While many of you are stuck at home looking for something to occupy your time, it can be hard to know where to start. I’m here to help with a list of free webcomics you can read right on your laptop or mobile device, guaranteed to keep you glued to the screen for hours, if not days or weeks … months? Maybe!
This list includes comics for teens and adults covering genres like fantasy, science-fiction, memoir, romance, and horror. You’ll find stories about robots, college life, adoption, superheroes, queer life, nuns, giant boyfriends, vagrants!, a gang of tenacious cats, Native American mythology, and so much more!
Note that each entry includes information on the status, age suitability, and content for that comic.
As there are more webcomics out there than I can count, this list is not meant to be exhaustive, but hopefully you’ll find something new to enjoy. Many of these comic artists have recommended other webcomics they like on their website, so if you like something here, see what that artist recommends for even more fun reads! And if that's not enough, check out The 11 Best Places to Read Comics Online for Free from Book Riot.
Happy reading!
1.. Always Raining Here by Bell & Hazel
Summary: Adrian is heartsick, Carter is horny. This is a story about their misadventures as awkward teenagers as they fumble through unrequited romances.
Genre: Fiction
Status: Complete
Age Suitability: 14+
Content Warning: Includes brief scenes of non-consensual activity, along with harsh language and sexual scenarios.
2. 
Check Please! By Ngozi Ukazu
Summary: Eric Bittle—former Georgia junior figure skating champion, vlogger extraordinaire, and amateur pâtissier—is starting his freshman year playing hockey at the prestigious Samwell University in Samwell, Massachusetts. And it’s basically nothing like co-ed club hockey back in the South. For one? There’s checking.
Genre: Hockey, friendship, bros, and trying to find yourself during the best 4 years of your life.
Status: Complete
Age Suitability: 13+
Content Warning: There is some underage drinking, minor swearing, and briefly hints at substance abuse and depression.
Awards: In 2017 it won a Reuben Award in the "Online Comic: Long Form" category. In 2019, it won the Harvey Award for Digital Book of the Year, and an Ignatz award for Outstanding comic.
3.
Decrypting Rita by Margaret Trauth/Egypt Urnash
Summary: When a robot lady is dragged outside of reality by her ex-boyfriend, she’s got to pull herself back together across four parallel worlds… before a hive-mind can take over the entire planet!
Genre: Science Fiction
Status: Ongoing
Age Suitability: 13+
Content Warning: None
4.
Dumbing of Age by David M. Willis
Summary: A story about college freshmen in the girls wing within a co-ed dorm at Indiana University, learning everything about life and themselves usually in the most difficult ways. It stars a Christian homeschooled girl and her atheist best friend, and also a disgraced cheerleader, a misanthrope, a rebel, and a caped vigilante.
Genre: Fiction
Status: Ongoing
Age Suitability: 16+
Content Warning: Does include themes of depression and parental abuse, some utterances of homophobia and transphobia, and an instance of attempted sexual assault and a depiction of attempted suicide.
5.
Giant Nerd Boyfriend by Fishball
Summary: Having a boyfriend who's a full foot taller than you might seem adorable at first, but it usually just ends up causing a whole bunch of minor inconveniences. Follow Fishball as she navigates the Malaysian life with her 6'5" geeky boyfriend.
Genre: Autobiography/Memoir, humor
Status: Ongoing
Age Suitability: 16+
Content Warning: Touches on depression and abandonment at times.
6.
Girl Genius by Phil & Kaja Foglio
Summary: Follows the career of Agatha Heterodyne, a hapless student at Transylvania Polygnostic University who discovers that she has more going for her than she thought.
Genre: Gaslamp Fantasy
Status: Ongoing
Age Suitability: 13+
Content Warning: Includes lots of running around in Victorian underwear, occasional innuendo, a certain amount of violence and the occasional swear word.
7.
Hark, A Vagrant! by Kate Beaton
Summary: Beaton skewers historical events and people with plenty of humor.
Genre: History, literature, humor
Status: Complete
Age Suitability: 16+
Content Warning: None
Awards: Won the 2009 Doug Wright Award for Best Emerging Talent; Nominated for the 2010 Harvey Award for Best online comics work; Won the 2011Harvey Award for Best online comics work; Nominated for the 2011 Eagle Award for Favourite Web-Based Comic; Won the 2011 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Online Comic; Won the 2012 Harvey Award for Best online comics work; Won the 2012 Doug Wright Award for Best Book.
8.
Heartstopper by Alice Oseman
Summary: A comic about love, friendship, loyalty, life, time, and mental illness. It explores, among other things, the blossoming relationship between Nick Nelson and Charlie Spring, two boys at a British all-boys grammar school.
Genre: Romance
Status: Ongoing
Age Suitability: 14+
Content Warning: Deals very seriously with mental illness, including anorexia, depression, self-harm, and a suicide attempt (but there will be absolutely no death). Updates that include these are marked with trigger warnings. While this comic will eventually explore sex, it will remain strictly SFW. The characters are under 18. There may, however, be mild violence and swearing.
Awards: No awards yet, but it has been published and optioned for TV.
9.
Homestuck by Andrew Hussie
Summary: On his 13th birthday, John Egbert starts playing a mysterious videogame called Sburb. Unfortunately, this triggers the apocalypse. Fortunately, he and his friends can make things right, if they can beat the game. They’ll need a lot of teamwork, a little luck, and some inspired shenanigans along the way to make it through this mind-bending, genre-defying adventure.
Genre: Defies genres
Status: Complete
Age Suitability: 16+
Content Warning: Does include extreme profanity, occasional sexual innuendo, occasional alcohol/drug use, violence, and gore.
10.
Indexed by Jessica Hagy
Summary: This site is a little project that lets the creator, Jessica Hagy, make fun of some things and sense of others. I use it to think a little more relationally without resorting to doing actual math.
Genre: Nonfiction. Humor.
Status: Ongoing.
Age Suitability: 13+
Content Warning: None.
11.
Lackadaisy by Tracy Butler
Summary: A gang of tenacious (if not shady) characters (cats!) run a St. Louis speakeasy in the era of Prohibition.
Genre: historical fiction, parody, dark comedy, and abject nonsense
Status: Ongoing
Age Suitability: 16+
Content Warning: Some violence and illegal activity abounds here!
Awards: Won the 2007 Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards, including "Outstanding Newcomer" and "Outstanding Artist". Won the 2008 Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards, including "Outstanding Artist", "Black and White Art", and "Website Design". Nominated for the 2011 Eisner Award in the category of "Best Digital Comic". Won its first Ursa Major Award on May 26, 2019 for "Best Graphic Story" in 2018. These awards have been presented at select furry conventions annually since 2001 for outstanding achievement in anthropomorphic and furry arts. The webcomic was a runner-up in the same category for 2009 through 2012 and 2015 through 2017.
12.
The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ & Amal by E.K. Weaver
Summary: In the span of a single day, Amal calls off his arranged marriage, comes out to his conservative parents, promptly gets disowned, goes on a bender... and wakes up the next morning to find TJ, a lanky, dreadlocked vagrant, frying eggs and singing Paul Simon in his kitchen. Thus starts a 3,500 mile road trip!
Genre: Romance
Status: Complete
Age Suitability: 16+
Content Warning: Includes a few short sex scenes.
Awards: 2016 Lambda Literary Award finalist
13.
Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe, Edited by Bekah Caden
Summary: Witness what the gods do…after dark. The friendships and the lies, the gossip and the wild parties, and of course, forbidden love. Because it turns out, the gods aren’t so different from us after all, especially when it comes to their problems.
Genre: Romance
Status: Ongoing
Age Suitability: 13+
Content Warning: A few depictions of coercion, drugging, and sexual assault. Any NSFW content (18+) can be found on the author’s Patreon.
Awards: Nominated for the 2019 Will Eisner Award for Best Web Comic.
14.
Lucky Penny by Johnny Wander
Summary: If Penny Brighton didn't have bad luck, she'd have no luck at all. She lost her job. And her apartment. In the same day. But it's okay, her friend has a cozy storage unit she can crash in. And there's bound to be career opportunities at the neighborhood laundromat...
Genre: Fiction/Romance
Status: Complete
Age Suitability: 16+
Content Warning: There are some fight scenes to watch out for.
15. 
Monsterkind by Taylor C.
Summary: A light-hearted story that follows Wallace Foster, a human social worker, on his quest to help the monster inhabitants of District C with their various problems. Along the way, he meets many bright and colorful characters, gets into some dicey situations, makes friends, and slowly begins to unravel a deep mystery with the help and guidance of his monster counterpart Kip Kaizer.
Genre: Fantasy
Status: Ongoing
Age Suitability: 13+
Content Warning: A couple of the monster characters experience prejudice, and at least a few characters suffer from mental health trauma. Most of the time, it’s got a soft way of portraying these issues; thus far, nothing gets too grim.
16. 
Mooncakes by Wendy Xu and Suzanne Walker
Summary: Nova Huang knows more about magic than your average teen witch. She works at her grandmothers' bookshop, where she helps them loan out spell books and investigate any supernatural occurrences in their New England town.
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Status: Ongoing
Age Suitability: 13+
Content Warning: None
17. 
Namesake by Megan Lavey-Heaton and Isabelle Melançon
Summary: When Emma lands in another world following a library fire, she discovers she’s a Namesake, one with the power to open portals to other worlds via the power of their name. The portals lead to strange, fantasy, and fairytale lands we know thanks to literature, cinema, and folks tales. The rules of Namesakes are quite clear - Alices always go to Wonderland. Wendys always go to Neverland. However, Emma finds herself in Oz, where she is expected to act as the latest in a long line of Dorothies. She instead unveils a magical conspiracy plot that’s more than 100 years in the making.
Genre: Fantasy
Status: Ongoing
Age Suitability: 14+
Content Warning: Fantastical violence and a few headless bodies with rolling heads show up
18.
Novae: The Necromancer and the Astronomer’s Apprentice by KaiJu
Summary: It is 17th century France, the age of discovery and scientific revolution. Sulvain, a mysterious traveler, is absorbed in the Parisian academic scene. Through his friendship with renowned Christiaan Huygens, Sulvain has the chance to study the latest discoveries of the distant cosmos. Deep in the library of Academy of Sciences, however, our traveler will meet Huygen’s apprentice, Raziol Quamar, who will truly spark new lights in Sulvain’s universe. But as the two grow closer, trouble brews in the city.
Genre: Historical m/m romance with a touch of paranormal
Status: Ongoing
Age Suitability: 13+
Content Warning: Racism and death
19.
O Human Star by Blue Delliquanti
Summary: Alastair Sterling, the inventor who sparked the robot revolution, dies suddenly and wakes up 16 years later in a robot body that matches his old one exactly. Now Al must track down his old partner Brendan to find out who is responsible for Al’s unexpected resurrection, but their reunion raises even more questions. Like who the robot living with Brendan is. And why she looks like Al. And how much of the past should stay in the past…
Genre: A science fiction family drama featuring queer identified characters and plenty of romance.
Status: "Nearly done", according to a recent Twitter post.
Age Suitability: 16+
Content Warning: Mostly SFW, but there are NSFW pages accompanied by a post giving you the heads-up to not read that day’s update while you’re at work.
Awards: Won the 2012 Prism Comics Queer Press Grant, an annual grant awarded to cartoonists publishing comics that feature LGBT characters and themes. It was nominated for the Ignatz Outstanding Online Comic award in 2015 and a Lambda Literary award in 2016, and it won Best Self-Published Work and Best in Show at the DINK Awards in 2016.
20. 
Questionable Content by Jeph Jacques
Summary: A comic strip about romance and robots.
Genre: slice of life/science fiction/romance
Status: Ongoing
Age Suitability: 18+
Content Warning: Includes nude/sex scenes, substance abuse, mental illness struggles, and references to suicide.
Awards: Won the following Web Cartoonists’ Choice Awards: 2005 – Outstanding Romantic Comic; 2006 – Outstanding Romantic Comic; 2007 – Outstanding Character Writing, Outstanding Dramatic Comic, Outstanding Slice-of-Life Comic, Outstanding Romantic Comic.
21.
Rain by Jocelyn Samara D.
Summary: Follow the life of a teenage trans girl named Rain, attempting to go through her senior year in high school identified only as a woman.
Genre: slice-of-life/comedy/drama and pseudo-autobiographical
Status: Ongoing
Age Suitability: 13+
Content Warning: It's intended to be a comedy, and though violence is minimal, it will also touch on some heavy subjects including acceptance from family and peers, blind hatred, and many of the other difficulties faced by members of the LGBT community.
22.
Sarah’s Scribbles by Sarah Anderson
Summary: Sarah Anderson doodles about being asocial and weird. Follow the arrow to the left to see her art.
Genre: Humor
Status: Ongoing
Age Suitability: 16+
Content Warning: Sarah humorously draws about her mental health struggles.
Awards: Won the Goodreads Choice Award in the "best graphic novel" category in 2016, 2017, and 2018, for Adulthood is a Myth, Big Mushy Happy Lump, and Herding Cats respectively.
23.
Seemingly Dark by Jules Royce Andersen
Summary: A story about an exhausted mailman trying to raise a teenage monster, and the mysterious hitchhiker who turns their sleepy town upside-down.
Genre: Supernatural
Status: Ongoing
Age Suitability: 13+
Content Warning: Contains potentially triggering content such as blood, offensive language, and mental health issues. All pages with sensitive material have a trigger warning on them.
24.
Selkie by Dave
Summary: A story about a family created through adoption and the challenges of coping with being abandoned.
Genre: Fantasy
Status: Ongoing
Age Suitability: 13+
Content Warning: There is some bullying portrayed and some fighting. While not shown, one of the characters was abused in the past.
25. 
Sister Claire by Yamino and Ash
Summary: This is the story of a young woman who leaves her quiet abbey to undergo a rigorous journey across a monster-riddled wilderness. On this journey, Claire begins to assemble the jigsaw puzzle of her past, present, and future, all while facing terrible dangers, finding new friends, and trying to save her found family from certain doom.
Genre: Paranormal fantasy
Status: Ongoing
Age Suitability: 13+
Content Warning: There are trigger warnings on page for blood and explicit situations. Mature/sexual situations are sometimes implied but are never explicit.
26.
Travelogue by Aatmaja Pandya
Summary: Nana, a small wizard, travels the world with Adi, Emerene, and Princess (Adi’s goat) solving magical problems as they go. Where are we headed today? What should we do next? Let’s sit by the stream and talk about it awhile. We’re in no rush.
Genre: Fantasy diary comic
Status: Unfinished, but still beautiful to read as is
Age Suitability: 13+
Content Warning: None
27. 
Tripping Over You by Suzana Harcum and Owen White
Summary: Growing up is an awkward waltz. Tripping Over You follows Milo and Liam's steps (and missteps) as they begin a hesitant relationship in their last year of highschool. They must learn to fold each other into their lives (in the midst of major life changes) with as much grace as they both can manage, which admittedly, could be enormously more graceful. They stumble over each others' feet while trial-and-error learning what it means to provide each other with a center point of balance.
Genre: Romance
Status: Ongoing
Age Suitability: 13+
Content Warning: Our main website is PG-13, with some suggestion of sexuality as it comes up in their relationship. We do also make additional 18+ comics available in our store, but 18+ material does not appear in the main story itself. We like to keep the two separate in case the adult stuff isn’t someone’s cup of tea (and sales of the 18+ comics help support us making the main comic for free), but we have a lot of fun making both in their own ways.
28.
Unshelved by Gene Ambaum & Bill Barnes
Summary: A daily comic strip set in a public library and written by a real-life librarian. Some of the stories are made up, some of them are based on real life, and some are absolutely true stories sent to them from their readers. And the stranger the story, the more likely it is to be true.
Genre: Humor
Status: Ongoing
Age Suitability: 13+
Content Warning: None
29.
Vattu by Evan Dahm
Summary: A story following a member of a nomadic culture caught in the midst of a clash of cultures.
Genre: an anthropological fantasy epic
Status: Ongoing
Age Suitability: 13+
Content Warning: Some violence
Awards: Winner of the 2014 Ignatz Award for Best Online Comic, and the 2013 Stumptown Comic Arts Award for best webcomic.
30. 
Wilde Life by Pascalle Lepas
Summary: Set in a small town in rural Oklahoma, Wilde Life focuses on stories about creatures from Native American mythology as witnessed and documented by a journalist from Chicago, Illinois, named after Oscar Wilde.
Genre: Supernatural adventure/horror
Status: Ongoing
Age Suitability: 16+
Content Warning: As a horror comic it contains imagery that may spook or unsettle some readers.
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