The Unoriginal Comic

NOW we are getting in the interesting part of The Pixelated Window of the Past : The crap.

No, really.

As I said previously, when someone does something good, others follow trying to do the same thing. And then you'll find the bad and the ugly, which are often FAR more numerous than the good ones, but fortunately and thankfully also don't last too long because... it's not good. Sometimes the author will realize it on his own, sometimes others will give it subtle or less-subtle messages that will bring it down. And sometimes it'll keep going because the author still thinks that at least one person out there must find it funny.

Today, I'll talk about Megaman Interference.

It only lasted 5 strips, but the sheer amount of bad here made me want to see how far one can go down the rabbit hole. I'll be upfront here. In 5 strips he managed to hit just about ALL of the Rules. It's quite a feat, if someone had tried to do it on purpose they probably would have trouble. He did it so effortlessly that it deserves a medal. Since it's a small archive, let's link each of them and take them separately.


Rule #1, check, no point to making this comic.
Rule #3, check, it's pretty much straight out of B&G, so Rule #A and #C while at it.
Rule #4, check, balloons are terribly placed here.
Rule #5, it might not be trying to get pity (yet) but it's hitting itself here.
Rule #6, proportions are skewed.

Other things of note, characters don't touch the ground. Ever. They just float.
You also don't see it here, you'd need to visit the actual page, but there's some juicy text over there too. Under the title he wrote "My first comic, my first megaman comic, my first comic that has a retextured sprites, and my first comic that I think will be good. Read it and be a fan!"
I'm still looking for the funny. Maybe next strip?


At least he's using PNG. Oh hey, he's touching ground on one of them. No consistence though. And still haphazard placement of text bubbles, so much that I have troubles understanding in which order to read them. Really, it should always be obvious at a glance, not having to read it 4 times and try different orders until it make sense.

Not even gonna bother with the recoloring for the author here, barf!

And the text, oh my god. This is worst than self-inflicted humor, this is the right side of the brain telling the left side how stupid it is, but still going with it anyway. At least no poop jokes.


This isn't getting any better. The pacing is all broken up, that huge PAUSE makes practically no sense, Protoman is out of scale for no apparent reason in the second panel, and the 'enters with Roll' is the worst thing I've ever seen, and he couldn't figure out how to do any sort of scale to fit all 4 characters in a single panel so he squished them horizontally. Holy freaking god help me.

Bubble placement is is so terrible that you wonder if he wasn't trying to write it right to left like a manga, but no, he just sucks at placing things. I'm not even sure he knows how to horizontally flip the characters at this point, he just copy-paste them in without thinking about how it would flow.

Roll said probably the only sensible thing in this entire strip up to now. You're not the only one lost, Roll.

Go away 'Jace'.


Why is there a white background in that single bubble? Ugh. This is a waste of a  strip, still nothing funny either. "Sometimes this comic is lonely"... it took you 5 SECONDS of blissful silence from your retarded author to already miss him? Megaman really is an idiot.


The 'conclusion' to MM Interference. The only conclusion here is don't make sprite comics if you have no talent at all. Even copy-pasting sprites together was beyond the ability of this boy (he must be about 10 years old).

Again the bubbles are in any random order, there's even a bubble to the right that I think belongs to Dr. Light, don't ask me what that black blob was supposed to be.

And then look at the banner, at some point he decided 'this banner's color needs to change', so used the paint bucket tool, and didn't even bother filling the INSIDE of the letters.

And after 5 comics, I haven't seen a single 'retextured' sprite. Maybe he meant recolored. That's not really showing his intelligence though. The only smart thing here was stopping after five. Thank god.

Just boring and nothing special, move along.

I have lots of games with black boxes it seems. Too many games to play, some of them still in their wrapping.

Another Pixelated Window of the Past. Last week was Bob & George, this week probably one that beats it on several levels.

Another big player in popularizing the subgenre, 8-Bit Theater probably surpasses Bob & George on that side. The writing is more than excellent, and the art improves miles between the first and last strips.


Unlike Bob & George, 8-Bit Theater was no accident. The original plan was to visit several games, like Metroid and River City Ransom. But due to the high popularity of Final Fantasy, it ended up being the only game ever used, although not exclusively either. Some side strips were made which parody other genres, games or movies at times, and sometimes visited by characters not belonging to Final Fantasy (the first) either, such as classes from Final Fantasy III.

8-Bit Theater is an entire retelling of the Final Fantasy story, where the 6 playable classes are portrayed as archetypes, exaggerated and caricatured to the extreme. Their names are literally their class for one thing. And all of them active by their own motives, and most of the time they are not of the purest intentions either, not what you'd think of Warriors of Light.

Spanning 1225 episodes over the course of over 9 years, the writing is the strong point of the series. There is a lot of text. Sometimes entire comics are simply bantering between the characters. The art obviously was simple, based on 8-bit spritework, but also underwent many custom work over the length of the comic, giving it it's own identity. It moves between the two styles of sprites that were in the game, the smaller overworld sprites and the taller and more detailed battle sprites.

More detailed being very subjective considering the limits of the original game were mostly kept intact. Which was 3 colors per character for their palettes.


The individual strips also had lots of uniqueness to it. It never adhered to any precise format in panel size or position. Arbitrary and even artistic, it was emulating what physical comics, like Marvel or DC, would do by juggling panel size depending on what was wanted at the time. Lots of liberties was taken with them as a result, all for the better even.

Let's talk about our Rules. It's quite simple, no rules were broken whatsoever. There was an appearance or two of the author, but those were placed as interludes. Never directly influenced the story, that's not how this strip's dynamic worked. No need to speak about B&G references here either, obviously, but everything else was followed to a T. In fact, the Rules could have been created from 8-Bit Theater and it'd be all for the best.


Not as huge of a run as B&G's 2000 strips, but still a VERY long read, and quite the enjoyable one as well. It breaks everything from Final Fantasy in the best possible way, and even has a fake out ending midway through just to throw you off. The internet exploded when they thought it to be the actual ending of the comic. That's how strong the people thought about it.

If B&G is referenced when talking about Megaman, almost every other sprite comic references 8-Bit Theater, mostly Final Fantasy, but the quirky characters and amazing writing left a strong impact, one that may never be equaled again.

Next week, another of my favorite, an excellent pick too, I hope you like it.

He looks happy in there at least.

In reference to this over 2 years old comic, Ayasu is still streaming Chrono Trigger, and still hasn't streamed any Megaman. I don't blame Megs of wanting to play it though.

Third installment of the Pixelated Window of the Past. Look up last's week episode.

In theory, making a Sprite Comic is very easy. Open up paint, copy & paste characters together, add text, and you got a comic. You can produce a strip in a matter of minutes only. No comparison with other comics that are hand drawn.

There are still some guidelines to follow, as there are many easy to make mistakes, which draws a rather thick line between good and bad webcomics. A long-standing sprite comic known as Bass & Crash made a handy list of Dos and Don’ts, also known as “Don’t make the same mistakes I did”. It’s often traps that budding Sprite Comic makers fall into at first, before they learn better, or stop making comics completely.

Today we’re going to review all points he made, and explain them (in my words at least). I’m going to be using these as a measuring stick in reviewing the various Sprite Comics, so I will refer to these rules by number often.

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Pretty simple in theory. Some people start making a comic without any idea and just think that things will happen on their own, or that others will do the work for them. No, maybe you don't need talent to make a sprite comic, but at least do it yourself.

Here you are, thinking that since you're already using copyrighted characters, that you can also use the modified characters that other people made since they are based on copyrighted characters. Start by asking first. Although nowadays people probably don't care as much. Sprite Comics are a thing of the past, save for a few resilient ones.

Okay, sometimes you could use a joke that has been used before, but at least be creative about it. Otherwise why don't you just link to the original joke and call it a day? Because you pasted the pictures together? Whoop-freaking-do.

You'd THINK that this is a given, but some people just put their texts any random way and lets reader figure it out. Really, it's not that hard. Use readable font with a good size, text bubbles should have tails pointing at who's speaking. Making the character's mouth move is actually personal preference, as sometimes the facial expression is more important than the fact that you have your mouth open. Not to mention, even while you're talking, your mouth does close too, so the mouth open/close can be used as a subtle way to emphasize a certain syllable as well.

And for the love of god, SPELLCHECK. Some mistakes can happen, but sometimes it's just too much.

Self-pity only goes so far. Make fun of yourself, sure, but don't try to win pity points out of it. Not to mention it breaks the fourth wall without purpose. Make a joke out of it, or two, but don't make it a constant to say how much you suck, your readers will agree with you all too readily.

Even when using good editing programs, use full numbers (100%, 200%...). Normally, if you zoom in, most sprites should be 1 pixel per ‘square’. When you 2x (200%) the size, each square would become 2x2 pixels, triple (300%) to be 3x3… the squares should look like squares, not rectangles.

In Photoshop, use ‘Nearest Neighbor’ to avoid anti-aliasing (the blur and rounding effects) when resizing. But if you’re going to use weird sizes (like 75%, 150%) then you may want to try some of the other options to smooth it up a little bit. But avoid blurs as much as possible, it looks dirty. Sprite Comics are usually crisp in pixelization, that’s part of the charm.

When downsizing, it’s alright if you don’t see every detail, that’s kinda the point when trying to make a scale or perspective effects after all, especially when making them very small. If you need to see the details for some reason, try to think differently, like making the other objects larger instead, if you’re already at the “1 pixel per square” point, be creative with it.

If you're going to use backgrounds, make them subtle. If it's hard to see the text or even the characters, then it defeats the purpose. Bland backgrounds are often used for sprite comics for a reason, it allows to concentrate on what's important. But again being creative is part of making a comic.

Another often forgotten point here, if your title isn't interesting, what makes readers think the rest of your work will be? It doesn't have to be overly complex, but at least don't use something too obvious either.

Seriously, unless that’s what you’re TRYING to do for a strip or two because of comedy, don’t make this a recurring character and make readers want to stab their own eyeballs. It’s not ‘genius’ to recolor Megaman to neon pink and yellow and call it a day either. Try to dress up your characters so it's more than just a simple recolor.

This is debatable on the kind of story you’re running. If you’re making a Sonic story, then don’t place an author character that will control everything and become the star of the show. They are probably here to see Sonic, not you. On the other hand, authors can be used as characters in the same way if you’re not trying to adhere to something canon, like say an ‘Abridged’ comedic version of Metroid.

Let the other characters do their own thing, unless your strip is only about promoting yourself, which may become old pretty quickly too. In TUC though, we profusely use (and abuse) our authors as they are equally part of the humor.

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Here are those Crash and Bass listed as important points, but not strong enough to make an entire rule about it. I shall call them Rule A to E.

	This also depends on what you’re attempting to do. Back in the days of B&G, many made their own as ‘fancomics’. So logically, authors will also use the same personalities, because it’s referring to it directly. But that doesn’t mean every Megaman Sprite Comic should follow it either. Depends on the intent again.
	Very important. JPG compression is by inserting imperfections that aren't overly obvious to the naked eye because it’s essentially ‘blue on top of slightly lighter blue’. GIF and PNG on the other hand use different compressions that ‘condense’ large areas of the same color into something smaller, like if your whole background is red, then it reduces it to ‘insert 4000 pixels of red here’. That’s why JPG don’t have a transparency setting, because the colors do change slightly, while GIF and PNG keep a clear palette of colors and one of them can be selected as transparent. GIF allows for animations as well, but are limited as a palette to 256 colors. PNG can be made with nearly no limit compared.
	Okay, we got it, you love Bob & George, but no need to refer to it ALL THE TIME. This is similar to previous points, make your own material, jokes, characters and personalities. Of course B&G ran for some 2000 comics, so there will be similar jokes here and there. But not every other strip. Basically, if we want to read B&G, we'll go read B&G, not read it through your retelling.
	By generic we mean things that have already been done before. B&G visited all 8-bit games, unless you have some NEW and AMAZING jokes to do about it, you should probably avoid it. Make your own story, it doesn't have to follow the standard 8 stage + boss either, or at least be creative about it and make your own Robot Masters.
	I'd call this consistency. If your characters are mainly in 16-bit, stay in 16-bit. This means in the same strip. It will undoubtedly look awful when the 32 bit characters mess with 8 bit characters. Also, like in the picture, avoid sprites + fan art. At least, not on a regular basis, it's not like we've never done something like that for comedy either.

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Next week, I start taking on actual Sprite Comics, starting with some of the oldest and most popular ones.