Penny Arcade's CGW Interview

1up is running an interview with the Penny Arcade guys, originally done for Computer Gaming World. They talk comics, the industry, Harlan Ellison, and (of course) games. From the article: "Jerry Holkins: My favorite quote comes from this one strip where I say 'Fetch it, and gaze upon your ruined world.' I'm not sure that anybody else really pays attention to that particular comic strip, but it's called 'They Hailed From Canadon,' and it's just this...it starts out in this weird, Penny Arcade way, but it has these spacefaring dogmen that for some reason really do it for me. I don't know why."

Slashdot PA Sidebar

Hey, while we're on the subject of PA. Would someone please fix the PA Slashdot sidebar? Or is PAs feed screwed up?

Dear Penny Arcade

Why are your forums always down, and why does it take until 2pm central time each day to get the image up for the comic?

Re:Dear Penny Arcade

You could always write to them and request a refund.

Re:Dear Penny Arcade

They'll only give out a refund if you're a member of their PA Supreme service.

Re:Dear Penny Arcade

My questions are relating to the website - Why is it so slow, why did you switch to Rails, who wrote your search function such that it is incapable of locating a comic even if you type in a word in the comic title, and so on.

I want to know how much they paid for this terrible, worthless site redesign that they got, because if there's a market for shitty sites, I want to know what I should be charging.

Don't get me wrong, I love the comic, but ever since the new design came around, it's been almost completely impossible to find any of the old content.

They Hailed from Canidon

It's actually "Canidon" and here's a link to the comic: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/05/21 [penny-arcade.com]

Another PA interview that didn't get much press...

Jive Magazine got an interview (and a custom magazine cover) with the PA guys a few months ago that I submitted but was rejected. Has some interesting stuff on the origin of their names. Check near a third of the way down when they explain how Mike became Gabrial after being called Deadly Peach....

Here [jivemagazine.com]

No Ellison Schtick

So we went to this thing, and I didn't know what to expect. And we watched him sit in on a couple panels, and knew immediately that he was exactly sort of like us, in that he was an a**hole. [laughs] It's just that we're assholes in the comic, and not in real life. He maintained that shtick even to his fans, which I thought was sort of weird. A lot of times people will come to meet us at a show, and ask me to flip them off or something, and it feels weird. I try to be nice to people when I meet them. But Harlan, that's not his gig. And I told Jerry, I said, "You know, we're going to have to be onstage with this guy here in a little bit." Because we were co-guests of honor, I guess, if you can have that. And just having watched him for a couple minutes, I knew that he would not like that. I knew that once we got onstage, he would try to do something to belittle us. Somehow he would just have to take the spotlight; that's just the kind of guy he was.

If these guys had known anything about Ellison, they'd know his assholedom is not a schtick. Everything he says or does is a melodrama, with him as the long-suffering hero. That's why I find his work unreadable, even though he's basically a talented and imaginative writer. And it's why the SF community is full of people who avoid his company at any cost. It's amazing that he has any fans.

A few words about Harlan...

Harlan is a lot like me (and many other geeks), in that we can often be opinionated, blunt assholes who insist their current view is the right one, and will defend it with passion and vigor. It isn't because we don't think we could be wrong, but because we rarely offer opinions without some serious thought behind them. This turns off a lot of "ordinary" folks (and even some of the geekier ones), who are so insecure about their own beliefs that they can't really wrap their head around someone else who is so secure in theirs. And those people don't like to be shown to be wrong, either; it just makes them hurt and hostile.

I knew all this and read all the stories about Harlan before I ever talked to the man, and when I finally did spend an hour with him chatting and discussing various topics, I treated him with a little common courtesy and respect and he was completely charming and reasonable. We squabbled over a couple of points, had some good laughs, and we both came away having enjoyed our conversation.

Yes, the man will bite your hand off if you stick your finger in his eye, and while watching him get riled up may be amusing, one should not then complain about his temperment. If the PA guys had been nice to him, he would have been nice in turn. I'm sure the PA guys can thoroughly understand this, too.

Bruce

Re:A few words about Harlan...

Did you read what happened, though? Harlan started it, not them. Asking somebody if they even went to high school (with the obvious intent of implying that the other person is a moron) up on stage in front of a ton of people isn't exactly what I'd call 'nice.'

Re:A few words about Harlan...

Damn formatting:

MY SECOND, AND FINAL, WORDS ON THIS MATTER

What the surly teenager posted on his website as having happened, did NOT, in fact, transpire in that way. Like Mr. Tycho's "gut feeling" or "assumption" or "telepathic intuition" or whatever it was, everything the surly teenager posted was HIS perception of an interchange that lasted for less than two minutes. His assumptions and interpretations are his own, and he's entitled to them. Weird and sad and skewed as they may be.

But for him, for Mr. Tycho, and for all of you, I am telling you they are no more accurate than MY understanding of the matter. I don't expect the surly teenager to pause even a moment to consider that his interpretations are wonky, he's incapable, I suspect, of assuming responsibility for ANYTHING he does, like some mook standing in front of Judge Judy. And he certainly isn't going to cop to fronting someone who meant him no harm, not in front of his worshipful gamer-tots. But this is the bottom line:

I did not know them, I had no negative feelings toward them, and I was neither rude nor discourteous to them.

Never insulted them. Never wanted to insult them. Didn't do it consciously or reflexively. Just didn't do it. ALL insults and disparagement came from the surly teenager. Mr. Tycho shouldn't be defending his associate's bad behavior; after all, Mr. Tycho was standing right there beside me.

My assertion is demonstrably more accurate than what the surly teenager posted to arouse his adolescent admirers. As verified by the CHAIRMAN OF THE FOOLSCAP CONVENTION, Hank Graham, who has stated very clearly THERE WAS NO JESTER'S HAT FOR ME. If that is so, then all that follows in the surly teenager's memoir is equally as skewed, equally as misinterpreted, and equally as unfair to me.

We were in each other's company less than two minutes. We were all four--Gabe & Tycho, Hank Graham, myself--on the stage in a small room. They were making "gifts" to the Guests of Honor. The first was an orange peeler. I did the expected "take" and looked at this small plastic kitchen implement with mock humor and confusion. I then got a SECOND one, intended for Kathy Roche-Zujko (my ex-secretary, who now lives in Bellevue, with whom we hung during the weekend, and who had picked Susan and me up at Sea-Tac). It was a thankyou from the ConCommittee for her good offices. With TWO of these items, I continued to do the aversion shtick, edging backward toward the audience, past the surly teenager, with one of the orange peelers behind my back and, openly to the entire room, slipped it to someone in the audience. Everyone laughed.

I then returned to my place next to the surly teenager, as Hank Graham placed jester's caps (signifying "foolscap") on Mr. Tycho and the surly teenager. Mr. Graham then handed me a lined yellow tablet in a plastic sleeve--foolscap, in the classic meaning of the word--and said, "Here's YOUR foolscap." I am a writer. Getting foolscap was appropriate. I am neither a clown nor an asshole, as so many of the PA adolescents who have no idea of my fifty-plus years' work perceive. It was fitting and proper that I should get a pad of ... well ... foolscap.

The surly teenager then asked me, not very loudly, "Don't you want to wear your hat?"

As there WAS NO HAT for me, I pretty much let slide the gibe.

Well, two aspects of the moment that followed:

1) Someone in the audience said something to ME, DIRECTLY, that I now understand as not having been heard or linked properly, by the surly teenager. I can't remember what it was, but it was a remark made my someone I knew, in a jocular vein, and I tossed over my shoulder the pro forma fuckyou or gofuckyerself or whatever it was. It was no more serious or rude a fuckyou than a Bart Simpson bite me or eat my shorts.

But it wasn't addressed to the surly teenager, who had already made snotty remarks at me, not once, but twice.

If the surly teenager misheard and thought he was EV

Really Does it for Me

"...it starts out in this weird, Penny Arcade way, but it has these spacefaring dogmen that for some reason really do it for me. I don't know why."

Perhaps it is because you like to pee on the carpet.

Re:Disappointing

Harlan is a pisser, not a pissant. Huge difference.

Re:Disappointing

And so subserviant too. I'm suprised he didn't bend over and wash their sandles while he was at it (religious reference, omg).

Theres a line between being a friendly interviewer, and sucking up to the people your giving the interview to.

Re:Disappointing

Actually I thought that was hillarious. There's something about watching self-important fucks getting nuked on a public forum that brings a smile to my face.

That's why slashdot is such a great read as well come to think of it...

Re:Disappointing

Why?

Re:Disappointing

I don't usually air personal material on the 'net (well, not much) but I met Harlan Ellison at DragonCon [dragoncon.org] two years ago and he IS a big fucking prick. One of my best friends not only had lunch with that cocksucker but used her own personal car to drive Harlan and his friends to lunch (at Harlan's own request) and THEN, later that day, he treated her like total shit when all she asked for was a picture of Harlan [dragoncon.org] and his wife. Man, I'll be honest, if I had had a bat or other weapon of personal destruction I'd be in jail because I would have beat the shit out of that asshat. He treated my friend with THAT much disrespect, disdain, and total disregard for her as a human being. Harlan's wife on the other hand was super nice. She deserves an award for putting up with that little peckerwood all these years.

Re:I don't get it

A big part of it is...just getting into it. You have to get to know the characters and the style, and you'll start to appreciate it. That's not really something that everybody can/wants to do, so, like anything, it's not for everybody.

Re:I don't get it

I agree that many of their comics are unfunny - it's just when they get a good one in it's genius. "Dear lord, bless the fucking nub. Bless him right in his stupid face!"

Re:I don't get it

I happen to find PA very funny (well, sometimes its just funny), but since I dont really care for forums (nor network tv, for that matter), Maybe im not the typical PA fan. But nobody that i've found follows the games industry as closely as I do. And they usually have interesting commentary. I'm not really interested in the PA fans who think chuck norris is a demigod.

Re:I don't get it

PA's humor is one of those things that carries quite a few prerequisites.

You have to be a fairly avid and experienced gamer to catch even half the allusions they make. You have to like sarcastic and satirical humor, as well as be able to understand and appreciate more juvenile humor (like the frequency of the word "wang" in their strips for a while).

There are a lot of PA strips that I don't laugh at, even when I see the humor. A few of them I just shrug my shoulders and move on to something more interesting. But they get out at least a couple a month that really make me laugh, and that's enough for me to spend a few minutes reading.

Re:I don't get it

"PA is about as funny as any other comic strip one would find in their newspaper. They just happen to concentrate on games."

Marmaduke:
First panel- Kid: "Hey Marmaduke! I'm playing a video game!"
Second panel- Marmaduke sits in front of TV.
Third panel- Kid: "No fair! You beat my high score!"

Family Circus:
First- Boy: "I don't want to eat my corn flakes! I want to play video games!"
Second- Dad: "Well, pretend it is a video game!"
Third- Dad: "First one to finish their bowl ..." Whole Family: "Wins!"

Yeah, PA's totally like the newspaper comics. Except it's not written by fucktards. They exclude the fucktards. Once you get over that, they're pretty cool.