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This is a good question... may I also add that if you recognize the fellas in the RPG section of the site as Edward and Tellah, you might want to check out the 8-bit Theat(re|er), which features your favorite characters from the U.S. Final Fantasy game before Edward and Tellah.

Slightly on-topic... if you like online comics, visit your favorite 8-bit FF characters reborn at 8-bit Theatre. 3 years, 4 hurricanes, still going strong. No I don't run the site, just read it.

I had a few of those comics back in the day. That Captain N comic where Samus turns out to be a chick is unforgettable.

I'm surprised the article didn't touch on some of the online offerings like 8-Bit Theater.

In a world...

"Welcome to Corneria!"
"I like swords!"
"Welcome to Corneria!"
"I like swords!"
"Welcome to Corneria!"
"I like swords!"

...

In actuality, I suspect the answer is more grounded in custom. Motorcyclists have never had seatbelts and often haven't even worn helmets or protective clothing, so they're not required to. Probably the same reason busses lack seatbelts. (Although some school busses are installing them, probably to forestall lawsuits.) Similarly, AFAIK, if your car was built before seat-belts were required to be installed, you're not obliged to wear them.

More along the the lines of the topic, I'm mildly leery of firewalls being required to be installed. If they were, I'd say that they should by default only block ports that a typical user wouldn't need. And there should be a nice error message as to why as well as a big help section in the back of the manual about what to do when such an error message occurs. Otherwise, we're bound to get a lot of users claiming "their machine is broken."

In actuality, I suspect the answer is more grounded in custom. Motorcyclists have never had seatbelts and often haven't even worn helmets or protective clothing, so they're not required to. Probably the same reason busses lack seatbelts. (Although some school busses are installing them, probably to forestall lawsuits.) Similarly, AFAIK, if your car was built before seat-belts were required to be installed, you're not obliged to wear them.

More along the the lines of the topic, I'm mildly leery of firewalls being required to be installed. If they were, I'd say that they should by default only block ports that a typical user wouldn't need. And there should be a nice error message as to why as well as a big help section in the back of the manual about what to do when such an error message occurs. Otherwise, we're bound to get a lot of users claiming "their machine is broken."

if (isspam(mailentry)) HADOKEN(mailentry);

Go here for an explanation (funny webcomic IMO).

Slightly related to this idea of taking original content (say Penny Arcade) and remixing it (new dialogue), is the web-comic 8-Bit Theater.

The premise is a sorta-retelling of the original Final Fantasy's story using the sprites from that game.

Disclaimer: I am not affliated with 8-Bit Theater beyond being a loyal reader who has been entertained for over 400 strips.

- Neil Wehneman

Whatever that is, it better involve keeping my pants on.

I donate to a webcomic i read and love, and, given the cash, I would donate to more things that I use and love. Giving me more ways to donate may lead to more donations.

I for one welcome our new donation overlords, seriously though 5% aint bad, but it shouldn't be on top of the paypal fees. =/
S'pose I just want to have my executable and the source code too.

I used to think User Friendly was pretty good, but then either it's quality deteriorated, or i found other, better comics to put it in perspective.

Here's a list of (some of) the comics that in my opinion are better than User Friendly. As usual, your opinion may differ and your mileage may vary.

Adventurers! the best of the CRPG comics.
Dragon Tails comic about strange geeky dragons and a squirrel or two. (Has jokes that cover all kinds of geekery, not just the tech variety) The Wings of ChangeFantasy comic about a dragon, a girl with wings, and a group of pixie children
The Devil's Panties "Real Life" type comic about a female protagonist and a couple of her friends. Frequently touches on goth and comic geekdom, and there's a side comic about LARPs.
Sparkling Generation Valkyrie YuukiA manga style take-off on the "pretty-girl" anime genre. Has some Ranma-esque gender-bending themes if that disturbs you.
Freefall Science fiction comic, primarily focused on an kleptomaniac alien scavenger, a friendly but somewhat dim robot, and a genetically engineered anthropomorphic female wolf.
Ozy and Millie One of those comics with a world (mostly) like ours but filled with anthropomorphic animals. Frequently philisophical or political.
Something Positive "Real life" type comic with a very twisted and sometimes sick sense of humor.
Venus Envy A comic about highschool aged MtF transgendered person dealing with all the issues you'd expect such a person to be dealing with. Obviously lots of gender-bending issues.
8-bit Theater tied for second best CRPG comic.
RPG World the other tied for second best CRPG comic.
Anti-here for Hire by the author of Adventurers! Same style mostly, but with a comic-book superhero theme.
Megatokyo some people love the comic, some people can't stand it. The art is certainly pretty though in either case.
Penny Arcade people talk about it enough on Slashdot (including several mentions in this thread) that i'm not going to even bother describing it.

Okay, I'm tired of making descriptions, so some other good comics that didn't make it into the top tier (but still better than User Friendly IMHO) if you feel like looking around, PvP, Ctrl-Alt-Del, Saturnalia. The Life of Riley, No Need for Bushido

And last (just because everyone here has probably heard of it already) Sluggy, which has had its unfunny moments, but unlike User Friendly has managed to pull out of those slumps and return to its former heights every time (so far)

There's also a large set of comics that i only check every couple of weeks because they don't updated more than once a week, but are still worth taking the time to check. However i'm going to just stick to my daily list at the moment.

What about a ninja-trained asimo(you know, they are made by honda, they are japanese, ergo, they can be ninjas!) on a overclocked (and hopefully, cloaked) segway?

Of course, the ninja robot should be running linux, so we can create a beowulf cluster-army of ninja robots on segways!!!

Of course, even this plan wouldn't beat this(second question).

8-bit Theater. Remember Fighter, Thief, Red Mage, and Black Mage from Final Fantasy? Well, they're the main characters in this strip. Archives go back a year or two. Rather entertaining.

d+pad covers the goings-on at a video game store. The artwork is pretty crude, but if you're into the gaming world at all, you'll enjoy it.

Goats is a VERY disturbing strip. The early artwork was a lot less refined than it is now, but how can you go wrong with a strip that involves overclocked lemons and a Satanic chicken named Diablo?

PvP is a strip about a fictional gaming magazine. Sometimes crass and goofy, but often hilarious (go to any geek gathering and see how many people laugh when you shout "Panda attack!"). I know I'd subscribe to any magazine that had a 300-year-old blue troll as an intern.

And, of course, Sluggy Freelance. Best. Webcomic. Ever. But you really have to go all the way back to the beginning of the archives. There's years of great stuff in there. (Worship Bun-bun!)

I know that no day is complete without reading all my webcomics... which is really easy using bookmarked tabs in Mozilla. I just click on one bookmark, and the browser opens up a dozen separate tabs with all my comics loaded.

As additions, I'd like to add Megatokyo, RPGworld Comic and 8-bit Theater. Also, I'd like to comment on Real Life Comics that it's cute, at times. Whenever the guy is completely obsessed with something painfully irrelevant to his readers and he continues to post shitty strips about it for weeks after, it's not cute. Really, I quit reading it after reading on and on for about three weeks about the guy whining about losing something irrelevant in a MMORPG and the fact he got a net girlfriend.

You know, every time I hear "quid pro quo," I can't help but think of this 8-bit Theater strip.

"Open a can of Hadoken on your ass!"

love that 8-bit - it's a classic. If you haven't read it, check it out. /t

You'll be wanting one of these then;

A: The owl says three. The owl has never steered me wrong. Sometimes the owl tells me to burn things. Things like people.

-- Ask Red Mage #4

Here's some online comics that might be worth checking out:

Sluggy - Students, aliens, ghosts, psychotic rabbits, evil kittens. One of the oldest and niftiest comics online.
User Friendly - Linux, geeks. You get the idea.
Megatokyo - An online manga following Piro and Largo whilst stranded in Tokyo.
Schlock Mercenary - Not too good art, but usually a very good and suitably sci-fi-ish plot.
Clan of the Cats - A modern-day witch cursed to change into a panther. Good artwork.
RPG World - Great art. A parody of almost any role playing game (the console variety) you'd care to play.
Ghost Cat - It's a cat! It's a ghost! It's ghost cat!
Elf Life - Elves, fairies, barbarians, time travel, romance, comedy, and very well drawn as well.
Exploitation Now! - An anime-ish comic with good art and an interesting, if sporadic, plot.
Real Life - It's real life. Except it's not. Reasonably funny.
Penny Arcade - The mother of all gaming comics. Very funny :)
Sephen - A relative newcomer, but wow! Great pencil-work!
8-bit Theater - The grandpappy of all sprite comics. I think. It's funny anyway. Go read :)
Demonology 101 - Fantastic art, fantastic plot! If only it came out more often! Ah well, the world isn't perfect.

Oh, and I can't really get away without mentioning my brother's sprite comic, Pixelated!. It really isn't bad. No, really! :)

They stole this story from last weekend's Twinkin' out with Red Mage (a weekly article on Nuklear Power). A fabulous online comic with the most amazing art....

They stole this story from last weekend's Twinkin' out with Red Mage (a weekly article on Nuklear Power). A fabulous online comic with the most amazing art....

Secondly, I thought I could add to the list of worthwhile webcomics to read:
Penny Arcade (above)
Res Life
Mac Hall
Angst Technology
Zeek V2.0
I'll avoid the urge to shamelessly promote my own new comic :)

Bob and George

8-bit Theater

Movie Comics

Kick ass.

Episode 174

(Player guts second NPC, then turns to the next one.)

NPC #3: If you've already got a +5 Vorpal sword, what's the point in visiting our puny little weapons shop?

Player: Uh... I like swords. Hey, where can I learn to speak in bold type like that?

NPC #3: *sigh* ...Adventurers.



(I have no connection with the above URL other than as an amused reader.)

you should check out this if you liked the old FF games. FF3 imo is the best in the series.

Final Fantasy was a game turned movie. It would have been a big hit had it remained a game. It didn't fail in theaters because it was an art movie trying to get a point across that no one got, it was a block buster that busted. They could have saved some money and just taken tiles from FF1 to tell their story like they do at 8-bit theater.

Seriously they threw millions of dollars into FF:TSW only to learn that movie going audiences don't go for "My name is Daryl, I'm a dancer" dialog and delivery reminicent of a student directed documentary about red blood cells. There were scenes of the movie that looked like a live action sequence, these usually took place inbetween scenes where you could actually see the character or the character was talking. I love seeing James Woods in movies, he has definite style when he delivers lines and when he is intense you can tell he is being intense. There was NONE of that in General Hein. Neil didn't exactly fit in with the image you associate with Steve Buscemi's dialog. More effort was put into realistic hair movement than realistic portayal of emotions. Same for the story which was weak at best. They could have just used the story from FF6 it would have been ten times more involving and probably got them a couple million more dollars. Due to Square fucking the donkey with FF George Lucas is going to have a much tougher time pitching his load about replacing actors with computer models. I think this is a good thing (even if actors aren't pushing technological limits) because I want to see a movie with more substance than freckles and relistic moving hair. When Donny died in The Big Lebowski you feel at least a little remorse at him dying. When Neil dies in FF:TSW you're lucky to notice. That's not going to sell movie audiences.

People are working to make this a success, though it seems to vary.

Kevin and Kell seems to do pretty well. The author, Bill Holbrook, does two other paper strips. I know that he's making a profit - my friend is his colorist, who tells me that Bill is all business, and wouldn't pay my friend if he couldn't afford it. But the strip has a huge variety of revenue sources, like book sales at Plan 9, merchandise, and special "memberships". Most people know Sluggy Freelance, which also does the same thing. It also seems to make a profit.

But other strips like Bruno the Bandit are just as high quality in art and humor (in my opinion at least), but it seems like Ian McDonald has had just no luck in turning it into a profitable business, even though he's a prominent member of Keenspot and has two collected books published. My friend (who colors Kevin and Kell) has also had trouble keeping his strip Unlike Minerva afloat - he just doesn't have the time to juggle the strip and day-to-day living.

Anyway, it seems like the very best can survive, but even the very good like Bruno have difficulty making it. I know of one strip right now trying to make it with "tips", 8-bit theater, which seems to be having some success. Hopefully the author, Brian Clevinger, will pull it off. But even then, he's just struggling to meet the costs of bandwidth.

I don't know what the future of this medium is. But if anybody at all can make it, then I think there's hope for others.

The guy who does 8-Bit Theatre just started attempting to do the webcomic thing full-time. He's only around 20 years old, so no great risk if he fails, but I certainly expect his non-comic updates to get more amusing.

Of course, given the nature of the comic (8BT is a webcomic that uses Final Fantasy 1 sprites), I expect Square to sue him if he starts to do okay.

-Grant/JimTheta

And as nobody has mentioned it yet, may I point your attention to 8-Bit Theater. If you hadn't heard of it before, it's a webcomic set in the world of the first Final Fantasy game, and is very, very funny. They actually just hit their 100th comic. (At least, it's #100, that does not count a few extra ones the creator threw in along the way.) Black Mage and Fighter are a riot, and between the two of them there are plenty of great quotes that I've sprinkled into conversation.

This is also, come to think of it, very obvious, but a comic strip doe not rely on the quality of the drawing (I like the simplistic style anyway), but the jokes. If you don't like the jokes, you have a valid complaint, go someplace else.. but don't flame about Illiad's drawing.

When the jokes are stale, lame, or just plain awful (as UF has been for the past 3+ years), there's little left to keep a person interested but the art. And UF never had that, either. However, you're right. I don't like UF, and I don't read it. I prefer to waste my online time reading better strips, like Penny Arcade, Goats, Diesel Sweeties, 8-bit Theater, Sinfest, and way too many more to list here, all of which have (IMNSHO) better jokes, better storylines, better art, better attitudes, and better execution than UF. Sure, not all of those are daily strips, but some are. Sinfest is. Tatsuya Ishida is able to pump out teh funney (no, that's not misspelled) every day, with amazing art to go along with it. I would call T's art "simplistic", in that it's generally all various lines, with just enough shading to suggest backgrounds and such. Illiad's art, on the other hand, is what i would call sloppy.

8-Bit Theatre - A really funny online Comic that uses the sprites from Final Fantasy.
Bob and George - Another online comic that uses Mega Man sprites Bob and George
Thieves and Kings - One of THE best fantasy adventure comics out there.
Finder - Another great adventure comic.
THB - Paul Pope has one of the most original art styles IMO, good stuff.
Optic Nerve - A comic about different peoples everyday lives.
Poison Elves - About an elf with a really bad temper.
Strangers in Paradise - Yeah it stars 2 women, but it has some of the best art and stories I've ever read in a comic.
A Distant Soil - An adventure story about kids with psychic powers.

This should hold you over until then...

8-bit theatre

J