Here’s one that’s been bouncing around the comics blogosphere for a little while. A few weeks ago, cartoonist Sam Hiti posted one of his daily warm-up drawings on his blog – a hooded, axe-wielding sort of man-jackal named “The Neuterer” – and challenged his readers to draw a suitable opponent to face his creation in mortal combat.

Facing a sudden deluge of submissions, Hiti slotted the warriors into brackets, moved the whole mess onto a new blog, and called it FIST-A-CUFFS. The battle has been raging ever since.

The result is an absolute stitch. Picture a guy with the biggest sword you’ve ever seen squaring off against a horned, sledgehammer-swinging sasquatch; or a tag team of an animated trampoline monster and a ghost-singing (?) version of Jughead going up against a pair of syringe-wielding dachshunds and a giant, fanged eyeball. No, I’m not exaggerating.

The voting process is wildly biased, the winners are ultimately irrelevant, and I’ll be damned if I can put a face to more than two of the artists involved, but hell, Hiti’s idea has hit a nerve. Check it out on your coffee break – right now they’re in the middle of a five-round tag-team tournament featuring 64 (!) individual combatants. My money’s on The Blood Wizards for the title.

–Benjamin Pogany