While working as the creative for an ISP, thirtysomething Canadian J.D. "Illiad" Frazier enjoyed the banter and humour shared between staff, particularly between the technical and non-technical staff. A lifetime doodler, he scribbled down some of it in the form of cartoons. He passed them around the office. The drawings were (and still are) very basic, but the humour was dead accurate, and his colleagues encouraged him to produce more. Before long, the scribbled cartoons had turned into a phenomenon with a Web site and cult following. In 1999 O'Reilly published User Friendly, and, following on the popularity of that book, Evil Geniuses in a Nutshell continues the tale of life and times at Columbia Internet ISP, with its cast of techies, designers, executives, AIs, hard-core geeks and one cheeky dust-puppy.

Illiad revels in the trappings of techie culture—abundant references to Star Wars, The Hitchhiker's Guide, Tolkien , Quake and Linux ("Stef thinks he's a penguin. Is he all right?"). But there's also humour here for those who aren't white, wired 18-30 year-old males. Illiad gets the way technology is changing the way we live: our curious relationship to spam ("I read it every morning like I read headlines! 'Be wealthy in 30 days!' 'A free turnip!' and 'Babette is waiting for you!' I want Babette to be waiting for me!!"); our habit of hiding behind disembodied digital communication ("I just find that in chat I can be a lot more expressive"); plus a healthy dose of self-deprecation ("You hit it off with A.J.? That's like Angelina Jolie being attracted to Illiad. It would just be wrong.") Smart and quirky, Illiad's cartoons cut through market-speak with laugh-out-loud humour, documenting the idiosyncrasies of a subculture that's moving fast into the mainstream eye.—Tamsin Todd

Zine illustrated by Jordan Crane