Penny Arcade Holiday Strip Series #5

Today we run the final strip in the Penny Arcade Christmas series "The Last Christmas". As a last strip, it is preceded by others. Strips 1, 2, 3, and 4, to be precise. Many thanks to Gabe and Tycho for allowing us to share in their Holiday fhtagn.

Wow....

That sucked.

Re:Wow....

But at least Slashdot posted it over 6 hours after PA did to save PA's precious bandw- er... nevermind. I don't think that /. mirroring this series did anything for PA except for more publicity.

Re:Wow....

Page one: Hah, cool, Cthulhu's destroying the world on Christmas. This should be good. Page two: Right, Cthulhu's destroying the world on Christmas. Got it. Page three: Cthulhu, apocalypse, christmas. I assume there's a punchline coming somewhere here? Page four: Still Cthulhu, still christmas, world's still being destroyed, still no punchline. But there's a creepy kid who seems a bit out of place. The last page is coming up, with this much setup the punchline has to be good. Maybe the creepy kid's going to play into it. Page five: No, guess not. Did I miss something?

Well...

I think that this "book" is a lot less scary now that an asteroid is coming to kill us all anyway.

jesus this sucks

i mena really this entire "Holiday fhtagn." has sucked a major amount of ass

Liars

"86 bytes in body"

Yeah, more like 128227 bytes in body.

You're mising the whole point!

HAHAHAHA

You Slashdot guys with your degrees thingies could'nt figure the intrinsic humour of al this!

You see, Gabe and Tycho tricked you in believing it was going to be a fantabulastically fun story, and that it was going to be so awesome that the bandwidth requirements would have slashdotted slashdot itself with yuletide Ancient One goodness. The fun factor of it would have been so astronomic that all life then would have seemed bland...

But then, and that's the beauty of it, it all went "flad".

pure genius!

They've tried to make something sucky before

As some of you may recall they were under the impression that they couldn't make anything people wouldn't like. So they made their first Twisp and Catsby cartoon in an attempt to make something people didn't like. But they obviously failed there.

They've achieved now though. Good lord did they achieve.

God damn overachievers if I ever saw any.

Compared to other children's books

It's not so bad. Really. If you want to punish yourself, pick up some of the cardboard-paged disappointments the next time you're at a bricks-and-mortar bookstore. This would make a good one of those, especially if it were die-cut in the shape of the last image, with Cthulu's noggin making the top of the book a nifty shape to add vim and vigor to the ending. I think it was a little too short, in that the book failed to reveal who had misguidedly or intentionally summoned the critter.

My nomination for worst of these kinds of books is "God Loves Little Lamb" which involves the tastiest critters in the barnyard giving thanks to the Good Lord. Really. It comes with a special plush lamb adhered to one of the covers so you can pet it and encourage it to put on a little weight in time for the next major holiday meal.

A little length goes a long way..

I like the guy's humor, but that was way too short to be very good. If they had done about double that and added a little more substance then it would have been much better in my opinion.

Re:"fhtagn"

Regardless, another self-indulgent mediocre offering that continues to get in the way of Gabe and Tycho talking about video games, per their mandate.

Thank you... It's amazing in this season which they admit is so full of gaming opportunities, that they could waste so much time and talent on a topic that interests no one. The post sums it all up-- the fact that they could consider the project a success does not hinge on whether their audience enjoys it or not. Regardless of the bull they spout about doing this for fun AND/OR not caring about whether the fans enjoy their work, any publication requires its fans to enjoy the work. To say otherwise is simply posturing...

Re:"fhtagn"

I figured it was Zonk getting eaten by Cthulhu, but it turns out to be a reference to the phrase "ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn", which translates to "In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming" - thanks Wikipedia [wikipedia.org].

But, yeah, this whole story kinda sucked. Hopefully now we can get back to things that are actually funny. The artwork was nice, though.

Re:"fhtagn"

talking about video games, per their mandate

http://www.callofcthulhu.com/ [callofcthulhu.com]

Re:"fhtagn"

Mandate?

They don't have a mandate to do anything; they are simply two private citizens running their website in a way that pleases them. It turns out that sufficient people find their website entertaining that they can turn this endeavour into a business. Good for them.

When you vote for them, or directly pay money for their services, then you get to bitch about them not following their "mandate". Until such time, recognize that Gabe and Tycho are not under any obligation to you, or anyone else, and that you can simply choose to visit their website if you like it, or not, if you don't.

It's legitmate to offer an opinion on the quality of their work, or to express hopes such as "I wish they'd get back to talking about games". However, when you use a word like "mandate" you imply that they have some kind of duty to listen to you, which clearly they don't.