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. Since 2003, Garrity has done freelance editing 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 she 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. Once out of college, Garrity worked as a front-desk secretary at Viz Media for three years while simultaneously creating Narbonic. Webcomics Shaenon Garrity conceived her daily webcomic Narbonic in college, after watching the science-fiction films City of Lost Children and Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie back-to-back. She began posting her webcomic, about the evil mad scientist Helen Narbon and her minions, shortly after moving to San Francisco in July 2000. She initially advertised her webcomic to her family, friends, and her old Usenet group, and she submitted her website to major search engines. She also submitted Narbonic to the webcomic portal Keenspot, but it was rejected. Garrity had no plans to profit from her work, but she 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 do a Narbonic spin-off featuring a child 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 artists Robert Stevenson and Roger Langridge to write More Fun, and, for Serializer, Garrity worked with Tom Hart to write TrunkTown. After the launch