Penny Arcade
Juxtapose This: Gaming, Blah Blah, Gaming
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It's gaming month and that means that blah blah blah disappointing lack of female characters in comics about gaming blah blah blah my D&D experiences blah blah blah; too many people doing gaming comics about two college roommates blah blah blah women like shamelessly slaughtering orcs too occasionally blah blah game reviewer for Computer Gaming World named "Scorpia" who was really cool blah blah blah and once in awhile you found a woman who games with other women rather than a small cabal of smart-mouthed male characters against whom she is set as the "sane/reasonable" character who tries to be one of the boys but ultimately adores shopping blah blah blah PvP blah blah only computer game I've ever enjoyed was The Longest Journey and blah blah blah Final Fantasy blah blah why aren't there more chicks doing this stuff already.
Okay, I really needed to get that first paragraph off my chest. I feel much better now.
Comixpedia WANGED, retreats to new server
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 20, 2004 - 00:52
Actually I don't know the full story yet - but it's possible the Penny Arcade link-driven traffic today was too much for little old PHPWEBHOSTING.com webhost and our site got shut down by our hostestwiththenotmostest. So we're up and running at comixpedia.net on a different server account while we do the DNS thing for comixpedia.com this week. Be sure you're posting all of those witty comments at comixpedia.net this week (we'll let you know when we're out of the woods server-wise.
Week 3 of Comixpedia January Issue Now Online
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 19, 2004 - 00:22
In week 3 of our January issue, Damonk interviews the creator of Bob and George, Chris Furniss investigates the genre and giants of gaming webcomics; we review Ko Fight Club by Russ Williams and Penny Arcade by Gabe and Tycho; Damonk tackles the fine art of online argument; and Otis Frampton delivers the latest installment of the Art & Narrative column.
Dave and Damonk: An interview with the creator of Bob and George by Damonk
David Anez has been messing with pixels before messing with pixels became cool. His landmark Sprite-based comic, Bob and George, actually wasn't even supposed to BE a comic about a hero and cast of characters awfully similar to a certain Capcom game. It inadvertently became one of the first Sprite webcomics on the web, and certainly the first one to really pioneer and spark the masses of Sprite comics out there now. Almost four years after this "accidental" genesis, Anez tells us about how it all started, and why his webcomic is exactly what it is.
Gaming Webcomics and the People Who Love Them
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The mere mention of video games often evokes images of a solitary white ball bouncing between two vertically moving white paddles, with that distinctive Pong sound. Maybe it evokes images of a large gorilla hurling barrels at unsuspecting Italian men instead. No matter what you think of when you think video games, it is undeniable that games as a whole have affected our culture over the last 20 years. In the late 1970s, games like Pong revolutionized arcades, and in the 1980s, Nintendo revolutionized our living rooms with Super Mario Bros. Our generation grew up with names like Atari, Nintendo and Sega. The culture of video games has boomed in the past 5 years with the recent console wars between Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony. With the increase of video game fans came an increase in people writing and drawing about their favorite video hobby: enter Gaming Webcomics, a genre that is not so easily classified. What are Gaming Webcomics, what are they all about, and where are they going?
Stickler and Hat-Trick review Gabe and Tycho's Penny Arcade
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Stickler and Hat-trick, in association with Comixpedia present…
Stickler and Hat-trick at the Keyboard
This week, they review PENNY ARCADE, created by Gabe and Tycho!
( Tonight's show is sponsored by Bigger than Lifeâ„¢ Prunes. Enhance the size of your after-dieting effects today with new and improved expanding prunes!)
Stickler: Welcome to a new year of At the Keyboard!
Hat-Trick: This week we're taking a look at one of the biggest and most successful webcomics out there, Penny Arcade, created by Tycho and Gabe, which updates on M-W-F schedule.
S: Well, let's just get this out of the way. PA is a great webcomic. When we were asked by Mr. Editor who lives under our couch to review Penny Arcade, I was a little nervous…
HT: We volunteered, dumbass. Thanks!
Ko Fight Club by Russ Williams, reviewed by Xaviar Xerexes
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Russ Williams' Ko Fight Club is a constantly evolving webcomic that samples a wide and extremely diverse set of topics for its subject matter. Williams describes Ko Fight Club as "eclectic comics about Go, board games, the Bench, Watchmen, Fight Club, Shakespeare, Esperanto, and Toki Pona." 'Eclectic' does not do justice to the range of topics and styles found in this webcomic.
Full Circle on Penny Arcade's Child Play Fundraiser
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 15, 2004 - 15:54
The columnist who wrote a column bashing video games as "training killers" received word about the Penny Arcade Child's Play toy-a-thon and fundraiser for Seattle Children's Hospital. The Child's Play drive was partially inspired as a way to disprove the stereotype perpetuated by his column. Now he writes a column expressing his gratitude and acknowledges that he is reading a book on gaming upon which he may comment in a later column. Aaah, our lazy mainstream media. Write first, research later...
Wednesday Lazy Blogging
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 14, 2004 - 16:16
Gamers and their Webcomics: Wow. I think our server is slimy after getting wanged all day by Ctrl-Alt-Del and Little Gamers fans. Yes we're reviewing gamer and sprite-oriented comics all this month at Comixpedia. No question comics that incorporate gaming culture can attract a large audience - just look at some of our Most Read lists from last year. Penny Arcade is consistently at the top of any metric I've come up with so far.The Ctrl-Alt-Del comic - I myself read the review and I didn't come away thinking bad comic but I guess some of the C/A/D fans did. Most seemed more upset that the review seemed to suggest non-hardcore gamers wouldn't get it. Reasonable minds can disagree I would hope - I'll admit upfront I haven't read C/A/D myself so I have no opinion one way or the other. Still it's got a lot of fans so they have to be doing something right. Also the creator on his site very politely urged his fans to be civil in their comments over here. We do appreciate that. I'm not sure the noise ratio is all that good in the comments to the review but it is a 180 from what I saw on Little Gamers today.I don't get much of the comments to the Little Gamers review at all - not that I don't understand what they're saying but just surprised at how a review provoked such wide ranging discussion... Anyhow, I can't say I'm surprised at the L/G take on the Comixpedia review, with their feet firmly planted in the South Park tradition, such as it is. All in all I wish we had a lot less of the snaps style comments and a little more actual point/counterpoint discussion but I think it's kind of cool that C/P has gotten to the point where people are taking the reviews here to mean something.UPDATE TO LITTLE GAMER DUDES: I forgot to mention - NAZI references are really, really lame. Otherwise I think that today's L/G is the first comic directly about Comixpedia.
PVP Sunday Comic Dives into MD/PA Episode
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 13, 2004 - 12:21
Just in case you missed it, PVP's Sunday Comic references the Modest Destiny/Penny Arcade story covered earlier this month in this interview with Sean Howard.
