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 thatSabrina or thatSabrina, or even the 1954 film called 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. Though the quality is such that this is hardly something to complain about.
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 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.
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.
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']
Calling the Old Man Out: Fairly early on, Sabrina gently but firmly tells her mom to back the hell off.
Cursed with Awesome: Doesn't actually happen by trope in the comic, but the phrase itself (word for word) is on one guy's shirt◊ in a recent strip... before he gets curb-stomped by a VERY PISSED-OFF Zig Zag.
A Date with Rosie Palms/Caught with Your Pants Down: In one of the early strips, Sabrina decides to indulge in some "hands-on" "cybering" with her (then still-unseen) internet boyfriend, Richard. She's just getting into things when her roommate, Amy, walks in on her. (This later earns Richard the nickname "Sticky Fingers".)
Also that one time Carli the Chinchilla was eavesdropping on Sabrina and Richard during one of their sessions.
Eye Scream: Zig Zag gets a scare when she wakes up and finds she has a subconjunctival hemorrhage of the eye, but her doctor says that it's essentially just a bruise.
The Faceless: Both Carli's husband and Thomas' father are wolves who, possibly as a species trait, are much taller than anyone else, thus they are only "shot" from the neck down for long periods to avoid awkward scene angles.
Though Spike, Carli's husband, has had his face shown on his first (at the time un-named) appearance, and several times more since (he was sitting, so his head was level with Carli's).
Alternate Character Interpretation: Zig Zag is in heavy denial and hasn't recovered emotionally from her abuse. That's why she screws almost Anything That Moves. That's why Sabrina is her ONLY platonic friend. After getting forcibly rejected by Sabrina in comic 138◊, Zig Zag told her "I've had to deal with abuse like this my whole life. I can't believe I almost fell into doing it myself." Zig Zag also told Sabrina "Calm down a bit, and I promise you'll love this"◊ right before Sabrina gave her a black eye. That doesn't sound like someone who's over her past abuses. Let's face it, Zig Zag needs therapy. A LOT of therapy. However, she has been shown to open up...but to a point, and under her own terms. Then again, as ahe herself put it - "Honestly! Can't someone behave playful or slutty without there having to be some deeper meaning behind it!?!" Either way, one never truly recovers from that sort of abuse - the best that can be hoped for is a life in which it doesn't weigh on the mind or constantly interfere. Zig Zag arguably does that. Therapy might still help her, but the belief that one can just rollback their life and edit out the bad parts is something that has to be fixed in therapy. Zig at least seems to have understood this, and acts accordingly. (That said, Blackrabbit would know more than Schwartz on the matter.)
Hey It's That Girl!: In-Universe example: Apparently Amy and Sheila went to the same high school together. It's unknown whether or not they were friends/enemies/etc. during that time.
Hot Mom: Amy Squirrel after her son Timothy is born.
Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Carli, a chinchilla and her husband Spike, a wolf. Also, Thomas' parents, a fox and another wolf, respectively.
Hulk Speak: One of the Transformer toys running for president delivers a speech using this.
Informed Ability: Before going into porn, Zig Zag was aiming to be a professional actress. Subverted when said abilities were shown during a visit to Sabrina's family, leading to a subtle Crowning Moment of Funny...
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?
In The Style Of: 1990's era Warner Bros. cartoons, such as Animaniacs. In fact, some of the character roster might have actually influenced them, such as Amy, who was first drawn in 1988.
Arguably, Tabitha looks and acts as a Dot expy.
I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: In a variation, Zig Zag is more infatuated with Sabrina than in love, knows it, and just wants her to loosen up and enjoy life more.
Jerkass: Darke Katt. A perpetual grouch who would put even Oscar to shame, she refuses to socialize with the others in the studio, let alone be in their films. She can't stand her job as the janitor and the only reason she hasn't left is because she has nowhere else to go and that the others are polite to her, giving her money and shelter for her work.
Sabrina's Optimus Prime toy, which went on a rampage beating up the Decepticon figurines until Timothy intervened.
Karma Houdini: Zig Zag is basically able to do whatever she wants whenever she wants to whoever she wants with little to no consequence, up to and including stalking, sexual harassment, and physical assault.
Les Yay: Zig Zag wants this with Sabrina, and has this with several members of her staff, notably Sheila Vixen and Tina Lynx.
Living Toys: Sabrina's toys have their own little society, complete with a president (a Transformers Animated Blackarachnia figure). They refer to Sabrina as "The Mistress".
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.
Red Oni, Blue Oni: Arguably Sabrina (blue) and Zig Zag (red), the former being a somewhat reserved computer/Transformers nut and the latter an outgoing porn star legend.
Schedule Slip: While it really does update once a month (first day of the month) and is generally on-schedule, it originally featured about four strips with each update; nowadays, at least one is often a Filler Strip, or there may be as few as two, or both.
Strip 49◊ has Sabrina meet Schwartz's Author Avatar and call him a "loser" behind his back.
Strips 602◊ and 603◊ show Sabrina explaining her ideas for a comic project of hers (including a schedule and an art style mirroring those of Sabrina Online itself), only to have Amy criticize her choices as ridiculous.
Sour Prudes: Zig-Zag sometimes (jokingly, one should hope) calls Sabrina a prude because she refuses to become a porn star and because she can sometimes get embarrassed.
Stalker with a Crush: The "Funny Bunny Man", as Tabitha called him (actually Max Blackrabbit, the fursona of Malcolm Earle, Zig Zag's creator).
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.)
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.