Category Archives: Roundtable

Foreword: For new readers, Steve Anderson is the reviewer behind Reel Advice who gives his own sardonic opinions in the Tangents Roundtables. He’s better known for his direct-to-DVD movie reviews over at the above website. Be sure to go read, there are plenty of movie reviews available for perusal. Enjoy! Rob H.

Robert Howard: So. Why roundtable Penny Arcade? Well, we figure it’s our turn for some trademark Tycho and Gabe sarcasm and link whoreage. I mean, Fleen has Goats as a sponsor, and PvP is behind Websnark. So shouldn’t Tycho and Gabe have their own little pet cynics – er, I mean critics under their thumb?

Steve Anderson: Of course! And if you kick a big bald guy and his spindly little artist friend often enough, surely they will give you links on a hugely popular site to go away!

Robert Howard: That’s strange. I never thought Tangents was popular… oh! You mean Penny Arcade will! Well, maybe if we send them a thousand Krispy Creme donuts…

On a slightly more serious note, the truth is that Penny Arcade is a pretty damn good strip, and well deserving of a tangent. The problem is, I suck at writing tangents about comics that don’t have a big storyline for me to gnaw at.

Steve Anderson: These guys are gag-a-day, there’s no two ways about it. Sure, there’s some four or five-strip long installments, most notably anything about the Cardboard Tube Samurai or that charming Annarchy plot, but mostly, it’s just “Gabe and / or Tycho pounds on / beats the hell out of / insults the mother of a major corporation / major gaming figure / each other for little or no reason / a very good reason, circle the relevant topics.

Robert Howard: Don’t forget “while reusing the same panel art” or as I call it, my old nemesis Cut and Paste. I mean, Gabe, dude, you’re drawing three comics a week. Why are you using CaP all the time? Sure, at first it was understandable. It’s a good way to keep quality artwork up there. But you’ve gotten damn good over time. Your artwork isn’t going to suck if you draw each panel individually. Though at least you’re not doing it all of the time these days, unlike some comics I’ve reviewed.

But anyway, this is where Steve comes in. Steve loves gag strips, and doesn’t suffer my knee-jerk reaction to a lack of lots of story. Thus my having PA’s first review being a Roundtable. It’s the only way I can do PA any justice.

Steve Anderson: Oh come on, Rob…Penny Arcade is a bloody damn cottage industry! Reusing the same panel art is a critical key feature to providing the time to operate it! These guys run a charity. A convention. A line of merchandise. It IS their day job, they’re damned good at it, and it’s making sufficient bank to support a family.

This is just like Scott Adams’ three-panel strip. Most other comics were four panel–Adams’ move to three panel gave him an automatic twenty-five percent gain in productivity. PA using recycled art gives THEM a similar edge.

Robert Howard: I will give them that. PA is more than just a webcomic. It’s more of a blog and comic combined, giving Tycho and Gabe the chance to poke fun at the gaming industry (and for that matter their associates). I’ve been doing Tangents over a year now. It’s not easy. It takes over an hour a day to write up a thousand words. And the past year’s comics seem reliant on the blog. Without the blog the comics exist in a vacuum.

Steve Anderson: You’re not kidding. Been doing Reel Advice for the last two and a half years and keeping up once a week can be tough as it is. The thought of three a week fills me with a cold dread.

Robert Howard: I only keep it up because I feel I owe my readers. I have to admit, it’s kind of fun to catch a glimpse at the minds behind these strips, like when Tycho’s wife found something on his computer. Oh, the comic has it being mushy poetry, but it says something about Tycho that he’s willing to admit this in public rather than keep it quiet. He sees the humor inherent in the situation and brought it to the front.

Steve Anderson: So definitely kudos on the constant influx of new work. Having it for a day job makes it easier, but not by that much.

Besides…the points of the gags themselves are as good a look into their minds as anything else. Who comes up with the robotic juicer with the strange proclivities aimed at the fruit he targets? This is at least a PG site yet, thanks to the milquetoast running the show, so I won’t offer up the Fruit-Fucker’s name…oh wait. Just did. Ha! Burn, milquetoast!

Robert Howard: Just means I have to put a warning at the front of the review. Something like: Warning, this roundtable contains typical attempts by Steve Anderson at vulgar humor. Reader discretion is advised.

Still, the robotic juicer is twisted. I mean, it just keeps returning, over and over again. Who the frak comes up with ideas like that?

Steve Anderson: Foilt again. We gnash our teeth and return to the quiet dimness of our DVD chamber to tear hell out of bad movies. But it’s not just the juicer. We’ve got a guy who paints a giant dick on his neighbor’s door for no apparent reason. His best buddy has a large quantity of giraffe porn on his computer. Their apartment contains sentient appliances, including a hard-drinking DVD player (DivX, actually…not that anyone really remembers DivX much anymore, probably why you haven’t seen Div show up lately) and the aforementioned juicer. The neighbor has had at least one major personality revolution. The only real voices of sanity around here are the poor, poor women who happen to be Gabe and Tycho’s significant others. And, dammit all, isn’t that how it USUALLY is?

Robert Howard: Voices of sanity? We’re talking about two people who were going to use a monkey wrench and a claw hammer to shut their spouses up. For that matter, they married them. Though I suspect the real-life Tycho and Gabe aren’t nearly as scary. To be honest, I sometimes wish they’d include these two in the comic more often. They help ground the comic when it needs it. And they’re fun when they’re in the comic. I mean, hell, the Cybersex episode alone makes the comic worth reading. Especially with the look of revulsion on Gabe’s face when he realizes he’s not Cybering with his wife. I mean, dude. He’s married… and cybers with his wife. Just how bizarre is that?

Steve Anderson: How bizarre is that? For a guy who goes around painting genitalia on neighbor’s doors for no reason, I’d think this is about as close to normal as you get.

Robert Howard: Okay, you have a point. And you have to love the homoerotic bit they did for starting to use iMacs. I swear, I was expecting Gabe to burst in on his wife, kneel before her and start sobbing “I’m sorry, dear… I… I have to come out of the closet! I… use a Mac!”

I mean, dude! There were butterflies and birds cuddling! That’s frakking hilarious!

Steve Anderson: Exactly. Gabe and Tycho are two guys wildly obsessed with technology. They spent at least one strip using next-gen gaming systems to summon demons. You can even track the progress of tech by reading the archives. Look at the computer early on that Tycho describes as “a small god.” Today, it’s a POS. Plain and simple.

Robert Howard: I just wish the early blog entries still existed. I’d love to see what they had said about Homeworld. That has to have been one of the best RTS games out there, bar none. But that’s getting away from the comic. PA is like a streams of consciousness strip, teasing me with occasional bits of story and continuity (such as Annarchy) while dwelling mostly in a sea of gags. It helps those stories stand out a bit, though not all of them are very good. Some are just multi-part gags.

Steve Anderson: I love that most of the blog entries still exist. Sometimes, I confess, I don’t get the older references. I was a PC gamer back in the days of modifying your config.sys and autoexec.bat files, and I got so abundantly sick of it that I stuck with consoles. So I didn’t always get the PC based jokes, and having the blog entries really filled in the gaps.

Robert Howard: Ironically, I went the other route. I avoided consoles like the plague. It was only a couple years ago that I finally started getting into console games so I could play with friends. Even now I stay away from the handhelds.

What I really like is the fact Tycho and Gabe’s wives are gamers as well (or at least Gabe’s is, I’m unsure about Tycho’s). Normally you hear about the woman being ignored by the gamer they’re with. Having Gabe standing beside his wife naked… it is reminiscent of those old cliches you hear, and adds an extra bit of humor to the situation.

Steve Anderson: I think they call that irony.

Robert Howard: Whatever they “call” it, it was amusing. Heck, you can just go through and catch something at random and it’s sure to amuse, whether it’s an allusion to Evercrack – er, I mean Everquest or yet another part of the Cardboard Samuri, you’ll more often than not laugh. It’s just… without an ongoing story I’m not tempted to stay. And this is a shame, because most of the time Tycho and Gabe can’t help but amuse.

Steve Anderson: It’s just a plot fixation that’s got you off kilter here. If ever there were a vehicle tailor-made to get you to appreciate gag-a-day, Penny Arcade is just that vehicle. It’s got a Pac-Man hood ornament and two lunatics behind the wheel.

Robert Howard: I’m afraid I’m more into the RPGs than the mindless entertainment of Pacman, dude.

I did notice a few problems within the comic. There were some broken navigation links and a few images that only half-loaded. The latter might have been my computer (though I tried loading them multiple times) or their server acting wonky. And I don’t necessarily want to read a thousand-word essay on what brought about the latest strip to understand the underlying humor of it.

Still, those are relatively minor problems, especially with a comic as old and ongoing as PA.

Steve Anderson: You’re not kidding. Minor tech issues on six years of archives? Hell, it’s a wonder things aren’t far worse than they already are.

Robert Howard: Still, this is a weird twist. Normally I am the one waxing elegant about the comic while you deflate it. So, is there anything you don’t like about Penny Arcade, or are you going to ass-kiss your way through the entire review?

Steve Anderson: I have pretty much already dropped and puckered. Oh, don’t look at me like that, this is good stuff! It’s frequently funny on a variety of levels–from full-on stooge antics all the way up to quasi-sophisticate irony. The archives are in good working order. Personages in need of bitchslapping (Tycho’s competing hack is among them) are bitchslapped without mercy or regret. I’ve got nothing but appreciation for people who have discovered that sometimes people need to get five across the eyes, and it’s people like Gabe and Tycho that are out there doing it. For THEIR industry, of course. I claim my own virtue in the DTV arena out of sheer self-preservation need.

Robert Howard: No disdain even for their occasional digs at the movie industry? Or so long as they don’t touch the DTV stuff you feel safe?

Steve Anderson: Oh, they’re welcome to try. They’re walkin’ over, but they’re limpin’ back.

Robert Howard: Heh. Well, that pretty much wraps up this Roundtable. We’re pretty much out of time. And hey, I have to congratulate you. Considering the history that PA and PvP has, I could have sworn you’d try to slam Scott Kurtz during the Roundtable.

It’s nice to see you didn’t succumb to your traditional knee-jerk reaction to Kurtz’s presence on the internet. Especially as Tycho and Gabe enjoy poking fun at him.

Steve Anderson: THERE’s a man who could use five across the eyes. But Gabe and Tycho have already seen to that one for me, so I’ll defer to them.

Robert Howard: I’m sure but we’re out of time. Any last thoughts about Penny Arcade?

Steve Anderson: It may be gag a day, but that gag is often funnier than most of the other strips out there. Better they eschew storylines for a solid chuckle than try to make storylines that last too long, do too little, and don’t even have the satisfaction of a good laugh.

Robert Howard: Well, I think the comic might work better with a mixture of both. Still, they’ve got a formula that has proven to be a success. I doubt they’ll change it much anytime soon.

Goodnight!