Junior Scientist Power Hour

Abby Howard as depicted in Junior Scientist Power Hour

Junior Scientist Power Hour is a weekly episodic webcomic by Abigail "Abby" Howard, usually focusing on topics such as Howard's daily life and parodies of pop culture. From the Facebook page, "it's about her incredibly interesting life with her cat, and sometimes it is also about other things." ^[1] The panels tend to be hand-drawn black and white; however, there is one notable exception. The band members in the strip “Tupper Ware Remix Party” ^[2] are brightly colored and subsequent strips featuring them are in color as well. Abby's art style is similar to that of Jhonen Vasquez, whose comics she has admitted to being influenced by, especially Johnny The Homicidal Maniac.^[3] Howard describes herself primarily as a traditional artist, but she does use digital art for coloring panels.^[3]

Abigail Howard

Abigail "Abby" Howard was born on August 3, 1992 in Jackson, Mississippi and grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina. She attended McGill University in Montreal, majoring in Biology with a specialization in Evolution. She enjoyed learning about life history, but did not enjoy the math, chemistry, and microbiology classes that were a part of her degree. She describes herself as “a wretched student, all I wanted to do was draw pictures.” ^[4] She started Junior Scientist Power Hour in the summer of 2012. With only 27 comics to her name, she entered Strip Search. Despite placing second, she was able to quit school and become a full-time cartoonist, as noted in her comic "Screaming Constantly".^[5] According to a September post on the Junior Scientist Power Hour Facebook page,^[1] Abby Howard is now a resident of Seattle.

Strip Search

Howard was selected as one of the twelve contestants for Penny Arcade's webcomic based reality competition show Strip Search. She was the only contestant who competed using traditional media. Howard built up a following, who called themselves “Team Tangent.” ^[6]

Kickstarter

After competing in Strip Search, Howard created a Kickstarter for her next project, The Last Halloween. It was pitched as an episodic horror-comedy comic, and was crowdfunded within 20 minutes.^[7] The Kickstarter raised $126,507 of the $9,000 goal. 1405% more than necessary.^[8]

The Last Halloween

The Last Halloween began October 8, 2013 (September 18, 2013 for Kickstarter backers). While the art style is similar to Junior Scientist Power Hour, it features more detailed illustrations, locations, and a continuing story. The comic is influenced by horror films, which Howard is admittedly a fan of.^[3]

References