Brian Clevinger (born May 7, 1978) is an American writer best known as the author of the webcomic 8-Bit Theater and the Eisner-nominated print comic Atomic Robo. He is also the author of the self-published novel Nuklear Age.
Clevinger's best-known webcomic 8-Bit Theater, hosted on his site Nuklear Power. The comic is very loosely based on the video game Final Fantasy I and tells the story of four would-be fantasy heroes, known as the Light Warriors, who set out to save the world from the embodiment of Chaos, but conflict over their own stupidity and malice. The comic was done using 8-bit graphic sprites taken primarily from the Final Fantasy NES games, or created by either Clevinger himself or Kevin Sigmund. Spanning 1225 episodes, it ran from March 2, 2001 to June 1, 2010.
He has also created two mini-comics: Dynasty Memory was created in 2002 as a parody of the Dynasty Warriors series, and Field of Battle was created in August 2005 as a parody of FPS games in general and Battlefield 2 in particular.
In 2009, Clevinger started two other webcomics on Nuklear Power. Warbot in Accounting, co-written with artist Zack Finfrock, is about a war machine's struggles with human daily life in a white collar job. How I Killed Your Master, "a kung fu movie, but a comic", is co-written with John Wood and drawn by Matt Speroni.
Print
Atomic Robo, drawn by Scott Wegener, began as a six-issue limited series published by Red 5 Comics starting in October 2007. It was nominated in the "Best Limited Series" category of the 2008 Eisner Awards, won by The Umbrella Academy. Colorist Ronda Pattison was also nominated in the "Best Coloring" category subsequently won by Dave Stewart.
It was announced at the 2010 Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo that Clevinger would be revamping the saga of the The Infinity Gauntlet for Marvel Comics' all-ages series Marvel Adventures. Clevinger also revealed that he had contributed writing for both two issues of Wolverine vs. Captain America, which will be released that summer.
Clevinger has stated that "[his] favorite comics are the ones where the jokes are on the reader."He is especially known for his anticlimactic moments. For instance, the protagonists of 8-Bit Theater, the Light Warriors, accidentally defeated one of their adversaries, King Astos of the Dark Elves, via a heartbreakingly awful taunt rather than the conventional epic battle. After the Light Warriors received their class change Thief got a red ninja suit. The next comic it changed to black, and his explanation was that it was always black. To support this, Clevinger changed every previous occurrence of the red ninja suit. A third example is when the Light Warriors fought Kraken: despite the "formula" calling for a long and dramatic boss fight, Clevinger decided to make a simple anti-climax, explaining on the forum that he did it to annoy the audience and was just following his self-destructive impulses.
On Wednesday September 21, 2005, Clevinger attempted a "hostile takeover" of Ctrl+Alt+Del.The result was a brief outpouring of "resistance" in support of Tim Buckley, the author of the "seized" webcomic.This aid kept coming even as the news posts on both sides became more and more outrageous.
The self-published novel Nuklear Age is largely an extended parody of comic books. The book recounts the adventures of Nuklear Man and his sidekick, Atomik Lad, as they fight against rogue military weapons, highly evolved civilizations, the trials of everyday life, an angst-filled over-villain of undeniable power, the ever exotic Dr. Menace, and their own impulses.
