"Name's Burk. Remember that name well; soon it'll be legendary."
— Burk
A Path to Greater Good
is an original Pixel Art Comic created by Guido "Neorice" Bos. The comic follows the stories of three people: Burk, a quixotic hero who has set out on a seemingly impossible quest, Noah, a young man who seems to be developing magical powers, and Tobi, an extremely unlucky young woman whose life falls apart in an instant. The three heroes have not crossed paths, but they all exist in the same world.
As of the beginning of 2013 it has been rebooted as Hero Oh Hero. The original comic can still be read starting from here to here.
Tropes include:
- Action Girl: Tobi
- Art Evolution: The early strips used RPG-style dialog boxes before switching to speech balloons, which went through 4 different fonts. The character sprites were redesigned at least 5 times (but only 3 distinct sets were used in multiple strips). The backgrounds switched from vector art to pixel art to match the sprites, then again to vector and again to pixel. Early strips had some kind of filter applied, which covered background and sprites with brown squiggles. From the first style, to a more detailed style to the final, more retro style it went like this:
- 1-89: Human sprites about 30x60 pixels (for Burk, Eloy and Three) at double magnification (with occasional zoom out). Backgrounds use higher resolution, but the filter makes them look like hand-drawn watercolors on brown cartridge paper. Dialogs take separate panels with light condensed font and portraits on the sides, like in some RPGs. Those panels are high-resolution and the portraits are incredibly detailed.
- 90-100: Same as above, but dialog panels are gone, replaced with round speech bubbles with the same condensed font. The author said the portraits took too much time to draw.
- 101-106, 110: Same as above, but switched to an "uncial" fontnote in speech bubbles. One page uses hand-drawn portraits for close-ups.
- 107-109, 111-114: Same as above, but without the brown paper effect. The backgrounds are nice clean vector art.
- 115-143, 145-181: Same as above, but switches to a more traditional all-caps "comic" font. Character sprites seem a bit streamlined.
- 144: Character sprites redesigned completely. They have the same resolution as background. "Super deformed" style — huge heads on short bodies. For example, Three's head is 84 pixels instead of 50. Some items, like doors, are still low resolution pixel art.
- 182-199, 201, 202, 205-215: More detailed sprites. Background becomes pixel art at the same resolution as characters and items. Character close-ups use the same pixel art sprites at 3x or 4x zoom instead of 2x. All in all, the strips resemble an MS-DOS VGA, Amiga or Atari ST game.
- 200: Character close-ups are pixel art at 2x, more detailed than their sprites.
- 203, 204: Character close-ups use different non-pixelated style, but with a limited palette.
- 216-220: Same as 205-215, but speech bubbles become rectangular, get colored backgrounds and frames, and switch to a pixelated font imitating fonts of some 16-bit games.
- 221-250: Same as above, but speech bubbles get a wider variety of colors and decorated frames, but revert to all-caps comic font.
- 251-256: Sprites and backgrounds redesigned completely, they are no longer pixelated. Proportions remain more or less the same.
- 257-288: Another redesign, pixelation is back. Characters are much shorter and with bigger heads — Three is 20x40, Burk is 22x46, heads are 20 (all at 2x zoom). Portraits occasionally appear in speech bubbles. Graphics bears more semblance with 4th generation consoles.
- 289-294: Filler featuring complete redesign for Noah (green hair, school uniform) and somewhat bigger body for Tobi. Speech bubbles are again plain rectangles with black text on white background.
- Reboot: A mix of the last two and 182-250 styles. Burk and Tobi are more or less like in the filler, Veda and filler Noah got recolored, Three reverted to older style, Pablo is somewhere in-between. Texts are all-caps black on white with few exceptions.
- Art Shift: Mainly, the character close-ups described above: Noah recalling possible teleportists, foreshadowing all the people to disrupt Pablo's plans, Adell dealing with guards and prisoners
- Alternate Character Interpretation: Could Burk be smarter than he looks?
- Word of God says so. Burk admits to invoking the trope a few pages later, though it's unclear to what extent.
- Word of God says so
- Anime Hair: Multiple examples. Although The Emperor's stands out.
- Another Dimension: Possible location of Rauel and the place with dinosaurs where Noah teleports.
- Ax-Crazy: Lacey.
- Bandage Mummy: Tobi comes close, after the arena fight.
- Big Damn Heroes: Burk has a tendency to show up at the exact right time.
- Black Knight: Mai Aceland, ironically known as "The White-Haired Knight".
- The Blank: Three. Yes, that's his name. Well, close enough.
- Brainwashed: The Joy group
- Calling Your Attacks: "DRAGON COIL!" (According to the author: "I Always Wanted To Write That")
- "BOVINE KICK!" *kicks cow*
- Companion Cube: Mr. Acorn. The Emperor's hair is treated this way by fans.
- Crazy Enough to Work: Burk's plan to free Gang Rule Town.
- Crazy-Prepared: The diplomat.
- Dishing Out Dirt: Sunny's ability.
- Doomed Hometown: Tobi's village appears to be an example, though there is evidence that she was transported elsewhere instead.
- Dual Wielding: Burk sees this ability as essential to the "Badass Cool Guy" of his ideal party.
- Exposition Diagram: Uses type 3 while Sunny explains how he's able to bypass an attacker's magic shield.
- Eyeless Face: Apples... made of flesh. Hey, they're growing!
- Functional Magic: The rise of magic is one of the driving factors of the series.
- Gadgeteer Genius: Tobi
- Golem: "Pod soldiers" and Three.
- Goofy Print Underwear: Burk, whenever he loses his pants.
- Grappling-Hook Pistol: Tobi had one built into some armour on her arm, though she appears to have lost it.
- Heroic Bastard: Noah, as seen in this dialogue.
- Heroic BSoD: Happens to Tobi in the desert.
- Instant Knots: Lacey can do this with some sort of rope based weapon.
- Knows the Ropes: Lacey's weapon (along with a normal sword). Not quite Razor Floss — he hasn't cut anything with it.
- Leeroy Jenkins: Burk
- Lovecraftian Superpower: Three has these sorts of abilities, but his clothes somehow aren't damaged. Flesh golems can do this too.
- Magic Pants: Three's clothes always look intact. Per
Word of God, he repairs them that quickly. - Mirror Monologue: Noah
- Only a Flesh Wound: Subverted - Tobi's wounds were actually near-fatal - she failed to realise this due to a "numbing venom".
- Our Elves Are Different: Deconstructed. A group of humans discovered Green Thumb magic, and were called "elves" as a racial slur.
- Outlaw Town: Gang Rule Town
- Rule of Cool: Everything Burk does.
- Rule of Funny: Everything else Burk does.
- Simultaneous Arcs
- Sleeves Are for Wimps: Burk.
- Speech Impediment: Miss Veda's stutter.
- Stepford Smiler: The Joy group
- Strange-Syntax Speaker: Lacey often pauses at odd moments.
- Teleporters and Transporters: Noah's true magical ability. Sort of. Teleportation seems to move him either a very precise distance and direction, or to some parallel world. If he teleports, walks, say, a mile in a given direction, then teleports back, he returns a mile away from the starting point. Interestingly, Veda seems quite familiar with this limitation and the wildlife at the destination.
- The Profiler: Noah. A bit of a Clock King too. Sadly, downplayed in the reboot.
- Two Scenes, One Dialogue: Here.
- Unsound Effect: Burkick'd!
- Grosssfx!
- Hat'd
- Violence is the Only Option: The only way Burk can save Gang Rule Town.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: Burk wears an open vest.
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: At the start of the series, Noah has the amazing magical ability... to not see his own reflection! (other people can still see it). It later develops into something more useful.
- You Are Number 6: Three.
