[2] 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.

[3][4] She initially advertised her webcomic to her family, friends, and her old Usenet group, and she submitted her website to major search engines.

Narbonic's audience grew slowly during its first year, but shot up significantly in 2001, hitting Garrity with steep bandwidth charges.

[8] After the launch of Webcomics Nation, Garrity wrote Smithson, drawn by Brian Moore and Roger Langridge.

The first volumes of Skin Horse were published by a San Francisco Bay Area artist group, the Couscous Comics collective.

She was a regular contributor for Sequential Tart, The Comics Journal,[7] Publishers Weekly, and Anime News Network.

[17] In 2013, Garrity contributed to Dark Horse Comics' CBLDF Presents Manga: Introduction, Challenges, and Best Practices.

[18] Garrity is married to artist and Cartoon Art Museum curator Andrew Farago, and they moved to Berkeley, California in 2009.