Shaenon K. Garrity is a webcomic creator and science-fiction author best known for her webcomics Narbonic and Skin Horse. She collaborated with various artists to write webcomics for the Modern Tales-family of webcomic subscription services in the early 2000s, and write columns for various comics journals. Starting in 2003, Garrity begun doing freelance editing work for Viz Media on various manga translations.
Early life
Garrity was born in Pittsburgh in 1978. She enjoyed drawing and writing at a young age, and began drawing comics in high school. As a youth correspondent, Garrity drew a comic strip for the kids' section of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. She studied English at Vassar College, where she ran a comic strip in the college newspaper. Coming out of college, Garrity worked as a front-desk secretary at Viz Media for three years while simultaneously creating Narbonic.
Webcomics
Shaenon Garrity first came up with the idea of creating her daily webcomic Narbonic in college, after watching the science-fiction films City ofLost Children and back-to-back. She began posting her webcomic about the evil mad scientistHelen Narbon and her minions shortly after moving to San Francisco after college, in July 2000. She initially advertised her webcomic to her family, friends, and her old Usenet group, and submitted her website to major search engines. She also submitted her webcomic to Keenspot, but the webcomic portal rejected Narbonic. Garrity had no plans to profit from her work, but was curious how far her readership would grow. Narbonic audience grew slowly during its first year, but shot up significantly in 2001, hitting Garrity with steep bandwidth charges. Narbonic was part of the launch line-up of Joey Manley's webcomic subscription website Modern Tales in March 2002, and it remained the most popular feature on the website until she moved it to Webcomics Nation in 2006. In the following years, Garrity began several webcomics on Manley's subscription services. When the platform Girlamatic launched, Manley and Lea Hernandez suggested she would do a Narbonic spin-off featuring a kid-version of the character Mell, one of Helen Narbon's minions. Garrity initially collaborated with artist Vera Brosgol to write the webcomic Li'l Mell for Girlamatic, and this webcomic later had a rotating roster of artists. For the platform Graphic Smash, Garrity collaborated with the artists Robert Stevenson and Roger Langridge to write More Fun, and for Serializer, Garrity worked together with Tom Hart to write TrunkTown. After the launch of Webcomics Nation, Garrity wrote Smithson, drawn by Brian Moore and Roger Langridge. Garrity took over the content editor role for Modern Tales in 2006. She revived the long-form webcomic section of the website and worked on implementing Project Wonderful. Garrity concluded Narbonic on December 31, 2006. The series has been adapted into several volumes of comic books during its run, and she began a commentated "director's cut" of the webcomic a few years later. During Narbonic run, Garrity was contacted by Narbonic-reader Jeffrey Wells, who was writing a story with that shared some elements with Garrity's webcomic. In 2008, Garrity collaborated with Wells to write her new daily webcomic Skin Horse. Telling the story of a top secret government agency that handles non-humans as armed social workers, Skin Horse was the most popular webcomic on Webcomics Nation until it was moved to its own website and GoComics. The first volumes of Skin Horse were published by the San Francisco Bay Area artist group, the Couscous Comics collective. By 2018, seven volumes of Skin Horse had been released in print. In 2010, Garrity brought back Li'l Mell with a new storyline, this time collaborating with artist Cameron Nielson.
Other work
Garrity began volunteering at the Cartoon Art Museum in 2000, and continued to work there throughout her webcomic career. Shortly after being laid off by Viz Media in 2003, Garrity began doing freelance editing work for the company. She edited One Piece, Yu Yu Hakusho, Ultimate Muscle, Knights of the Zodiac, and Tenchi Muyo for the English-language Shonen Jump magazine, and wrote reviews for Animerica magazine. Garrity wrote for Marvel Comics in the mid-2000s, writing the 2005-2007 Marvel Holiday Specials. She was a regular contributor for Sequential Tart, The Comics Journal, Publishers Weekly, and Anime News Network. Handling the localization of Cased Closed, Garrity became responsible for official translations of the names of new characters. Garrity intended to write the book CLAMPin America in 2011, a volume which was intended to cover the history of the popular four-member manga creation team CLAMP. However, this release was cancelled due to copyright issues. Garrity wrote short science-fiction stories in Strange Horizons, Lightspeed,, and Machine of Death. In 2013, Garrity contributed to Dark Horse Comics' CBLDF Presents Manga: Introduction, Challenges, and Best Practices.
