PENNY ARCADE

Hello and welcome back to “At the Bottom of The Pit: Where Webcomics Suffer”.

To make my first critique, what better way than starting with the probably best known webcomic in the entire world, or at least the one that has become the biggest in the industry and has extended its tentacles outside of the world wide web.

Born as a humble videogame critique and situation comedy comic in 1998 at loonygames.com presenting the avatars of the creators Mike Krahulik & Jerry Holkins the comic strip known Penny Arcade quickly grew to become an industry giant, embracing other areas of videogame life, such as Expos with the “Penny Arcade Expo” (PAX) in Seattle and Boston, a videogame (Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness), a podcast, a charity event called Child’s Play and even a Reality Show that has been aired this year.

When you begin reading this comic strip in its first years you notice a really basic design, it has two main characters with a very basic design and the comedy factor is really low, too focused in very specific comedic factors that make feel the webcomic is too focused in the 24/7 gamer, but soon comes the change.

The drawing style improves and with it the evolution of the characters Johnathan “Gabe” Gabriel and Tycho Erasmus Brahe; they earn really full developed personalities marking Gabe as the naive, childish and care free gamer spirit while Tycho becomes the overrational, neurotic RPG, book and board game lover. With this the strip earns an easier way to make comedy thanks to the new found character personalities that they imprint in each joke and to their perceptions of reality. They extent their jokes to life and personal reactions to things. Jokes never seem to be forced, they are fluent and attached a lot to silly ways of thinking that are attached to illogical things on games or improbable reactions to certain features to the games, although some jokes can only be understand if the blog is read first.

Art evolves fluently in the strip, starting from a very stiff, childish style that evolves to a comic style that feels really fluent and where you could expect the characters to move. With art also comes new characters: Chuck the Apple loser geek that after a failed suicide attempt receives a new better face and a quick more aggressive personality, probably thanks to the trauma and Mackintosh reborn as a company; there also come Div a DIVX that is an alcoholic machine; the Fruit Fucker 2000 a little robot that obtain juice from fruits by raping them, this little gadget has become quite popular earning various arcs and special apparitions, even one as antagonist in the Penny Arcade game; Kara O'Donnal Gabriel and Brenna Brahe, Gabe and Tycho respective wives, they are minor characters in the strip, but each apparition of them is a major joke fest and Jesus who usually make Tycho suffer pointing his bad behavior and prizing Gabe naivety and child like spirit. These are the most important among the support characters and play major roles in arcs and jokes.

 
                                           Tycho (in blue) Gabe (in yellow) and Jesus

There are also several specials about non gaming related things, but personally the only two worthy to be mention are the Chuthulu Christmas special and the really incredibly drawn “Cardboard Tube Samurai Saga”.

Penny Arcade itself has demonstrated that time and popularity doesn’t mean lowering quality with time and fame, they manage to keep themselves improving and growing with 12 healthy years on their backs and a bright future forward. I give it a 4.5 OUT OF 5 points since comedy factor can sometimes still be too difficult to understand even for gamers. But I say that you must go and read this piece of modern gaming culture even if you don’t have any attraction to gaming, it can give you more than one good laugh or at least a good reading time.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1998/11/18/ Here is a link now READ IT!

Have a good day!

Disclaimer: All images belong to Penny Arcade and their respective owners.