8-Bit Theater/Funny
Clevinger: My favorite kind of joke is the one played on the reader |
- Every chapter of 8-Bit Theater has a good one, but every tenth or so has a 'hilarity assured' joke, e.g. Thief's answer to "Where did you get your class change from?" "I stole it. From the future." Or Fighter's sword-chuck rampage. Or when he for twenty or so chapters (and several in comic weeks) played the 'quiet game' (which were Black mage's happiest weeks though he hardly noted it). Or Red Mage winning a battle with his wit (the illustration atop Logic Bomb). And of course Black Mage's infamous... everything. (Like his 'love'-powered Hadoken, acquired by sacrificing 13 orphaned kids. No, it wasn't for fun. At least not entirely).
- "Where did you get your class change from?" "I stole it. From the future."
- Red Mage kills a dinosaur... with logic
Dinosaur: How can dinosaur hunting be your primary purpose? We're extinct. |
- Red Mage and Bestiality
- This exchange later on, when Fighter is riding the abomination Red Mage created:
Fighter: You can ride it! |
- Damn my wits!
- Any time any character attempts to formulate a plan, there will be one of these, guaranteed. To wit:
Thief: Hm, the cannon fodder angle. I can get behind that. |
- After the rest of the group leaves Black Mage behind with a monster, they discuss how he's going to follow them (Fighter thinks they're going back, the rest are trying to ditch him), when suddenly BM flies through the air and lands in front of them, and gives us this.
Black Mage: I found out what zombies are weak against. |
- The strip's most concentrated hilarity was during the arc where the team's diversion from their supposed mission was to run up an extortion racket after routing both the town guard and the mafia.
Bank Teller: This is a robbery? |
- And later in that arc:
Thief: Our protection racket is great, but providing concrete incentives to be protected would be great. |
- Until the whole thing comes to an end with:
Black Mage: Just cooperate, or we'll do this.
Thief: There is such a thing as being too illustrative. |
- This:
Red Mage: But where we start? |
- Thief then discovers that that's all the book says. Over and over, for hundreds of pages. He concedes the point.
- Fighter discerning he had defeated gravity by surviving an airship crash. And proceeding to fly. Red Mage promptly breaks. (link)
Fighter: Don't you see? With gravity slain, now we can FLY! *flies off* |
- But it just turns out to be Sarda jackassing them over to his place. Although, anyone time someone refers to Sarda's actions as jackassing is kinda funny in itself.
- Sarda and his Healing Shiv were hilarious.
Sarda: I turned the spear into a healing spear. Like this healing shiv. *stabs Thief* Or maybe that's my regular shiv. |
- And in Elfland:
Fighter: So wait, let me get this straight. So Thief is the elf formerly known as Prince? |
- And in the next strip, Doctor Malpractice gets stuck while trying to escape through the bathroom window as the light warriors listen from outside:
Doctor Malpractice: Darn it! I KNEW this would happen. I'm FAR too big. I need some help in here, but who would want to actually DO that?! Dammit, I thought elves were supposed to be scrawny twig boys! Argh! Now I'm all tangled up in my robes! I hope I can get un-tangled before I make a mess of things. If I wasn't so big, this wouldn't be a problem. |
- From the invasion of Dwarfland arc:
Thief: Ack! Beard-shaped parasites are eating their faces! |
- Another example from that arc:
Red Mage: I'm going to be in front this time, so no more- |
- The whole arc was a Crowning Moment of Funny in Comedic Sociopathy!
Dwarf: By Moradin's beard! Why do only our homes and children burn?! |
Dwarf: Everything I love is combustible! |
Dwarf: Why aren't I dead yet? |
- Vilbert von Vampire, the LAR Per. The Light Warriors have to go along with his arbitrary set of rules to fight him. Hilarity Ensues when it dawns on Fighter that he's...well, a vampire. So he goes to get an appropriate weapon...
Fighter: (swinging a chunk of a fence with a cow on it) COWBONG! (Clobbers Gilbert) |
- Red Mage notes how Black Mage has finally lost it from constant exposure to Fighter...
Black Mage: (staring at the fire) Wooden Stake. Wood in Steak... |
- (and then later goes on to discuss about how cool Sword-Chucks are.)
- Gilbert is equally baffled:
Vilbert: Fighter, first, you didn't engage in a physical challenge. |
Thief: Oh dear ever-handsome elf-gods, are we actually stupid enough to have voted on nothing at all? |
- The entire Dwarfland arc, start to finish.
Red Mage: Come on. Now you're just doing it to annoy me. You don't even have heat vision. |
- I, GARLAND, WILL uh...KNOCK YOU ALL DOWN!
- Even better when you're aware that except for the "uh...", it's a verbatim quote from the English translation of the first Final Fantasy game.
- The part where they're stuck on the island. All of Red Mage's attempts at chocobo transportation/genetic engineering/surgery.
Red Mage(after creating a horribly mutated chocobo): All it required was a cocktail of dangerous experimental surgery and a willingness to ignore the unnecessary suffering of perfectly innocent beings! Also, I shot magic into their chromosomes until they turned inside-out. Evolution is my bitch. |
- The icing on the cake was Black Mage's Eye Take and awkward glancing back and forth, just TRYING to think of what the hell to say.
- A short time before the above entry, Black Mage's repeated assaults on Fighter's cranium start having an effect:
Thief: Looks like that stab to the head wasn't so bad after all. |
- Three arrows in a single bow? Nothing out of the ordinary. Two bows with three arrows each? Funny. Two bows with three arrows each, per hand? Comedy gold. the right reaction to such absurdity? Downright hilarious!
Onion Kid: What happened to that arrow guy? |
- "I was right. That didn't make sense."
- The whole of the Glorious Chainsaw Method ability:
Red Mage: Fighter! (holds out index card) Do as the card commands! |
- Black Mage and Thief discuss the finer details of being dead:
- "There is a map to Swordtown on the other side of this note." Yee!
- Will you stop looking into the ancient insanity box already!
- "They may be monsters, but they're sea monsters. What're they gonna do? Flop around on deck and suffocate at us threateningly?"
- Red Mage freezing the team to keep them from being killed by the Ice Dragon? Funny. Expecting Black Mage to come and thaw them out with one of his many fire spells? Funny in a very pitiable way. Black Mage dropping out of his current fiery rampage to stare at the now frozen Light Warriors for two panels before going far in the background to deliberately squander more fire spells at everything but ice block? priceless.
- Even better is how they do finally get out of the ice.
- BEHOLD MY HUMAN LASER!
- Bikke's Establishing Character Moment:
Bikke: Consider the lives of me crew forfeit. |
Drizz'l: I'm going to be the bigger elf here. I'm not even upset. |
- The best by far is a sort of Meta example. Clevinger is best known as a Teasing Creator, and he created a fake, anticlimactic ending, expecting to receive tons of hate mail. Instead he was flooded with mail about how appropriate the ending was and had people thanking him.
- *KABOOM* "Yar? ...Must be Explodin' Tuesday." and "WHY WOULD IT EXPLODE?"'
- I particulary like "FIGHTERDOKEN!", "MEDOKEN!" and "HADOYOUSTOPTHIS?!"
- BOATDOKEN!
- The Light Warriors being found in the female Elf barracks.........dressed as women.
- In one comic, Black Mage, after being threatened with certain death against some fiends, Black Mage mocking claims that he's so scared that he's about to shit Thief's pants. Sounds like just a weird insult, until the next comic. Note Thief's annoyance and BM's apology after the fiends show up. BM wasn't just kidding, apparently.
Thief: That's super. Now I have to ninja up some laundry. |
- Why is everyone forgetting the epileptic llama attack?
Drizz'l: What was that?! WHAT WAS THAT?! |
- The whole Quiet Game episode, especially how it finally ended...
- This little exchange between Fighter and Black Mage.
Fighter: Hey Black Mage. Did you happen to see Dr. Swordopolis? |
- Garland: Oh, we'll show YOU adorable!
- Sarda: ... Yes, you sure did.
- Thief having his class change stolen from him From the past. several hundred strips later.
- "Glorious leader, we have found a queen for you!"
Black Mage: I have made a grave miscalculation here. |
- And then Black Mage's Beat Panel reaction, after Red Mage says he supports Black Mage's decision.
- The dragons in the Temple of Fiends.
- Made even better by the fact that just before that Black Mage said the worst thing they'd find was a stairway without handrails. In the last panel, they're falling down the stairs.
- And masterfully called back to in the epilogue:
- Made even better by the fact that just before that Black Mage said the worst thing they'd find was a stairway without handrails. In the last panel, they're falling down the stairs.
Menu: TWELVE DRAGON NACHOS: Piled so high with topping there's only room for nine on the plate! |
Black Mage: Where in the hell are we? |
- Followed immediately by This exchange.
Red Mage: So deep are we (within my A-hole) that Sarda will never find us no matter how thoroughly or how vigorously he probes my A-hole. |
- This whole conversation made me laugh nonstop for minutes.
Black Mage: They're trying to kill me! |
- "Any fate we can walk into because we're not dead is a better one than we had ten minutes ago."
- Sarda conclusively proves that he has not taken the Evil Overlord List to heart.
- Simply because of the buildup beforehand (and spoilered for that reason, though it is also a huge spoiler if you read the page):
Fighter: I thought Sarda had a mustache. |
Red Mage: I can fix all of this. |
- This older one is also very funny. Demonstrating Black Mage's logical approach to things:
Red Mage: (...) You're a mass-murdering psycho! |
- This one:
Thief: White Mage, Black Mage! Something bad has happened to physics. I'll need your help re-establishing order to the universe as soon as I'm done with RM's wallet. |
- "Your faerie shat itself!"
- After Black Mage gets kicked in the nuts by a decidedly non-goblin creature:
Red Mage: Oh, the dreaded goblin punch! |
- In the very next comic, Black Mage puts his newly learned...er, "Goblin Punch" to great effect.
Black Mage: (running as fast as he can) INNA NERTS! |
Red Mage: Maybe we're trying too hard. |
- "QUEST COMPLETE!", and this...
Red Mage: Well, yeah. But I mean, maybe we can't make our own quests. We have to find them out there in the world. Roaming free, pure, beautiful.
Black Mage: That got a little weird at the end. |
- The expression on the guy's face in the third panel of this strip, combined with this gem from Black Mage:
Black Mage: "Saved your life, lady! He was a monster! I'll prove it to you -- when I carve his mask off he'll look totally gross." |
- "So this is what it's like when he makes you too stupid to think."
- "Obstacle course? Mo' like KA-BOOM course!"
- And now Red Mage's latest plan to kill Chaos by stupiding him to death.
- This.
Thief: "HOW DO YOU MISS A VOLCANO?!" |
- Orbs of Light, bottom panel.
- In yet ANOTHER excessively long setup to an eventual payoff: Four White Mages? It'll never work. ...or maybe it will.
- Clevinger directly pointed this out and it instantly became a Crowning Moment of Awesome.
- Bikke. Two plus two.
- Cantaloupe.
- "And thus, King Steve's Kick-Ass Bridge was built. There's already a wreck in the southbound lane."
- Possibly Fighter's greatest line.
Victor Von Vampire: "Are you ready?" |
- How do you quote that without Black Mage's follow up? "If all goes according to plan, you'll die like that too."
- Episode 726: That Sinking Feeling
Red Mage: *standing in a sinking submarine* Oh, please. Death is for NPCs. I'll just pop the drain and let all the water out. |
- Made even funnier when Fighter goes and does exactly what Red Mage proposed.
- Sword-Chucks, yo.
- FLYING THROUGH SPACE!
- HAVING ADVENTURES!
- ARMOIRE, ARMOIRE OF INVINCIBILITAAAY!
- HAVING ADVENTURES!
- Fighter managing to make several 'bear' jokes one after the other, successfully pissing off Black Mage.
- Soon after, Thief dismisses the supposed hauntedness of the woods they're in:
Thief: We're not too worried, thanks. I'd like to think I know my way around a forest. Y'know, since the essence of my being resonates with the very concept of "forest." And frankly, I've seen darker wood in elf porn. |
- The second nightmare Black Mage has due to the poisoned cookies Matoya gives the Light Warriors. Absolutely hilarious.
- White Mage says that she doesn't know whether the Light Warriors are alive or not. Cue this.
- Black Mage taking out the Nintendo Power issue in here which he had already taking out here. It also counts as a Crowning Moment of Awesome for being the longest set up in a webcomic, lasting 9 years and 1214 strips.
- The last window in this strip.
- Black Mage explains the widespread destruction to White Mage.
- Oh, people cough for hours after they die. (...) And stand up. And... change their clothes?
- "Montage!"
- The Light Warriors are about to face Sarda while he is "charging" the power of the Orbs into himself. Black Mage and Thief run away, taking Fighter with them, leaving Red Mage alone with Sarda. RM says that this is quite normal, and Sarda replies "Preaching to the choir." Red Mage asks if Sarda is sympathic to his plight. Cue Evil Laugh.
- Setting: a quiet village where a gang of anonymous men posing as adventurers are raping people. Cue Red Mage leaping down from above: I HAVE TO SHOW YOU WHAT'S IN MY POCKET! IT WILL MAKE EVERYTHING BETTER!
- Dag. "Well, yeah, it is an elven slang. But more specifically it's prison slang."
Fighter: Psst! What does "situational homosexuality" mean? |
- After Black Mage gets back from killing the orc zombie and promptly passes out from flying into the ground at high speeds, we get this exchange:
Red Mage: "Oh, he's dead." |
Matoya: I hope I haven't POISONED your opinions of me. Because I'd hate to have POISONED our future dealings. Ooh! Ooh! Guess my favorite '80s band. Go on! Guess! |
- This whole comic is funny, but all of Red Mage's lines are brilliant:
Red Mage: Use your weapons, they are designed to inflict damage! |
- Thief hears about the quest given to the other Light Warriors by Bahamut:
Thief: So you morons met the god of dragons. |
- "Die, ants, die!"
- Red Mage's tale of defeating a monster through the "vigorous" use of animal husbandry.
"Each was more prehensile than the last!" |
- Nobody remembered this one? in my opinion, it's one of the funniest moments in the entire comic.
Black Mage: Does that LOOK like an invisible sky castle? |
- "Kary, why don't you show this pile of hair what you think of his little fire helm?" (beat) "That's not what I meant."
- "Chaos! You're too tall!"
- Back to 8-Bit Theater