Awesome / 8-Bit Theater

Black Mage

• Black Mage's first Hadoken:
  BM: The giant's gone, ain't he?
• Becoming ruler of Hell and stabbing his personal demons in the back of the head.
  BM: Wait, if I did evil, and you guys here are evil, then shouldn't you be showering me with rewards, concubines, etc.?
  Ruler of Hell: This is Hell. We're big on irony here.
  BM: Then I'm sure you'll appreciate what is going to occur.
• Absorbing his Evil Twin (because the only thing the Castle of Ordeals had that could represent Black Mage's inner darkness is Black Mage) and then using its power to feed his ego (and coincidentally do a lot of damage).
• Using said evil to re-kill the Fiends, absorb their evil, and create black tendrils
• His casual revelation that the Hadoken is fueled by love.
• His letter to White Mage, in a seriously uncharacteristic moment. Maybe there's some kind of... human being deep within him. Or maybe there isn't.
• Telling the 8BT equivalent of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and theoretically the most evil corporeal entities (barring the obvious) known to exist, to "...shut the GODDAMN HELL UP."
• Obstacle course? What obstacle course?
• Killing Spartans' Captain Ersatzes and making them look like idiots at the same time.
• 1136. The first, and thus far only, Blackjack... automatic natural 21 Dark Hadoken...known to exist.
• The unnamed wizard shopkeeper who kicked Black Mage's ass offscreen.
  Black Mage: What I learned today is that really old wizards don't get that way by being easy to kill.
• The only person to ever (attempt to) break a Stable Time Loop with the power of raw, unfiltered evil. "I never knew it was possible to care less about time travel." While it didn't actually work, it was still a pretty damn awesome. And with Onion Kid out of the picture, the Light Warriors can attempt to trick out time.
• Comic #1166 A CMOA for BM and RM successfully working together and distracting Sarda.

  RM: It's just a distraction.

  Sarda: From?

  BM: ME!.

  • They're actually working together for once. They're going toe-to-toe with Sarda and they're going down swinging. Considering the power discrepancy, that's impressive. If they failed, their last words would have been a "Facing the Bullets" One-Liner, rather than pleading for their lives. And as Sarda later notes, this would have actually killed him if he didn't absorb the power of the orbs.
• Without even really trying, Black Mage once again screws over Sarda aka the former Onion Kid. How? Black Mage's sheer evil overloads Sarda and turns him into a portal for Chaos. It's awesome in a very scary way.
• Waaaaay back: vicious mutated sea monsters are targeting Bikke's ship in the middle of the ocean. Black Mage gets fed up with the situation, resulting in this.
• "Damn, but you Goth freaks like to hear yourselves talk."

Red Mage

• Killing a random encounter with logic.
• Slaying Ur.
  • There's also Ice 9. For one thing, it's the first time we get to see Red Mage implement a plan that works perfectly instead of failing hilariously. Also, it's... ahem... very cool.
  • Using debate to shut Thief up when he insults humanity one too many times. The master of arrogant manipulation is speechless after that.
  "If you Elves are so great, why is your technology on par with humans even though you had a nine thousand year head start?"
• Red Mage pulls the hadoken out of his arse, and the graphic in the strip didn't hurt. HADOYASTOPTHIS?!
• Using Exit on White Mage to get her away from Black Mage, and trying to stop him after his defeated both Fighter, and Thief, and as a result, being the only one standing up to BM. And with the balls-of-cold-steel to insist he's able to do so. Considering he's a mime, he may very well be right.

  BM: Don't tell me, you think you can fight back, right?

  RM: Yeah, I do.

  • White Mage went on to build a new team and defeat Chaos, making Red Mage indirectly responsible for saving the world.
• Foreshadowing Sarda's Phlebotinum Overload when he claims that Sarda channeling his own magic, the four elemental orbs, AND Black Mage's evil power couldn't possibly exist. In this one case, Red Mage was smarter than Sarda.
• Credit should be given to the fact that RM found a (cartoon) logical way to actually leave the universe just to be out of the range of Sarda's omnscience.
• For both Red Mage and Fighter: Glorious Chainsaw Method.
  Red Mage: Should have probably told Black Mage to get out of the way first.
  (later) Fighter: Guys? I ran out of dragon.
• The following setup: Red Mage looks into datasphere. Black Mage looks into datasphere. Black Mage is confronted by his avatar dark god and claims the datasphere was empty. Cut to Red Mage's a-hole, where he reveals; "I absorbed the contents of the datasphere. I know how to destroy everything that will exist. That includes Sarda."

Fighter:

• "Sword chucks. yo."
• One more twist of the knife in Black Mage's side. and another moment for Fighter.
  • The first Fiend battle with Lich where he goes into an Unstoppable Rage after a brief Heroic BSoD when Black Mage is killed by Lich.
  • It doesn't happen often, but when Fighter does grasp the situation, he turns into the moral compass - and an intimidating one at that. He forces his evil teammates to back down here, here, and here. He has the Reality Warper and the Magnificent Bastard all but voiding themselves at the prospect of fighting him, and he does it with nothing but words.
• He won at Drownball. By default, as he was the only one who survived the drowning, but still. He won at a sport where the whole point is to die, by living.
  • His win managed to reduce Sarda to disbelieving mutters
• "Okay, you know you can't actually stop me?" "I'll try."
  • Even better, Black Mage actually acknowledges Fighter's ability to block his evil tendrils of evil. He had to trick him into letting his guard down in order to kill him, and make sure he's dead.
• Taking advantage of the fact that it's Not the Fall That Kills You… Fighter blocks the Earth and does it for his entire team.
  • The way I figure it, the fall doesn't kill you. The ground does. So I blocked it.

Thief

• Thief: Pretty much every time he opens his mouth.
  Black Mage: Wah?! When did you get to class change?
  Thief: Hm? Oh, I stole it. From the future.
• Not even sub-par powers get in the way of Thief's awesome.
• He is the deceiver.

  Red Mage: Why is it that your brand of truth inevitably involves obfuscation and lies?

  Thief: Because I'm Thief.

• Just how thoroughly Thief screws over his team mates is always astounding.
• Successfully outwitting a trickster god. The sequence starts here.
• He displays the power to freak out Black Mage: "Oh I steal souls and secrets."
• Thief and Red Mage briefly manage to come off like real heroes.
• For anyone who dislikes Thief, seeing him get mauled by Berserker not once but twice is very satisfying.

The Light Warriors

• The thing about summoning "true guardians" is that it tends to take a bit longer than a fatal mob stabbing. For once, the entire party was united, looking badass, and clearly holding the advantage.

White Mage

• White Mage's alternate solution to Red Mage's plan to defeat Kary, here.
• Putting up with Black Mage. While she became evil herself.

Sarda

• Rewriting Black Mage's speech bubbles.
• Then he teleports him somewhere... uncomfortable.
• This one.
• And then he does the Australia bit again.
• Black Mage had a Forgotten Aesop: when Sarda casts a spell to hurt you, and you mimic that spell, you cast a spell that hurts you.
• Right after saving Onion Kid from Ranger's quad-wielded bows: Do you know the best thing about magic? Everything.
• THE ONION KID IS SARDA!
  • The above spoiler gets even more extravagant when you realized Brian seems to have planned it from the beginning. (obviously the link can spoil this for you, btw).
• Since the Light Warriors' advanced classes presented a threat (however meager) to him, he took the logical step of removing those classes. (Except Thief - turned out somebody mysteriously stole his advanced class from him.)

Black Belt

• Black Belt: Too bad about the messy ending to the moment, here.

Garland

• Garland is usually a ridiculous softie of a villain. Eventually, his band of evil adventurers decide to mutiny against him. At a meeting that Garland himself caters. After the minions eat his special tacos, Garland proceeds to list the reasons why the mutiny will fail, in particular that the tacos were stuffed with Amnesia Peppers. Not bad for a guy who was once bullied by the princess he had kidnapped.

Bikke

• Bikke has been consistently portrayed as the dumbest of the Dark Warriors. But he and the other Dark Warriors manage to capture the Elemental Orbs, which would allow them to take over the world. However, Sarda confronts them, and asks them if they even know how to use them. After a beat panel, Bikke throws his into nigh-omnipotent Sarda's face. Considering Sarda has stopped arrows firing from bows at point blank range mid flight, we may have stumbled into Sarda's weakness. Or just Rule of Funny. Either way.
  • Sarda even thinks it's Actually Pretty Funny.
  • Though because Sarda is also spiteful, nigh-omnipotent, and incredibly creative in the ways he screws people, telling Bikke "You get to live" might not work out as well as you'd like to think.

Drizz'l

• Fairly minor, but given that Fighter is considered one of the most dangerous and competent of the Light Warriors, the fact that Drizz'l can go toe-to-toe with him speaks volumes of his swordsmanship.

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