The comics by Jorge Cham collected in these books are quite funny. It shows the humor of academic life of a graduate student. If you have ever been in grad school, then perhaps can relate to some of the comic strips.
Author Jorge Cham had been a Graduate Student at Stanford University where he later got his PhD in Mechanical Engineering. Now he writes and draws comics about life in academia. You can see his comics on his site at phdcomics.com.
Because of his engineering studies, some of his strips has some “technical humor”. For example, there is a parody of Newton’s first, second, and third laws of motion.
The strip also does parodies of popular U.S. movies and television…
- The Thesis is a parody of the movie The Matrix
- Radiers of the Lost Dissertation is a parody of the movie Radiers of the Lost Ark
- Who Wants to Marry a Grad Student is a parody of the television show Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire
- A Smithmas Carol is a parody of A Christmas Carol
- Cingradella is a parody of Cinderella
You can get a sense of the humor of the strips by looking his 200 Most Popular Comics.
The comic’s protagonist is a black haired male that wears glasses and is never named strip. So he is often referenced as the “Nameless Hero” in other publications. The other major characters in the strips are Cecilia (an engineering student who admits that she’s a geek), Tajel (a female student in the social sciences), Mike Slackenerny (who is lazy and has been in grad school for a long long time), and faculty adviser Prof Smith.
He had mentioned that the comics are drawn directly into digital form using a graphic pen tablet.