Dresden Codak

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Kimiko.

Sokar: I have issues with the Schrödinger's cat experiment. [...] In the period before observing the outcome, [the cat] is said to be in "superposition," a state of both decay and not decay, meaning [it] is both dead and not dead. Observer-dependent physics undermines the gods' decision three thousand years ago to ban cats from straddling the borders of the Netherworld. We won't have it!
Kimiko: I have reservations about reconciling a quantum mechanics thought experiment with Egyptian mythology. More importantly, what possible threat could superpositioned cats pose?
Sokar: Somewhere, Niels Bohr walks among us, unobserved and immortal.

Dresden Codak is a web comic by Arryn "Sen" Diaz that has been running at an irregular (and very slow) pace since 2005. It offers whimsical humor focused on physics, philosophy, and transhumanism -- except for the Hob storyline, which, while having the same focus, was much more serious. The story that has been running in the late-2010s with over 100 strips as of May 2021, Dark Science, starts out humorous, but this doesn't last long.

Dresden Codak is a sometimes Dada, sometimes Mind Screw comic focusing on the (mis)adventures of several often unrelated characters:

  • Kimiko "Thunderbolt" Ross: A misanthropic, cybernetically-enhanced Mad Scientist.
  • Tiny Carl Jung: Self-explanatory.
  • Dmitri and Alina Tokamak: A parody of the Wonder Twins and Marvel Family. They also have similar powers, except rather than using transformation and...water... they use physics.
  • "D.H." Ron Awning: A caricature of the literary-minded artsy intellectual.
  • Yvonne "Vonnie" Awning: Ron's sister and a fashionable, trend-focused bureaucrat, fitting, considering she works for the Department of Taste.
  • Rupert and Hubert: Two elderly Victorian scientists who live in a castle they built on the moon.

Not to be confused with The Dresden Files or the city of Dresden, though its name is a reference to the Dresden Codex.

The comic also has a number of similarly surreal one-shots, including the page that we adapted into the Essential Third Act Twists.

Updates irregularly.

Tropes used in Dresden Codak include: