FreeFall--The Web Comic.

I recently discovered this web comic, and have been working my way through the extensive archives.

Although in the "newer" world of internet-only publishing, FreeFall operates like the classic comics--three panels, a joke in each one, a plot line that advances microscopically each installment.

The set up is oddly simple, and simultaneously complicated: Sam Starfall, the main character, is a a squid-like, tentacled extra-terrestrial, living on a planet human beings are terraforming. He is a scam artist, whose great ambition is to be a starship captain. His cohort is a robot who has a better sense of ethics than Sam does. They have managed to acquire an engineer, who is a genetically combined human/wolf, named Florence. She is bright, competent, ethical, loyal--everything that Sam is not.

The simple line drawings contrast with the complicated science that forms the substance of the series. Yet, even with punch lines depending on such semi-arcane concepts as "Turing tests" and "Fermi's Paradox," there are still plenty of classic comic staples as well. Such as this one.

The last panel is all you need. "In operating system terms," asks the robot,"would you say the legal system is equivalent to DOS or Windows?"
Florence replies "Slow. Buggy. Uses up all allocated resources and still needs more. Windows. Definitely Windows."

Don't you love the fact that the existence of technology gives us more ways to bash lawyers?