[ 
Mood: Sleepy ]
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Currently: Playing illegal tag. ]
I did it. After five days of taking "liberties" with my PTO to work on "personal projects," I have successfully read the entirety of 8-Bit Theater. That’s five years of web comics in five days. I am a machine. Built to read web comics.
I’m not going to lie to you. 8-Bit Theater is not worth your time. Don’t do as I have done, do as I say. Skip it – its not that funny. The comic didn’t get off the ground in the humor department until around 2003, or possibly, early 2004. Even then, most of the jokes that do go off are blatantly stolen from pre-season seven Simpsons episodes, or just re-hashes of jokes that the author acknowledges we didn’t laugh at the first time he did it.
What was nice about going through the whole thing all at once was that I got to witness how a story is told. Not a particularly interesting story, but all the pieces fit – everything is there for a reason. In one of my classes at one point or another, I remember reading some guy saying, "If there’s a gun above the fire place in act one, somebody better have used it by act five." Or something like that. College is a mild, beer flavored haze at this point. Anyway, the guy who made this, he did a good job of sticking to that quote that somebody said at some point. I don’t think this is the type of thing you can start in the middle of – either you were a fan from day one, or you spent five days reading this garbage, frame by frame.
All of the characters have very two-dimensional motivations. The thief steals stuff, the fighter fights things, the black mage is evil, the red mage is a pompous homosexual, etc. The characters tell self deprecating jokes scattered throughout the years that are always much akin to, "Teehee, our motivations are two dimensional." This doesn’t make them any less bland and uninteresting. Maybe the comic is better in small doses, when you’re just reminded bit by little bit about each character’s drive to do the stuff they do. Of course, there’s the occasional breaking of character, but sometimes that feels like he just misattributed a speech bubble rather than deliberately tried to flesh out a personality.
And of course, if you have the pleasure of reading the comments at the bottom of the page after the comics of 2002… Well, Stewie Griffin says it better than I:
| Quote: |
| Oh I know it hurts now Brian, but look at the bright side: you have some new material for that novel you’ve been writing. You know…the novel you’ve been workin’ on? You know the the one, uh, you’ve been workin on for three years? You know the novel. Got somethin’ new to write about now. You know? Maybe a, maybe a main character gets into a relationship and suffers a little heartbreak? Somethin’ like what… what you’ve just been through? Draw from real life experience? Little, little heartbreak? You know? Work it into the story? Make the characters a little more three dimensional? Little, uh, richer experience for the reader? Make those second hundred pages really keep the reader guessing what’s going to happen? Some twists and turns? A little epilogue? Everybody learns that the hero’s journey isn’t always a happy one? (Voice returns to normal.) Oh, I look forward to reading it. |
So, for those who didn’t follow it for the past five years, what could possibly motivate you to start from the beginning and work your way forward? Boredom and the desire to procrastinate things that truly matter in life, both of which, I’ve had in abundance lately. That is all. Don’t gots? Then go catch up on good web comics, like www.vgcats.com or www.homestarrunner.com. In fact, Homestar can take some time to get into as well – they had some shakey years before they perfected the joke rhythm, and there’s layers upon layers of self referencing humor.
But I guess that’s just the process. You suck for two or three years, stop it, and then people look back with nostalgia on your work back when you sucked, thus making your new material God-like and inspiring t-shirt buying rampages.