penny arcade: c/d

Well, a) That's their house style, has been for a while and b) it's not his avatar and he's not portraying himself, he writes it and the other guy draws it.

Yeah it's a small thing but telling - if they were different people with different motives/priorities, one could easily imagine the Gabe and Tycho drawings aging/evolving to go alongside the having-kids material or whatever. Thinking here of the Scott McClouds of the world, giving themselves increasingly graying hair etc. But Penny Arcade the cool-guy dgaf dckwolf internet hardman brand wouldn't permit that (though I guess it permits the gradual uglifiication of everything about the art), and the commitment to that particular brand and its profits tells you a lot about who these guys really are.

Child's Play is a fine thing, and IMHO not more harmful to other forms of aid than Toys For Tots etc. But it's interesting that its form and sales pitch are calibrated exactly to reach internet gamerbros with chips on their shoulders about proving a point (recall its origins in a public squabble with some ''games are violent and harmful'' establishment type) and who accept buying power as the final arbiter of right and wrong. The REAL FANS have spoken through their debit cards! (I also imagine that far, far more people have invoked CP in shouting down PA's critcs than have ever donated themselves.)

This characterization isn't meant to denigrate everyone who's given to the thing over the years, cause I expect it has actually done a lot to cheer up some very sick, bored and lonely kids. Just I think it reveals, in a small, nice way, some things about ''gamer'' mentality that elsewhere come through in a big, ugly way.

Looks like Robert Khoo left the company this year. I got the sense that he was a big part of driving its expansion.

The Scott McClouds of the world is basically Scott McCloud - there aren't a lot of comic strips that have the same longevity as Penny Arcade, and changing your characters to reflect that is more of a gimmick than not - they don't reflect reality (obviously, in Tycho's case).

I agree that Child's Play is a good thing, it came about in a specific context, but that context did exist and it's an admirable way of fucking with it, of making the point that gamers are not some fundamentally twisted subculture. It would obviously be nice if there was less regular need to make the same point, which is obviously on a loud minority of gamers.

Their forums were the first place that I was surprised to hear described as a nest of SJW's when Gamergate started, and that helped as regards reassuring me that things generally run towards tolerance if you let people mingle long enough.

I think that's basically all the nice things I have to say about them? They'll occasionally stumble into a decent joke, but Jesus I would never read the text posts for enjoyment these days (in fact I only ever do it if I realise I'm far enough from core gaming that I don't understand the joke in the comic).

The Scott McClouds of the world is basically Scott McCloud

In Doc C's context, no. Alec MacGarry went grey, then white. Kim Deitch is bald and white-bearded in Alias The Cat. Chester Brown went from tit-length locks in Showing Helder to skullet in My Mother Was A Schizophrenic to bald in Paying For It. Crumb has a grey beard in his C21st strips. The Kyle Baker in Critics At Large is thin and curly-haired, the Kyle Baker in The Bakers is fat and dreadlocked. Seth wears glasses and a hat and a long coat in his modern comics that use a character based on himself.

I realise you're rejecting the entire notion that the Penny Arcade characters in any way represent their authors, contrary to Doctor Casino's view, but to say that cartoonists that use avatars to address the audience never change those to address the passage of time is completely mental.

You are completely correct and I meant webcomics.

my main issue with PA (outside of how ugly the strip looks) is how stupidly wordy the writing is. like it shouldn't take 400 words in 3 panels to get to a dumb punchline in because you want to shoehorn in all these dumb obscure references

my main issue with PA is that is sucks

grrr I hate typos

always thought these guys sucked. this story just confirms they are Prima Donnas too.

I'm not versed enough in webcomics to name examples but I'd be shocked if there were not tons and tons of more obscure, bloggish sorts of strips that feature some kind of aging/appearance change for the author analogue. Again, not to say PA's under any obligation to do that, just that it's a choice to maintain the stylized hepcat looks for their protagonists, and maybe that choice tells us something about what kind of strip it is and what they see as its role.

IIRC though the one dude signs (signed?) his unbelievably long, self-indulgent text posts as Tycho, and a variety of strips have involved in-strip Gabe as cartoonist, with Tycho dictating content to him or whatever. They're author stand-ins and that's a part of their personal brand identity etc.

Also DJP otm

not versed enough in webcomics to name examples but I'd be shocked if there were not tons and tons of more obscure, bloggish sorts of strips that feature some kind of aging/appearance change for the author analogue

James Kochalka's hair thinned out in American Elf but I don't follow a lot of webcomics either

so this is a real PA comic

https://photos.smugmug.com/Comics/Pa-comics/n-xmQS5/i-VbLTTth/0/2100x20000/i-VbLTTth-2100x20000.jpg

wtf has been happening with the character's faces, they're becoming more grotesque and aesthetically revolting over time

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WIYhqGkhZiw/R7DA8alPFUI/AAAAAAAAADY/ydBhRlqhLo4/S1600-R/oops.png

the lack of self-awareness it must take for the penny arcade guy to write "incoherent rhetorical salad bar" about something anyone else has written or said is staggering

I'm not sure how you post that particular strip and have the first question be "what's going on with the faces"

lol i was gonna say... the content was much more stupefying

oh I didn't actually read it

wise move

you could literally replace every word in there with "WAAAAH WAAAAAH WAAAH I'M A BIG FUCKING BABY" and it would have the exact same rhetorical impact

this showy smart voice of extremely online nerds "incoherent rhetorical salad bar" is so distinctive, it pervades their scene which is almost total sealed from the rest of the world, ppl like this penny arcade and that very popular music vlogger who everyone was mad at for also being a nazis are their alternate reality reddit.com intellectual giants, its so weird and bad, prob mostly teens tho

https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2017/10/23/second-opinion

his little blogpost which goes with the comic.

this showy smart voice of extremely online nerds "incoherent rhetorical salad bar" is so distinctive

yes

I try not to spend a hundred percent of my time thinking about the shambling chaos that gnaws at the periphery, but it’s hard not to notice the symptoms.

Look - we’re chasing the best writers out of this industry.

lol

I mean ... I do think EA sucks, and probably would have played that Star Wars game.

i opened this thread to figure out why ppl were mad at this comic on twitter the other day, some anti trans thing? i tried lord

ok now that I know what he's mad about, I don't disagree. (Didn't EA basically poach Hennig from Naughty Dog for this game?) but why make a comic in that form at all? just the blog post would be enough

the guy who made them rich quit last year so I assume the PA corporate culture is in serious decline

people dislike them because one of the dudes is incapable of taking any criticism and doubles down instinctively

I think one of the initial things was a comic with a rape joke, which was dumb. When someone clued them in that maybe they're not set up to navigate such things, I think they doubled down with RAPE IS GREAT

I am very sorry for typing that