In a recent review I mentioned how good artwork can help salvage even poorly plotted comics. Its converse is that a poorly drawn comic can keep people from reading, unless the story manages to catch you from the very start. When you add in that a comic is a highly-pixilated sprite comic, then things start going downhill rapidly. Looking back at 8-Bit Theatre, there’s one thing that drew me in: the characters. Unfortunately, there is a current character-glut that threatens to sink this ship into a sea of inanity.
Part of the problem lies with the plot convulsions that make me want to shove a leather wallet between its teeth before it bites its own tongue off. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy complex plots and involved comics. But the comic has just come off of yet another pointless subplot, this one with White Mage turning wannabe-evil for five minutes, to an equally pointless story with tertiary-character Princess Sara suddenly having four villains as advisors… and I’m left scratching my head as to when that happened and realizing I don’t care. I didn’t feel like reading through the archives to see if it was something new (no doubt due to her father’s dementia) or if she’d hired them herself.
8-Bit Theatre is becoming too convoluted. While character development of the “Heroes of Light” (who are anything but heroes) may be its main draw, this development can actually continue in pursuit of the main plot itself. Instead, third-rate plots and close-ups of overly-pixilated sprites has done a good job of killing my enjoyment of the comic, especially as the characters have shown no sign of true development (and I don’t count the recent events where Fighter has become a genius as development but instead another plot development). The comic needs to get back to its roots: the primary story, and the growth of each of its members. Without this, the comic will lose the only qualities that made it worth reading in the first place.