never gets visually stale. In addition to keeping the look of the strip fresh, the effort put into the layouts and effects also helps the artist fend off accusations that he's merely ripping off existing work and passing it off as his own." Maragos did say, "the humor is often far more repetitive than the art. To compensate for this, Clevinger begun focusing more on story than jokes some time ago, but as a rule the quality of the writing hasn't become any sharper. A large component of the strip's popularity is love for the characters Clevinger uses". Reviewers writing for Sequential Tart recommended 8-Bit Theater on multiple occasions. Donielle Ficca wrote in 2007 that "When I was introduced to 8-Bit Theater, I was transported back to my mom's basement playing role-play video games for hours at a time... Nearly every geek I know who loves older games absolutely loves 8-Bit Theater. It has grown and welcomed into its fold newer people that simply have a particular sense of humor. If you are at all interested in parody or video games this is one comic you should definitely check out." Reviews of the completed comic Writing for Comic Book Resources, Larry Cruz said, "[in sprite comics] every character is generally rendered in the same scale and the same sideways or three-quarters position from panel to panel, [so] sprite comics became the favorite style for the laziest webcomic creators. Clevinger could get away with it because he has a knack for writing dialogue that's clever at times, silly at times, but always full of personality." Mikkel Snyder, a staff writer for Black Nerd Problems, said that 8-Bit Theater was the first webcomic he read and was "the comic that made me love comics". He described it as a "sprawling saga" which "thrived on Clevinger's love of video games and ability to use serialized webcomic formatting to tell this comedic tale." Matthew Pardue reviewed 8-Bit Theater for the University of North Georgia's University Press blog. Pardue strongly recommended the comic, though noted the humor was highly dark, that the comic featured "() violence, adult concepts, and some adult language", and said, "I personally think it takes some time for Clevinger to really hit his stride. His humor peeks through a little early on, but it only busts out in force after a few hundred strips." Writing for Io9, Lauren Davis recommended 8-Bit