Abby Howard  Abigail "Abby" Howard is a webcomic artist from Charlotte, North Carolina. She is the creator of "Junior Scientist Power Hour" and "The Last Halloween". Howard was born on August 3, 1992 in Jackson, Mississippi and grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina. She attended McGill University in Montreal, majoring in Biology with a specialization in Evolution. She enjoyed learning about life history, but did not enjoy the math, chemistry, and microbiology classes that were a part of her degree. She describes herself as “a wretched student, all I wanted to do was draw pictures.” She started "Junior Scientist Power Hour" in the summer of 2012. With only 27 comics to her name, she entered "Strip Search". Despite placing second, she was able to quit school and become a full-time cartoonist, as noted in her comic "Screaming Constantly". "Junior Scientist Power Hour" was a weekly episodic webcomic by Howard, usually focusing on topics such as her daily life and parodies of pop culture. From the Facebook page, "it's about her incredibly interesting life with her cat, and sometimes it is also about other things." The panels tend to be hand-drawn black and white; however, there is one notable exception. The band members in the strip “Tupper Ware Remix Party” are brightly colored and subsequent strips featuring them are in color as well. Abby's art style is influenced by that of Jhonen Vasquez. She was especially influenced by his comic "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac". Howard describes herself primarily as a traditional artist, but she does use digital art for coloring panels. Howard was selected as one of the twelve contestants for Penny Arcade's webcomic based reality competition show "Strip Search". She was the only contestant who competed using traditional media. Howard built up a following, who called themselves “Team Tangent.” After competing in "Strip Search", Howard created a Kickstarter for her next project, "The Last Halloween". It was pitched as an episodic horror-comedy comic, and was crowdfunded within 20 minutes. The Kickstarter raised $126,507 of the $9,000 goal. "The Last Halloween" began October 8, 2013 (September 18, 2013 for Kickstarter backers). While the art style is similar to "Junior Scientist Power Hour", it features more detailed illustrations, locations, and a continuing story. The comic is influenced by horror films, which Howard is admittedly a fan of.