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....

[Anonymous Coward]

That sucked.

Re:Wow....

[over_exposed]

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....

[cheeseSource]

I'd have to agree there. It could have been really good. The first page strip reminded me a little of Bill Watterson... If only Bill were still writing, those were the days.

Re:Wow....

[superstick58]

Yes I agree. Bill Watterson is a creative genious. However, I don't in any way see a PA strip as comparable to anything he has done. Regardless, I keep hope that some day the unreleased Calvin and Hobbes archives will be released to us to satisfy my endless cravings for comic greatness.

Re:Wow....

[wdr1]

Agreed -- both on the suckitude of this public Zonk-giving-head-to-PA-fest and the unparalled awesomeness of Bill Watterson. While I join you in hoping for undiscovered Calvin & Hobbes, in the meantime, we can take comfort in Andres McMeel's plans [icv2.com] to relase a COMPLETE collection of C&H (a la The Far Side) in '05!

<Cartmen> sweeeet </Cartmen>

-Bill

Re:Wow....

[cheeseSource]

I think that would be an unconditional sweeet if it has Bill's notes from the Tenth Anniversary C&H.

Re:Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

Kind of like most Penny Arcade comics.

Re:Wow....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. This was an even bigger waste of time than the Obsidian Spur story-arc. I half expect to see some strip with some crazy Eastern European guy saying, "It Cthulhu...iz funny, no?"

For something holiday related, that actually has a semblance of funny involved, watch this instead [homestarrunner.com].

Re:Wow....

[Japong]

These story-arcs are becoming a lot more common when Krahulik and Holikns know they're going to be busy in real life, so they do a set of ~5 strips that are more-or-less unrelated to gaming. When little Gabe (Krahulik's son) was born, he took a week off work, and used the story arc comic to cover the updates. They're not particularly great, but better than most other webcomics who would simply not update when things got busy.

Re:Wow....

[Chrondeath]

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?

Re:Wow....

[Senjutsu]

So in other words it's an amazingly accurate recreation of the HP Lovecraft stories they were pastiching?

He was pretty heavy on the ominous and low on the payoff too, you know.

Well...

[sH4RD]

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

Re:"fhtagn"

[Swanktastic]

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 doin

Re:"fhtagn"

[Darkness Productions]

Regardless of the fact that they are probably more artistic than your whole family combined, you continue to bitch about something they give away for free.... Shut up.

Re:"fhtagn"

[elmegil]

That's right, I forgot! If it's free, quality doesn't matter!

Re:"fhtagn"

[{8_8}]

It would seem like the Cthulhu series supports their contention that they do this for their own reasons. As you stated, no one really thought it was interesting and there was better material available. If that trend continues, the readers go away and they have to get real jobs. It would seem like that would be enough incentive to avoid posting things like the Cthulhu series, but they do it anyway and thus appear consistent with their stated motivation.

For me, it's the quality of their other material tha

Art as expression, not as market campaign

[WaKall]

Seriously, whether anyone likes it or not, they spent their time and energy to create it and are proud of it. Knock these strips if you want, but don't fault Gabe/Tycho as artists because of it.

They can consider the project a success if it did what they wanted it to do. If they wanted to please one of their nephews, or just themselves, and it did that, then I say "Bravo".

Re:"fhtagn"

[_xeno_]

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"

[Dachannien]

talking about video games, per their mandate

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

Re:"fhtagn"

[tc]

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.

Re:"fhtagn"

[StocDred]

Absolutely. They can switch over to doing strips about cross stitch. But they gained their fame and their livelihoods doing comics about games. I think it's safe to assume that's what people wanted. Maybe times change and now people want them to do strips about the Cardboard Tube In-Joke Samurai or American Magee's Cthulu Christmas... but I don't think that's the case.

They can exercise their creative rights all they like, but I say it's going to work against them if they keep doing it all the damn time. P

jesus this sucks

[Harlockjds]

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

Liars

[Perdo]

"86 bytes in body"

Yeah, more like 128227 bytes in body.

You're mising the whole point!

[chocobratz]

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 gen

why is this flame bait?

[Snipes420]

apparently the people with "degrees thingies" outnumber the people here that dont. and you appear to have pissed them off.

good job! :->

They've tried to make something sucky before

[Kruez]

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

[CodeWanker]

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 w

A little length goes a long way..

[SnowCrashed]

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:A little length goes a long way..

[Shadarr]

I agree that it didn't go anywhere, but I haven't seen anything to imply that more of it would've made it better. In fact, I haven't seen anything to imply that Tycho is capable of better writing under any circumstances. We can only hope that there will be a period of actual comics before the next round of the Cardboard Tube Samurai or similar crap.