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Penny Arcade in the New York Times 34

Posted by Zonk from the they're-just-doing-it-because-we-interviewed-them dept.
Just a few weeks after our interview with Penny Arcade, the Washingtonians have landed in a feature article on the NYT Technology page (registration required). They even mostly get what the strip is about. From the article: "The strips usually feature the authors' alter egos, Gabriel and Tycho, who exist in a slightly surreal world where obsolete electronic components are drunk, vulgarity and cartoon violence run rampant, vegan damned souls roam and debates about whether the newest video game is awesome or overblown become a matter of life or death."
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Penny Arcade in the New York Times More

Penny Arcade in the New York Times

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  • Child's Play... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Schezar ( 249629 ) on Thursday December 16, 2004 @10:25AM (#11104356) Homepage Journal
    So a major news outlet does a story on the most popular webcomic in the world, and fails to mention that said web comic also runs a massive charity [childsplaycharity.org] for children?

    I would think it was at least worth mentioning.
    • All other mass media is getting to know penny-arcade through "Child's Play". I Don't get how this article overlooks that.

    • Re:Child's Play... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Somehow, the term "most popular webcomic" begs about as much respect as "most popular weblog" or "best-tasting airline food."

      Gabe & Tycho should be proud that they're getting recognition in a forum that thousands of 'Net-heads claim is obsolete.

    • Re:Child's Play... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jnik ( 1733 ) on Thursday December 16, 2004 @10:53AM (#11104788)
      There is a hole in the article....

      Reading carefully, the second to last paragraph seems to be the lead-in to a list of other community-building activities. Then the last paragraph says they aren't "Samaritans," which wouldn't be anything like the impression one would get from the article as it stands.

      I suspect an editor got chop-happy.

      I'm amused by quotes from Scott McCloud and Infinium labs, though.
    • I know!

      I thought that was a huge oversight as well.
      Good to know I'm not the only one.
  • and now, penny-arcade.com is slashdotted :(
    • PA is always under extreme duress. Their servers, webspace, and bandwidth are donated by the kind folks at Homelan.

      I am also under the impression that they are working on a faster loading (perhaps less graphical) CMS for the new year. Take that with a grain of salt though, I really don't know if its going to happen.
      • What they really need to do is switch to a system that generates static pages. The errors I always get on viewing their site have to do with the database, which they hit on every page view even though the page only changes a handful of times each week. The forums are really the only part of the site that need server side scripting.

  • Don't like Registration? (Score:4, Informative)

    by funny-jack ( 741994 ) on Thursday December 16, 2004 @11:12AM (#11105066) Homepage
    Try this. [google.com]

  • Remember... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Login: SlashdotNYT
    Password: SlashdotNYT

    to get past the registration...

  • NYT's confused on their roles (Score:4, Informative)

    by ostermei ( 832410 ) on Thursday December 16, 2004 @11:14AM (#11105095) Homepage
    The two met in high school, where they collaborated on "really terrible projects,"
    Mr. Krahulik said. He wrote, Mr. Holkins illustrated, and they left their "bad superhero" booklets in comic book shops in the hope that someone would pick up a copy.
    That's a little backwards. Gabe (Krahulik) is the illustrator and Tycho (Holkins) is the writer, although Tycho HAS drawn for them before... with dire consequences [penny-arcade.com]. Not only was the art abhorrent (sorry, Tycho... just leave it to Gabe.), but this strip was during Year One, where the characters had not yet been named. This was (as I understand it) a sort of half-assed attempt to stop everyone from asking for names for the characters. The strip didn't go over so well, as it was seen as something of a cop-out, and so as time went on, the guys gradually shifted into the current situation, where the characters are, in fact, the creators' alter egos.
    • Weird.. that link gave me, instead of the comic itself, a single text line.

      "jack john that out way fricking time thang up"

      Maybe Tycho and Gabe love bees?
      • The archive search functionality on the site uses the alternate text of the embedded strip images for the search keywords. Those are just the keywords they chose for that strip. Recent strips haven't had keywords and are thus currently unsearchable (only accessible by the drop-down menu with ALL strips listed and by navigating through chronologically). I'm not sure why they haven't been keeping up with that.

        Tycho does love tending his bees, though.

  • Ahh.. wonderful... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by the_skywise ( 189793 ) on Thursday December 16, 2004 @11:17AM (#11105138)
    Now hundreds of thousands of NYT readers are going to go to the website and see a comic strip of a guy having a fiery car accident and looking all bloody and mangled afterwards...

    And they're not going to look at the previous installments because that's too hard.

    So this will become their opinion of all video game webcomics. "Ah... yes... extreme non-sensical violence... Ahh, much too banal for me, I must return to the comforting prose of Cathy."
    • Yeah, unfortunate timing, since they're into a continuity series that has little to do with video games. Then again, this happens quite a bit - see the line-dancing series, the golf series, etc. PA Wish List: More strips about games, and put the current comic right on the freaking main page.

      Will I be immediately modded down if I suggest that the Cardboard Tube Samarai is an overblown unfunny self-indulgent in-joke that reveals the lads as high on their own celebrity?

      • Re:Ahh.. wonderful... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by pezpunk ( 205653 )
        well, the ORIGINAL CTS comic was funny, but then they took it too far.

        the
      • I always kind of chuckle when Tycho refers to "dreaded continuity" because I really do dread it. Or to put it another way, they suck at it. Any time they do a series of related comics, they go from doing a dialog-driven humour comic to some sort of graphic drama style, which in addition to not being funny also doesn't have much of a plot, or at least not a particularly interesting one. The line dancing thing in particular was a completely uninspired retelling of Karate Kid. Did that really need to be do
    • Good! We don't want that kind of idiot in our community anyway.

      And I don't care if what idiots think about me is wrong. If they took time to look into it, they'd have an informed and different opinion; anyone who doesn't bother doesn't have an opinion strong enough to matter.

  • Nooo!!! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Z0mb1eman ( 629653 ) on Thursday December 16, 2004 @11:26AM (#11105248) Homepage
    Shoo! Shoo! Today's NYT is supposed to be all about Firefox :p

    I kid, I kid.

  • Scott McCloud (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Tofino ( 628530 )
    1. How did Scott McCloud weasel his way into this article? And how sad is it that he's still "best-known" for Zot!, which was around in the late 80s and early 90s?

    2. Zero mention of Child's Play. Well-researched.

    • Re:Scott McCloud (Score:3, Informative)

      by Pxtl ( 151020 )
      Scott has managed to weasel his way into being the industry advocate for Webcomics. I'm not quite sure how that happened, but he's now the point-of-contact for the press. Sucks, don'it?

      • Re:Scott McCloud (Score:3, Informative)

        by Junks Jerzey ( 54586 )
        Scott has managed to weasel his way into being the industry advocate for Webcomics. I'm not quite sure how that happened, but he's now the point-of-contact for the press. Sucks, don'it?

        I would argue that Scott is by far best known for his book "Understanding Comics." His own comic ventures are obscure and unknown.

        Scott has also turned into the advocate for the independent artist/developer of any kind of media. He wrote a column for Computer Gaming World, which was essentially "Understanding Comics" ap

  • Missed a bit (Score:2, Informative)

    by Yer Mom ( 78107 )
    ...who exist in a slightly surreal world where obsolete electronic components are drunk, vulgarity and cartoon violence run rampant, vegan damned souls roam
    ...and oranges are scared.

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