Kriston doesn't like Penny-Arcade. I disagree with him about the comic's merits, but I guess I can understand where he's coming from. Tycho — the strip's writer and chief blogger — has a prose style that can be gratingly pretentious; the comic's gags lean heavily on non-sequiturs and in-jokes; and Gabe, the strip's artist, admits that his visual style is heavily cribbed from Stephen Silver .

But Tycho's doing something that I think even Kriston will like. Actually, I think Kriston will especially like it.

You may not have heard of Epic Legends of the Hierarchs: The Elemenstor Saga, but that's only because it doesn't really exist. Tycho invented the pretend franchise about a half a year ago as a blank canvas onto which all the most ridiculous conventions of the fantasy, Pokemon-derived, Saturday-morning cartoon, video/roleplaying game and shameles-kiddy-commercialism genres could be projected. Not too much has been done with it since then — a strip here and there, but that's about it.

Today, a new development: Tycho has created an ELotHTES wiki and invited readers to contribute. The setup is pretty straight-laced: the Elemenstor Universe is overwrought, incoherent and thoroughly broken, thanks to the franchise's imagined commercial history. The true stroke of genius is Tycho's insertion of grudging references to a little-loved, Ewoks-style cartoon departure from the canon called "The Wizbits" that briefly aired at some point in the past and horrified all true Elemenstor fans.

I have no idea whether any of the contributors will be genuinely funny, but the idea behind this project is a great one. The end product may or may not be hilarious, but it's certain to be an entertainingly incomprehensible, self-referential universe. It's fertile ground for nerds to riff on: I've already got an idea for the bio page about the Wizbits' executive producer that could best be pitched as, "What if Aleister Crowley had invented My Little Pony?"