A tribute to Penny Arcade
First let me tell you about Penny Arcade. PA is a webcomic that has been going for 10 years now. It depicts the life of two young gamers while they joke their way to our hearth. Tycho Brahe and John Gabriel (just “Gabe”). The comic consist of a blog entry accompanied by a comic that usually express their thoughts on games, movies and internet stuff. Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik are the two behind our heroes.
What makes them great is the amazing relation that both characters have with each other. Gabe plays the PacMan addict(he is always seen with a PacMan shirt and sometime a watch) that keeps up with a passion for barbies and unicorns. He once found a cardboard tube on the street and has been using it has a samurai sword for several comics. He loves superheroes, especially Batman and Spiderman. He likes to brag about his “wang” and makes regular jokes with it, usually crude jokes but nonetheless appreciable (in a Penny Arcade context that is). He is usually rude to people but he can be gentle with closer characters. Like when he wanted to give RAM to his girlfriend for example.
Now to his counterpart Tycho Brahe. He is intelligent, cynical and sarcastic on several occasion. Tycho is always seen wearing a blue stripped jacket with matching pants. He is an adept of D&D and RPG’s in general. Thought he try to hide it, he’s having late night sessions with nerdy guys to play D&D. His childhood has been marked by his mother that physically abused him, the trips to Idaho’s Shitfarms. He also have “one of these aunts that send you homo-erotic material for Christmas”. He possess a very special D&D cookbook that allows him to cook wonderful sandwiches because “He roll twenties”. Much of Tycho’s comics are marked by a presence of his faithful twenty sided dice in honor for his passion of D&D.
Penny Arcade comics are full of references of games that went out recently, both characters comment on these games very aggressively. The same goes for any company that makes big announcements or big blunders. One of them involves EA commenting on their SecuROM copy protection software (the one that had to make periodic checks to validate the game) but PA transformed it into a crazy announcement involving blood test and rectal exam as validation. Thought you must be up to date on the latest news to understand their jokes but there is no need to be a hardcore gamer to fully understand every joke. A popular strip is John Gabriel Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory as depicted here:
This shows how anyone can become a total jackass over some time by playing multiplayer games like UT2004 or other. I think this leads to the uncontroversial proof that Penny Arcade is the best webcomic ever. Not only because of their jokes but also because of their implication in society. They are the host of the annual Penny Arcade Exposition (PAX). A game convention that draws thousands of gamers to Seattle to the 
Washington State Convention & Trade Center. They also support Child’s Play, which is a charity organization that supplies hospitals with toys and games for child’s. They have a running total of $3,489,000 from 2003 to 2007. So don’t hesitate to donate, some kids are really sick and they need amusement. You wouldn’t want yours to be in such situation. Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins along with Scott Kurtz of PvP’s webcomic went together and played the new 4th edition of the D&D game along and a DM from Wizards of the Coast. And it is hilarious. They have 5 episodes of about 45 minutes released yet and you can download them from here (search google : DnD + penny arcade episode # to get other episodes).
But Penny Arcade is not just about Tycho and Gabe. They also sometime include side-characters. Both Gabe and Tycho have wives that appears sometime in the strips. Kara O’Donnal Gabriel is the wife of Gabe(in the comic as well as in real life), she is a gamer and she understands Gabe’s obsession for gaming. Gabe actually discussed with Tycho the fact that she was playing the Sims online with other guys that pretends to be girls in-game. Which is a really good deal for 10$ a month says Gabe. Brenna Brahe is the wife of Tycho that shares the name of Jerry Holkin’s real wife. She does not understand why her husband plays so much games but sometimes talks about it with Kara. Tycho actually killed her once when he was trying a Splinter Cell’s move. But she came back in the comics a year later. Another but far from the last would be the two talking appliances that Tycho and Gabe owns. One is a DIVx player that can talk and that is alcoholic as well as a sex maniac. The second is the Fruit Fucker 2000 a machine that makes juice by… ( … you know what I mean, read the name … ). A near complete list is available here. So, for every laugh that Penny Arcade brought us I think they deserve a good thanks. I wave my hat to you guys ! Keep up the good comics, you’ve been working so hard for the past 10 years and I hope that you will excuse me from asking you to keep up the work for another ten years !
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