The Unoriginal Comic

Welcome to another episode of The Pixelated Window of the Past. This is where I take a small break of webcomics to talk about webomics, go figure. See episode one last week.

As I said last week, Sprite Comics only require minimal artistic talent to produce. You don’t have to draw much, you only need to take the sprites from copyrighted work, modify them slightly, paste them together, and apply the text of your choice.

Of course, this means that if you have no need for artistic talent, that you might not need any talent at all, and make comics that only makes the author giggle, with poop jokes, sexual jokes, dropping the f-bomb for no apparent reason, make characters engage in sexual banter, often disregarding if they had any of the reproductive organs to start with…

Now understand that we don’t expect every webcomic to be ‘canon’. Canon is the term used in the industry to difference the ‘fanfiction’ from the ‘official work’. If the characters act in a recognizable way, and don’t show personality traits that are out of bounds (or cannot be explained by circumstances), they are considered as ‘canon’ most of the time.

Stories are the same as well, if a sequel is written by official or unofficial sources, then it could also get ‘replaced’ by a new story later, like Star Wars Episode 7 made all of 20 years of novel written non-canon. They are not less good, but the stories are to be considered as separate, alternate since they don’t fit in the same timeline anymore.

Crossovers also belong to the realm of fanfiction unless the ‘copyright holders’ decide to do something about it, like for example Dissidia : Final Fantasy, Marvel vs Capcom, or Project X-Zone.

In Sprite Comics, there are very little boundaries, as you can simply cut and paste characters of different sources without regards to anything. Some Sprite Comics will build a proper story that could explain, others may just put them together for the cool factor (like Mario vs Sonic).

Others simply don’t care and just put them together because they think it’s funny, like in this example. This was a parody of how many sprite comics don’t put any effort for cheap laughs.


And yet, even Sprite Comics have certain rules they should follow to stay readable and interesting. Next week, we will cover the “Dos and Don’ts of Sprite Comics”.

Welcome to the first installment of The Pixelated Window of the Past (PWP for short, I guess?), where we search for the best and the worst of webcomics, but in particular one subgenre that had it’s time for glory, and that you know well if you’re reading The Unoriginal Comic.

Sprite Comics, of course.

Every Wednesday for a little while, you will find these episodes, a little summer break from mid-week comics.

Today I shall talk about the history of webcomics in general. The term webcomic wasn’t used until 1995, in the very early instance of the Internet, but online comics were used since 1985, although it was on the Compuserve system.

Webcomics were quick to use the power of the internet to expose their work, whether it was talent for writing or art, there has been all kinds. The advantage of webcomics is allowing to reach a potential of million of internet users without any of the hassle of production, distribution, printing and such.

Sluggy Freelance has been one of the first ones to be made on the actual Internet (although not the true first one), has become very popular, and is still currently active, at least until next year, where they announced a potential ‘ending’ or change of plans for their 20th anniversary.


Like many things on the internet though, when one person manages to hit the sweetspot to become popular, many will follow in the wake of it and try their own hands at it, with very varying qualities of results.

One style appeared a few years later, and showed a new way of making comics with minimal artistic talent, the Sprite Comics. Bob & George started in 2000, using Megaman sprite sheets that various websites had collected. While also not the first, it became so widely popular that it might as well have created the subgenre.


And again, many followed into those footsteps… with an even GREATER range of quality between what’s good and bad. With minimal artistic talent you could also combine even more minimalist writing skills, culminating in a cesspool of comedy that probably only the writers found funny.

In the upcoming episodes, we will be reviewing these Sprite Comics, the good and the bad, and judging them by their art, comedy and writing. Because not all comics are made the same, with different authors also come varying talents, and humor is very subjective of course. But there are some things that can be judged impartially.

See you next week for Episode 2 :  The basic of a Sprite Comic