessing the piston rings will seize before the valves fail.

As much as I am fan of steampunk like this, I really doubt that there is any future for an automotive reciprocating steam engine.

your comment about birds made me think of Airships. Castle Wulfenback anyone? I mean it is just as impractical...see comment further down. Plus an airship would be freakin' sweet.

So much bad news someone cheer me up...please.

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20021104

Start at the beginning, then work your way through the middle until you reach the end. Then stop.

What on earth are you talking about?

Business.

Price is driven by cost of development - of course it is. If it weren't, then companies would be selling a product for a price floated on the market as you suggest, and then finding themselves out of capital b/c their total income would be *less than* their total expenditures.

No. Cost of development is a sunk cost. Once it's paid, there's nothing to do but to try and maximize your income. If the total income - number of units sold * (price per unit - cost per unit) - is less than price of development, then yes, the company will be running a deficit rather than profit on that product. That's precisely why they often conduct market surveys before investing in R&D.

How they recoup their dev costs depends on the business model, but to suggest that dev costs don't impact pricing is just nonsense.

It's math, and unless and until you understand it - and I mean really understand it - you better not try to run a company, for your own sake, because you will fail miserably.

To recap: profit = number_of_units_sold * (price_per_unit - cost_per_unit) - cost_of_development, where number_of_units_sold is a function of price_per_unit, benefit per unit to the buyer and human psychology.

Seriously, all aspiring businessmen: read this and understand it. If you can't, you can't succeed. There is no way around this.

If one company has lower dev costs than another, they have what's known as "competitive advantage" -- they can create new products with equal value to the consumer at a lower cost. That company now has a viable option (not available to their competitor) to float their product to the market at a price lower than their competitor, and still make positive net revenue.

Of course they do. That's perfectly in agreement with the equation and its implications. After all, they make the same profit with less (price_per_unit - cost_per_unit), since their cost_of_development is lower.

However, in the long run, for long-selling goods, the cost_per_unit is the dominating factor. That's why it's often a good idea to spend some extra R&D to make sure your manufacturing processes are as efficient as possible. Experience shows that this is especially true of goods with low cost_per_unit. In the bottom end are Internet-downlodable games, where all of the costs are in cost_of_development, and cost_per_unit is for all practical purposes zero; in such items, it's almost always beneficial to decrease the price, since it increases the sales a lot - a hundred times as many people pay for a $1 game than $10 one, adding up to 10-time profits.

In the very extreme end of this, Girl Genius, Dwarf Fortress and The Freenet Project seem to survive entirely on donations/auxiliary sells. But then again, they are bringing something valuable and wonderful to the Internet, unlike most corporations.

Just like today's Girl Genius strip (in the last panel).

Wait... you mean there's a actually a mad scientist named Tryggvason?

He did it right in that first he observed and then came up with a mathematical explanation of what he had observed.

That is exactly backwards from the way we know the things we know.

Observation can provide inspiration for a mathematical model, but the test for a model is not only whether it fits current observations, but whether it predicts new observations, which are then confirmed.

For instance, the Big Bang theory predicted the cosmic microwave background radiation, which was then observed. Einstein's theory of relativity was not invented to explain the movements of Mercury, but it does. As for black holes, I wonder if these mean anything to you?

Furthermore, it should be obvious that a thing is true or not -- the order in which humans discover it does not change the truth of a thing, only (perhaps) its likelihood to be true. Even if a logical falsehood is employed in discovering a hypothesis, that hypothesis may be true.

There is no such thing in nature as absolutely nothing.

Fair enough. At least, it's not worth arguing, as humans can certainly come up with concepts which don't apply to the real world, or concepts which, while useful in mathematics -- even in mathematics which have real applications -- are wholly imaginary.

For example:

The ultimate measure of what is real and what isn't, is more philosophical or even religious than science. Jesus Christ gave us a few glimpses into a reality that cannot be measured by our senses or their extensions.

This presupposes that Jesus Christ existed, that the report of his sayings is accurate, and that he was not deluded. There is significant doubt of the first two points, but if they were true, I suspect he was delusional.

I'm sure you've heard the saying about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic or the miraculous.

The point I take from that is that everything that exists can have a natural explanation. Anything that is "supernatural" and actually exists is actually a natural phenomenon that we don't yet understand.

I can say that largely because I am defining it to be that way -- for instance, if miracles and magic do actually exist, I assume they follow some sort of laws of their own, and quite probably interact with existing physical laws we know and understand. But I also believe that the universe does make sense, and that we have the ability to make sense of it.

I could pretty much sum that up like this.

It is a good and fun mathematical exercise, but...

I agree with you up to this point. I'll justify it with another webcomic.

like black holes, dark matter, dark energy and gravitational waves

But again, we have a fair number of observations which tell us black holes exist, and line up with certain predictions black holes would imply. We have nothing like that for string theory, that I'm aware of. Hawking Radiation is similar. People are working on it.

In my view, science and religion are two sides of the same coin in man's search for truth.

I would argue that the motivation can be the same -- note, can be. Religion is much easier to corrupt than science, since we don't really know what we're doing, whereas in science, anyone can come up with a counterexample.

But despite the similar motivation, they represent wholly different methods.

In particular, science demands that you turn on your brain and think rationally and critically. Religion demands that you turn off your brain and believe on faith. Science can throw out many hypotheses, and admit which of them we don't know, whereas relig

ok, girl genius online - I dig mad scientists, I guess. Kimiko is low charisma because she's socially awkward - can't talk to boys, calls people primates, that sort of thing.

All we can really do is let the industry die and THEN see if it is so valuable that it needs resurrecting.

Ah, so you've been reading Girl Genius too?

-Ster