Sabrina Online

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Sabrina Online is a furry webcomic created by Eric W. Schwartz and which has consistently managed to put out its monthly batches of strips since its start in late 1996.

The comic revolves around the Slice of Life tales of Sabrina, a quiet skunk who works as a web designer. Unable to find another job after she was replaced at work by a clip-art library, she finds work as webmaster for a porn studio, run by the flirtatious Zig Zag. However, the tone is gently restrained, with an uncomfortable heroine only now growing used to this bizarre job, while her friends (including her living Transformers toys!) around her have their own antics. Updates once a month.

Not to be confused with that Sabrina or that Sabrina, or even the 1954 film called Sabrina.

Tropes used in Sabrina Online include:
  • Adorkable: Sabrina.
  • Anything That Moves: Zig Zag, though she exaggerates this to get a rise out of Sabrina.
  • Art Evolution: Averted; the strip pretty much looks the same in 2011 as it did in 1996.
  • Art Shift: Sabrina's webcomic that is an Expy of herself drawn in a grittier style. Lampshaded to no end, of course!
  • Aside Glance: Often enough to smash the fourth wall.
  • Author Appeal: Sabrina's Amiga advocacy, the talking Transformers toys, and, by Schwartz's own admission, the inclusion of Zig Zag.
  • Author Filibuster: Though it's turning into more of an Author Tract as the last several months of strips have been literally nothing but two to three characters standing or sitting around espousing Eric Schwartz's opinion on various things.
  • Barefoot Cartoon Animals: The entire cast.
  • Berserk Button: Bringing up Zig Zag's past as anything other than a set of facts (and even that chafes).
    • It's also hinted that Zig doesn't take kindly to anyone who tries to hurt her or her friends.
    • An arc launched in December 2010 implies she doesn't take kindly to the GIFT in action.
  • Big Beautiful Woman: Tina Lynx, Zig Zag's secretary/assistant/lover.
  • Bleached Underpants: Eric Schwartz's own commissioned stuff, plus the porn-based origins of much of the supporting cast. (Although the whole "they're porn stars" premise is not hidden at all in the comic.)
    • Special mention goes to Sabrina, which the artist has done nothing erotic of, even on his adult art site. The closest thing he ever did of naughty Sabrina art was an oil painting of her in a pose out of a well known Victorian-era nude painting. In fact, he rather vehemently goes after risque Sabrina fan-art on the web, for all the good that does.
  • Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Zig Zag complains of her lack of friends to hang out with:

With the others it's about business, or sex... or sexy business.

  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: Special strips for holidays - most especially April Fools - will be completely and utterly medium-aware. The main storyline has some moments of this as well.

Amy: Must be tough waiting so long to get a car. [points out to the viewer] To them, too.
Timothy: [Waves 'Hi']

Sabrina: It's tough keeping up with Tabitha, isn't it?
Zig-Zag: You're telling me! It's harder than picking camera angles for a scene with an elephant!
[Cutaway to a camera's eye view: only the top of Zig's face is visible, with an elephant flooding the background]
Zig-Zag: Can you see anything?
Cameraman: Maybe if I backed all the way out of the room...
[Cut back to Zig and Sabrina, the latter looking very confused]
Sabrina: What the hell was THAT!?
Zig-Zag: Hey, we work in media! We should have more power to set up random cutaways than some fat New England guy!

Endora: I don't see how someone can be taken seriously with a name like that.
Zig Zag: *in cheerful tone* Why? Am I supposed to be taken seriously?

"Decepticon... GIVE ME YOUR FACE!"

Thomas: Zoologically speaking, shouldn't this also be impossible?
Amy: Well, that's why we have comic strips.

  • Ms. Fanservice: Zig Zag, obviously. Sheila and Amy also qualify.
  • My Beloved Smother: Endora, Sabrina's ultra-conservative mom.
  • Not So Different: Played with here.
    • Happens again here, albeit unintentionally on Schwartz's part. See also She Who Fights Monsters above.
  • Not What It Looks Like: Invoked: Zig Zag deliberately makes a lunchtime invitation to Richard look like a proposition for sex, much to his bewilderment.

Play along. Sabrina and I are taking you out to lunch.

Amy: (looks straight at the reader) So, you buying any of this?

  • There Are No Girls on the Internet: Discussed and eventually subverted. One strip even is titled almost exactly that.
  • There Is Only One Bed: Intentionally set up by Zig Zag.
  • Thought Bubble: Being a baby, most of Timmy's dialogue is shown in one. He even has these before he was born.
  • Token Wholesome: Sabrina in her workplace.
  • Unusual Euphemism: "Holy dammit Christmas!" At least, it's a euphemism compared to what people would normally say. (And a reference to The Venture Brothers.)
  • Webcomics Long Runners: Along with User Friendly, Sluggy Freelance and Kevin and Kell, the longest of the long.
    • Although that's only in terms of age. In number of comics, it still hasen't reached 1000...
      • It's got 500+. In twelve years. If you count holidays, filler and April Fools strips.
        • Let's see, that's... a little over 41 strips a year, or 0.8 comics a week, or 0.11 comics a day.
  • Webcomic Time: The comic has been going since 1996. At the most, 18 months have passed, storyline-wise.
    • Yet Schwartz keeps mentioning real-life products in the comic... So basically, no more than two years have passed in-universe between Windows 95 being the most recent version of Windows, and Sabrina's toys complaining about the new Revenge of the Fallen-based Optimus Prime toy.
      • To reference the figure above, if one were to figure every strip wound up averaging one day of time In-Universe, time for the main cast is somehow being distorted into running at one tenth the speed of normal time.
      • Subverted several times; Sabrina apparently goes went to college, and explains that she does this "in the free time between strips" when Amy questions this; another occasion, when Amy wakes up to find her pregnancy greatly developed, and asks "how long between strips, anyway?"
  • Where Did We Go Wrong?: Richard's parents. They are ultra-liberal flower-child hippies, and extremely open-minded - and he rebelled by becoming a perfectly straight-laced IT graduate, working tech-support for Microsoft.
  • Wish Fulfillment: In one arc, Zig Zag steals papers detailing information on a group of trolls (courtesy of a well-meaning Sabrina) and abuses them psychologically and, in one case, physically.
  • Write Who You Know: Sabrina starts drawing her own web comic, which is based on events that happened previously in the comic.
  • You Bastard: While the don't explicitly say it, this is probably what Sabrina and Tina think of the viewers who want them to joke about Zig Zag's past.
  • YouTube Poop: Several of Schwartz's old animations of the characters