I was directed to 8-Bit Theatre by my friend Steve Anderson (whose movie review you read before this); he felt it was right up my alley with its twisted humor and surreal story. He was right. If you enjoy Order of the Stick, then 8-Bit Theatre will definitely be your cup of tea.

Much like OotS, 8-Bit Theatre makes fun of a genre (in this case fantasy role-playing computer games). It also doesn’t rely on sophisticated art or the like; the characters are rendered in 8-bit format, and their close-ups are extremely pixilated. And the world itself is as idiotic as the worlds found in many early computer games; many townsfolk have very limited speech patterns (ie, you click on a townsperson and if they didn’t have anything to say, they’d just chant out some generic bit of nonsense that doesn’t mean anything).

The comic follows four characters (Thief, Red Mage, Fighter, and Black Mage) through their quest as the Heroes of Light. The truth is, they’re not heroes. Thief is a con artist of the biggest sort, Red Mage… well, you could call him a power-gamer personified and you’d be close to the mark, Fighter is an idiot who keeps channeling stuff from the real world (well, all the characters do from time to time, but Fighter does this to an extreme) and who is hopelessly naive, and Black Mage, a murderous spiteful wizard who wants to kill Fighter (who for some reason thinks Black Mage is his best friend; this isn’t through Black Mage pretending to be his friend, but due to Fighter being a complete and utter idiot (which is part of the reason BM wants to kill him so badly)) and maybe everyone else around him.

There’s also White Mage, who is trying to keep the “Heroes of Light” on course and then heal them when they’re hurt (and those who the “heroes” hurt, sometimes) and Black Belt who was her protector until he… (well, why spoil it?), and Sarda, the manipulator behind it all.

Actually, all of the characters are complete and utter idiots. Some are more obvious about it than others (Fighter being the most obvious one, with Red Mage being the second most obvious idiot), but even the realists of the group tend to be idiots.

Interestingly enough, the one character with the most development would be the most evil of our four, Black Mage. While this character fuels his most powerful destructive spell (Hadoken) through love and tends to be bloodthirsty and power-hungry… there’s a certain charm to him. What’s more, he of all the characters seems to learn (and one of the things he’s learned (and then forgotten) is that maybe the hate, anger, and destruction isn’t worth it. (Tragically, it is Fighter’s inanity that drives that knowledge from Black Mage’s mind, and sends him on another homicidal rampage.)

Perhaps it’s because the growth from evil is more interesting than the growth of good. Look at some of the more popular comic book characters these days, like Venom or Cat Woman. They started out as villains (and in some ways still are). Yet they’re fan favorites. People like them because a villain can be quite complex; in some ways more complex than a hero. That’s part of Black Mage’s charm.

Well, that and the fact he’s head-over-heels in love with White Mage (who detests him) and every time Black Mage opens his mouth he says something stupid to her. I mean, the boy has less charisma than I do, and I’m… well, let’s just say that I’m blunt to a point.

8-Bit Theatre works, in the same way that OotS works, through parody. It can be offensive at times, and in poor taste, and often it goes off on tangents as bad as my own, but it’s fun and reminds me of when I played Ultima V and VI. Okay, it’s more inventive. Definitely more inventive.