Thank Heavens for web comics! Before them, comics were doomed to die a horrible death in the newspapers, where 75-year-old franchise-zombies hold on forever, getting moldier every year.

The web saved comics, end-of-story. For the web designer and developer audience, here are the essential web comics:

• XKCD – The webcomic that made webcomics famous. Also spawned 1000 stick-figure comic imitators. Which is silly, because the point of XKCD isn’t the drawing, but the brilliant scientist creator who thinks up those impossibly geeky jokes!

• Dilbert – The only newspaper comic to survive its time in print to be reborn online as fresh as ever. It helps that creator Scott Adams is still alive and well, unlike the creators of the franchise-zombies.

• Penny Arcade – Well, sometimes you have to take a break and not think about work! This comic is focused entirely on gaming and video game culture. It’s what web designers do in their off time anyway.

• User-Friendly – Founded in 1997! It can be said to be the oldest surviving web comic, and from day one it was about tech, geeks, “hackers” (it meant something else in the old days!) and development.

• Doomed to Obscurity – A new up-and-comer, but definitely worth watching. It’s been called both a modern successor to User-Friendly and “Dilbert without the dog,” but its humor is blaringly original, while having a focus sort of like the above four comics combined!