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Most people who write about "The Game Industry" tend to suck up. They figure that writing nice things about Nintendo will increase the chances of the newest Zelda beta test landing in their mailbox. Jerry and Mike prefer to rule by fear. Rest assured that they get advance copies of games. They are flown out to various game company headquarters around the country to be wined and dined by young ladies who seem to have forgotten to put on half their clothes and presented with advance screenings of the latest techno-froth that said company has to offer. This is because said companies know that these two unprepossessing fellows could utterly destroy them. Penny Arcade is faithfully read by several hundred thousand readers. Readers who like games. Readers who have no desire to waste hard earned money on shoddy game product, and will take Penny Arcade's pronouncements into consideration when deciding where to spend said hard earned money.
Penny Arcade is perhaps the ur-gaming comic, created by Mike "Gabe" Krahulik (art) and Jerry "Tycho" Holkins (writing) and updating on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule. From its humble beginnings in late 1998, the comic has inspired countless imitators and grown into a veritable household name; the franchise has its own convention ( PAX) and charity ( Child's Play), as well as several commissions.
Although most of the comics are connected to video games in some manner, it is not exclusively a gaming comic; much of the humor is drawn from real-life experience, as well as character interaction, both with the authors' alter-egos and with their friends.
Notable for being one of the few webcomics to actually divide up art and writing duties between an artist and a writer, with the pretty obvious result that both the art and the writing are far better than most webcomics, which tend to be solo affairs. While the benefits to dividing up the duties are obvious, the pitfalls keep most webcomics from following suit: mostly, it is really really hard to get two people to agree on how their ideal comic should look and feel, and in the rare cases where they do, well... money makes everything worse (see: Megatokyo). Gabe and Tycho make it work. Most webcomic creators would rather not try.
Also notable for a relentlessly professional update schedule. Other webcomics are subject to Schedule Slip. Penny Arcade will update every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday— even when Gabe gets swine flu.
The series has now spun off into an episodic game: Penny Arcade Adventures: On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness. And now into a Reality show
This comic provides examples of:
- Actually Pretty Funny - "Dune? Sounds dry." "I'm trying not to be amused by that."
- Art Evolution - From this to the current level. The ten years of practice really shows.
- Author Avatar - Retroactively so - Tycho and Gabe were not originally meant to represent the creators, but too many readers assumed that they did and eventually Jerry and Mike just said Sure Why Not.
- Awesome Mc Coolname - Mike named his Dungeons And Dragons wizard "Jim Darkmagic" (of the New Hampshire Darkmagics).
- Immediately called out by Scott Kurtz, who demands, "Why don't you call yourself Chet AwesomeLaser?"
- The group also suggested "Jim Fellmagic," "Fell Dark Jim," "Jim Felldark," "Fell Darkevil," and "Ominous Darkfell Magic-Bad."
- Fail O Suckyname - Jim is a callback to when they played Final Fantasy XI.
- Also all characters/creatures by Franzibald. (Grimm Shado, Witchaloks, wolfoids, the Shadowdark.)
- A Wizard Did It: Used to explain "reverse necromancy". As well as where babies come from.
- Back To The Penis Well - Trope Namer
- Blatant Lies: "Gabe, sometimes in order to hurt someone very badly, you have to tell that person terrible lies. "
- Yes, and then again, no. Author commentary from the collections reveal that during that time period, Gabe had somehow managed to construct for himself, a computer of nothing but parts that had absolutely no drivers/compatibility for XP.
- Bowdlerize: Gears of Conflict Resolution
- Christmas Special - Oh so subverted.
- Confusing Multiple Negatives - It doesn't not◊ work.
- Cosmic Horror: The recurring concept and species known as the Deepcrow.
- Cowboy Bebop At His Computer - Though you'd think Tycho would know better, he does this here, claiming that Mega Man X was the tenth game in the Mega Man series.
- One really has to see The Rant for that comic. The back-and-forth of Gabe and Tycho slinging factoids about the Mega Man games is fun. Especially the last one, where Gabe unearths an unbeatable fact that proves him right.
- Crazy Awesome - Gabe, as seen here.
- Crosses The Line Twice - Many of the strips. Probably the best example would be the comic where Tycho gets the hiccups.
- Best part? He still has the hiccups!
- Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming about 4:30 into the 2nd part of the pilot
- Dada Comics - Twisp & Catsby.
- Dark Age Of Supernames - Parodied with Doctor Raven Darktalon Blood.
- Dark And Troubled Past - Tycho is occasionally mentioned to have had one.
- Digital Piracy Is Evil — From the rant for October 26th 2009;
It is not a mischaracterization to say that conversations with the hardcore PC community about software theft follow these tenets:
- There is no piracy.
- To the extent that piracy exists, which it doesn't, it's your fault.
- If you try to protect your game, we'll steal it as a matter of principle.
- Expy: H.L. Franzibald appears to be some unholy combination of L Ron Hubbard and Tim Buckley — mostly Tim (and yes it's based on an outfit he wore, sunglasses and all).
- Filler Strip: The Sketchbook-like updates that happen when the two are at various conventions.
- Fridge Brilliance - Parodied here, for a Take That at Halo.
- GIFT - The Trope Namer.
- Guest Strip - Rare enough to stand out; a recent example was done by Bill Amend.
- Happy Ending Massage - This strip
- Heel Face Door Slam - Lampshaded here.
- How The Character Stole Christmas
- Ho Yay - Often instigated by Gabe, most hilariously subverted here. Played straight here. Played really straight, er, gay here and here, and, in a Callback to that, here.
- I Know Mortal Kombat - Parodied.
- Imagine Spot
- Interspecies Romance - Sexy, sexy giraffes. Also, jellyfish.
- Internet Counterattack - Jack Thompson got owned...hard.
- Also, if you have a TV or radio show, do not piss Gabe and Tycho off. They will get your advertising pulled.
- Kill It With Fire - Effectively the MO of the Gabe's Dungeons And Dragons wizard Jim Darkmagic (of the New Hampshire Darkmagics). in their podcast on the Wizards website. Scorching Burst was used to set flame to everything from goblins. to zombies, to vampires, to berserkers, to priests, to the Dwarf Fighter. Who happened to be in his party.
- Life Embellished
- Luke Nounverber - Jim Darkmagic.
- (of the New Hampshire Darkmagics)
- The Merch - Brutally satirized, and the Trope Namer.
- Merchandise Driven - Lampshaded.
- Memetic Mutation - WHY I AM SO BALD?!
- ZALGO COMES
- Why am I so bald? Why am I so pig-like?
- In the more traditional sense of a meme, the word "bullshot".
- Mermaid Problem - addressed quite directly.
- Nerf Arm - Cardboard Tube Samurai.
- Which has spawned more than a few instances of the deadly tube showing up in some games.
- Never Say That Again
- Nightmare Fetishist - Tycho is one. Apparently this trait extends to his real-life persona...
- Just a quick note, that last panel originally had nothing said at all. Being speechless at the "beauty" of the topic seems funnier.
- Non Lethal Warfare - Really weird, considering how often they do Sugar Apocalypses
- Odd Couple - The bread and butter shtick of the comic. Tycho mocks Gabe's ignorance, Gabe derides Tycho's pretensions. Rinse and repeat.
Tycho: Let me just ask you this: do you think that "cloud rendering" is something that happens in the sky?
Gabe: Yes.
Tycho: Alright. Check please.
- Overly Narrow Superlative - Used here.
- Perfectly Cromulent Word - Killographic, used also in Real Life, and stuponfuicous.
- Perverse Sexual Lust - Not how you think (I hope) but displayed with "Angelic Perfection".
- Race Lift - Parodied here
- The Rant
- Refuge In Audacity
- Robot Buddy - Div, subverted. Although if you wanna get technical, Div isn't really a robot so much as he is a personification.
- The Fruit Fucker is arguably a different kind of subversion.
- Rule Of Cool - Why does Penny Arcade think you should get Prototype?
- Rule Thirty Four: For the New Year, the guys have resolved to quit bizarre Internet porn (Tycho... coldturkeys.com? Squick) and quit jacking off to the jellyfishes in the local aquarium (Gabe).
- Running Gag - How many times have they killed each other and stolen that Pac Man watch from the corpse?
- They keep track. And it switches usually once a year.
- Schedule Slip - Relentlessly avoided. Things that would cause multiple-week delays for other comics cause single-day delays for PA. They recently ran the first guest strip in recent history, because Gabe was physically unable to move a pen when it was time to draw the day's comic. Specifically, because he had swine flu. And the first guest strip set a precedent for the others by being done by Bill Amend. And just for fun, some of the guest strips were "Gabe gets swine-flu"-themed.
- In fact, swine flu was the only time Gabe and Tycho were unable to produce a strip since the series began. Tycho did three MS Paint horrorpieces, but in ten years, that's it.
- Serious Business - Ping-pong.
- Leeches into real life, as Penny Arcade Company frequently hosts ping-pong tournaments at their offices against game developers and reviewers. This has led to some instances of calling out that have backfired. Especially with regards to SOE.
- Shell Shocked Senior - Frank.
- Snap Back
- Snarky Nonhuman Sidekick - Div.
- So Long And Thanks For All The Gear - Referenced in this strip
- Something Completely Different- Here.
- Species Surname - You'd think that Catsby was the dapper cat, yes, and thus the demon Twisp? Subverted.
- Spin Off - They attempted to make a Jim Darkmagic comic arc, which seemed to involve him and his stage performances going horribly wrong. It was however, voted down. Probably due to the fact that "That wasn't Jim Darkmagic! Jim Darkmagic only ever rolls natural 20s! He's seven feet tall with red hair and eyes like the sun!"
- Also due to the fact that, as great as the Jim Darkmagic's (of the New Hampshire Darkmagics) strip was, the even more amazing alternatives — Automata and Lookouts — crushed it in in the voting, with Lookouts winning by a small margin.
- They've also stated that all three concepts are going to be revisited anyway, they just wanted to know what order readers would like.
- Springtime For Hitler - Twisp and Catsby, which Gabe and Tycho intended to be so horrible that nobody would enjoy it. They became immensely popular instead, much to the creators' disbelief, and remain a favorite when they want to do something surrealistic.
- One of the recent appearances of the Victorian duo was a children's book written for one of their kids, in fact.
- Stylistic Suck - L.H. Franzibald.
- Take That: Among the usual ones to specific video games, most biting uses are usually towards the likes of Jack Thompson and Tim Buckley.
Tycho: I think Tim Buckley is the antichrist, and I think that miscarriage storyline was the first horseman of the Apocalypse.
- The Talk: This.
- Two Gamers On A Couch - The Ur Example.
- What Could Have Been - Olympus, an actual dream of both of them, is an arcade utopia which will never come to fruition because neither Gabe or Tycho have millions and millions of dollars.
Gabe: Imagine it's like a really classy Dave and Busters, like with dark hardwood bars, glass rooms full of high-end audio and video equipment ... Khoo said not yet.
Tycho: He said we didn't have a million dollars.
- Both Jerry and Mike have said that with Robert Khoo, their business manager, they would have sold themselves into slavery for what, at the time, would have seemed like a really good idea. For example: their book rights.
- With Friends Like These - Gabe and Tycho.
- Write Who You Know
- X Days Since - here
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