Sprite Comic

"If you can't draw, never fear, just steal some graphics from your favorite video game. And add yet another unlicensed pixel comic to the overcrowded, overstunk landfill of web comics."

— Strong Bad, Strong Bad Email #181 "web comics"

A sprite comic is a comic, most usually a webcomic, that uses sprites from video games for the majority of its visual work. A "sprite", in computer graphics, is a 2D object that moves around; the characters and enemies in video games, especially earlier ones, are good examples of these. The comic is not about pixies, more often than not.

An artist chooses to use sprite art in their comic for various reasons. Sometimes, the "artist" has no drawing skill but still has the desire to make a comic. In other cases, the artist's skills lie in manipulation or creation of their own sprites. In still other cases, the artist wishes to achieve a distinct look. In other cases, the artist attempts to replicate the look used in the original work, in the case of a fancomic.

Sprite comics that use ripped sprites have a reputation for being poor quality in terms of writing, humour and visuals; as they're easy to create, those with the least skill often gravitate toward them. However, there are many notable exceptions, enough to justify giving a newly discovered sprite comic the benefit of the doubt.

Was very prevalent in the years between 2000 and 2007. After that it seemed to have gone through a decline, as more people seem to be aware of the negative thoughts associated with sprite comics, as well as many of the most influential sprite comics ending their runs. Another major issue (which many of the most prominent creators have pointed out when warning people off from making them) is that it's difficult to make money off of one if you're successful - you generally can't sell physical volumes or anything of that nature due to copyright issues.

A sprite comic is distinct from a Pixel Art Comic in that the majority of the visuals are sprites. Also not to be confused with the comic Sprite by Donald Rooum.

See also Machinomics.

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Examples:

• The majority of the BZPower comics forum are these. Though rather than using video game ripped sprites, they use sprites created by artists in a different forum. It's so prolific that it's developed into its own subculture, and the amount of good ones possibly exceeds 10%, due to BZPower's decreasing and maturing userbase.
  • Most of the sprite comics in the International Comic Continuity are good examples of the latter.

• One of the earliest notable sprite comics was Bob and George, which played a big role in the genre becoming popular in the first place. Ironically, the sprite comic started as filler for a hand-drawn comic that never got off the ground. Instead, the author used the sprite comic to tell the sometimes comical, sometimes dramatic tale of two super-powered siblings trapped in the universe of the Mega Man games.
• Dave Anez also hosts a number of sprite comics on the Bob and George site. Two particularly notable ones would be:
  • MS Paint Masterpieces, a reinterpretation of the Mega Man (Classic) stories, which mixes the Gameboy-exclusive bosses into the story (and gives a plausible explanation as to why a robot with a 100% Metool alloy armor would be useless).
  • Metroid: Third Derivative is a pseudo-sequel to Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, written long before any notable information was released about Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, and which turned out to have a knack for guessing plot elements from the actual third game.
  • He also hosted a number of popular, now defunct sprite comics including Jailhouse Blues and Plague's Misadventures. They are still available for download on his downloads page.
• 8-Bit Theater is a fractured Sadist Show retelling of the first Final Fantasy game for the NES. The "heroes" of our tale are Fighter McWarrior (a naive nimrod obsessed with swords), Black Mage Evilwizardington (a Heroic Comedic Sociopath, though calling someone who was briefly King of Hell "heroic" is stretching the term to the breaking point), Thief Prince Elf of Clan Khee'bler (an elf with a fondness for exploiting the stupidity of those around him with convoluted, fine-print laden contracts, enforced by his crack teams of Lawyer Ninjas), White Mage (the resident Only Sane Woman, who also plays the Deadpan Snarker when Black Mage isn't available) and Red Mage Statscowski (the Munchkin personified, complete with stat-fudging, rules-lawyering, and needlessly complicated plans thwarted by either circumstance, or blissful ignorance of his own stupidity). Quite possibly the single most successful sprite comic ever made, as it served as the launchpad for Brian Clevinger's general creative career and inspired countless imitators.
• Life of Wily: One of many that tried to Follow the Leader after Bob and George, though it tried its best to find its own voice.
• Captain SNES: The Game Masta: A version of Captain N: The Game Master set in 2001, starring a new "champion" as he tries to figure out a way to save Videoland from being shot to hell. For Mature audiences only.
• Spoofed in Homestar Runner, in which one of the examples of webcomics Strong Bad gives are "unlicensed pixel comics". The site currently has a game that lets you make your own Stinkoman 20X6 comics.
• Neglected Mario Characters, by Jay Resop, are probably the first sprite webcomics ever, having started in 1997.
• Zelda Comic, inspired by 8-Bit Theater, is based on The Legend of Zelda series; in particular, it draws inspiration from Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.

• Ben Croshaw of Zero Punctuation fame had one of these back in the day. The main characters were both protagonists from his video games. He has since disowned them.

• Mega Pain is a sort of lets play on smackjeeves, and sequel Mvsvmm
• Ansem Retort is a comic that uses sprites from Kingdom Hearts Chain Of Memories and places KH characters on a FOX reality show. Its core cast also competes with the cast of 8-Bit Theater in the Olympics, with the winner being largely a matter of taste.
• Holy Zen is a webcomic that primarily relies on sprites from the Guilty Gear video game series.
  • Blazen! was later created by Shadow Dragyon, the creator of Holy Zen. It's based on Guilty Gear's own Spiritual Successor, BlazBlue. It's available to read here.
• Power Rings (Link here) is a Sonic the Hedgehog-based comic that essentially makes fun of all of the characters through absurd Flanderizations. Unfortunately, those not particularly familiar with the games and comics are likely to miss a lot of the jokes.
• Final Blasphemy is the story of a group of friends who (mostly independently of each other) suddenly find themselves super-powered and part of a very large multiverse, including worlds based on those of Mario, Mega Man, and the various Final Fantasies. Powerful forces threaten that multiverse, though, so the friends are charged with defending the multiverse from said forces.
• How to Make a Sprite Comic in 8 Easy Bits is a sprite comic focusing on The Author's (not an author avatar. Names aren't given for the characters, and as such they are referred to by their role) attempt to make a sprite comic. The actual author of the comic is an English major, so it boasts excellent writing and it's written as if video game sprites are actors, so his sprite comic, in context, makes more sense as a TV Serial than a comic.
• In Wily's Defense is a Mirror Universe of the classic Mega Man games set within its own universe that's presided over a God that's lazier than a sloth watching TV and with a love of widespread chaos as his angels of Death and Destruction. Original characters aside (after all, who cares about those?), Cut Man is the main character, Dr. Wily is an ex-roboticist that runs a Twinkie factory, the New York Mets (led by Don Bluehat) patrol the corridors, Dr. Light is an egomaniacal villain, X (yes, X is in here, despite it still technically being the classic series) is an Omnicidal Maniac, Heat Man has a god complex, and Gemini Man is a raving lunatic. And that's just the start. Its short-lived sequel, Tales of Southtown, goes to a new scene where SNK characters are all shoehorned into the same city, and is worth looking at just to read Geese Howard's insane rants about America. However, the comics lack any sort of brevity.
• Too Many Authors is a Mega Man sprite comic parody (supposedly), most notable for being in the Crossover Wars.
• FRIENDS 4 EVER!!!! uses sprites from various horror video games including Silent Hill and Doom.
• Castlevania RPG (Link here) (aka CVRPG) uses primarily custom-made sprites to parody not only Castlevania but RPG Video Games and Tabletop Games as well.
• Nintendo Acres is about five video game characters living together. Its fans have been known to start similar webcomics.
• The Perpetual Aquarium is a comic that uses graphics from the Neopets website, jumping between pop culture parodies, commentaries on daily life, and commentaries on Neopets site happenings. It differs from many Sprite comics in that it is actually authorized by the terms of the main site.
• Planet Zebeth is a comic based on Metroid that uses sprites from the original Metroid and Simon Belmont from Castlevania.
• Tales of the Skull King is a comic that uses sprites from the video game Scribblenauts.
• Kid Radd takes sprite comics to a different approach. Besides a few small cameos, all of the sprites were made by the author himself (being expies or homages for the most part) while using it to explore video game logic, ethics, morality and so on. In essence, it's arguably a spiritual predecessor to Wreck-It Ralph and Undertale.
• L's Empire: Luigi's had enough.
• Knights of the Old Coding is a comic that focuses on various knights trying to rescue Gwenevere. Unlike most sprite comics, it focuses on a wider variety of games, instead of focusing primarly on one or two games.
• Rumors of War lies in a muddy territory somewhere between sprite comic and Pixel Art Comic; all the character sprites are original creations of the author but the backgrounds are ripped from RPGMaker.
• Survivor: Fan Characters is a spoof of Survivor using original characters from all sorts of media. Notably, it does not use any video game sprites; every sprite and background is made from scratch by the author.
• Shooter's Epic Awesome Adventure of Manliness is a Sprite Comic based on The World Ends with You. Sorta. See also:
  • Gatito
  • Bro-Rangers
• Kristoph Gavin: Ace Attorney is a fanmade spinoff of the Ace Attorney series, featuring several heavily-edited sprites made into Original Characters.
• Like the above example, Francis Equitas: Ace Casanova (And Attorney) is a spinoff based on the Ace Attorney universe, albeit with less reference to canon.
• Bar'd focuses on the oddball staff and more eccentric patrons of the Leafy Bar. It has to be seen to be believed.
• Uniju Holiday Theater is a comic that edits sprites of characters, usually from Game Boy Advance games, into the Users of Userpedia, and inserts them into a series of holiday-related escapades. So far, it's been running since Halloween 2008 through the present day.
• Pebble Version is a parody of Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire. Has a lot of Lampshade Hanging with regard to Pokemon tropes. Check it out here.
• Wario Comix was an early crude sprite comic series that began in the early 2000's and ended later that decade. It was quite possibly the most obscene sprite comic at the time. Two storylines included fan interaction and influence on the plot through forum polls. In the later strips, the author matured and so did the comic's content, reducing the profanity and mixing in hand-drawn content intermittently. Due to a lapsed domain name and a lengthy delay in the series' 200th episode (to be done in Flash), it just disappeared from the web for a number of years. Suigi, the author, has posted No619277 the entire series on his deviantART account along with a finished alternate take on the 200th episode.
• Bob Squad is based on the Advance Wars series and focuses on a squadron of five Orange Star units (one of them named Bob), and the crowd-pleasing Sturm who has more than one CO Power, which he uses for mundane/stupid purposes.
• To Defeat Them All is a narrative lets play, produced on smackjeeves.
• Robert Lynchs Heroes Inc is a unique example of this genre, in that it uses sprites from SNES games mixed with 3D rendered environments. The comic began as a traditional sprite comic, based on the premise that Mario and Luigi get sick of doing everything themselves, so they hire other video game protagonists to work alongside them, however both the art style and story transitioned into its current more complex state over the course of its run. VERY well done.
• Pogeymanz is a sprited Pokémon parody that is almost a deconstruction of other Pokémon sprite comics, or maybe even sprite comics in general. But you have to look really hard.
• Contra Farce is a parody webcomic of the NES game Contra Force.
• Kirby Adventure, a webcomic based on the Kirby video game series.
• Kirby Card Clash, While starting out in Pixel Art, is primarily a sprite comic set after Kirby: Triple Deluxe
• Kirby Tales In Dreamland, a comic about the future of Dreamland after the events of Kirby Planet Robobot and future Kirby games.
• Strife Strips featuring the adventures of Duke Nukem and his roommate, the Doom Marine. Noteworthy for being made almost in Duke Nukem 3D's engine Build.
• Kirby Blast, previously a sprite comic, is a comic about a human girl turned into a puffball trying to get home.
• SMGPMD, an Affectionate Parody of the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series featuring Team SMG being sent to the world of Pokémon.
• The Legend of Maxx is a sprite comic based on the sandbox game Terraria.
• MMBN 7 The World Tournament, a Tournament Arc comic based on the Mega Man Battle Network series.
• Dungeon Crawl Inc used sprites from Baldur's Gate 2 for the first 66 strips, switching to original art thereafter.
• Winne Bobble has the creator using sprites he makes on his own, taking liberties of using other game sprites only when necessary. On occasion, there will be pixel art present.
• Liberal Art covers adventures from the 8-bit college of Liberal Art.
• Megamanspritecomic is a Stylistic Suck comic that is Megaman In Name Only. Hilarity Ensues.
• Mega Man Dissonance is a Mega Man comic acting as a Fan Sequel.
• inSonicnia was a Sonic comic hosted on the (now-defunct) MysticalForestZone.
• New Sonic Adventures is done almost entirely in Sonic sprites, telling original stories using inspiration from many different sources.
• Tis Tree is a sprite comic comprised of gifs taken from GeoCities as well as from several video games.
• Totally Flaked
• Akuma's Comics is a fighting comic similar in concept to M.U.G.E.N, mainly featuring Sonic sprites.
• The EE Comic series uses screenshots from Everybody Edits Flash, alongside additional drawn lines to illustrate motion.
• Reporterz mainly uses sprites based off Mega Man, however its main protagonists are from the Pokémon universe and it explores both original and existing fictional worlds via Dimensional Travelling.

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