Bad webcomics

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I was more into VG Cats and Brawl in The Family when it came to gaming webcomics, but I just can't imagine how this shit became popular enough to get a character in a Telltale game.
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I thought Tycho's nose was bleeding the whole time until I realized that's just how his mouth looks. What the fuck's going on with his upper head, too?
 
Cave Fisher said:
I just can't imagine how this shit became popular enough to get a character in a Telltale game.
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Character? My nigga they have their own video games and one of their gimmick bits Cardboard Tube Samurai was an unlockable in Tekken.

Cave Fisher said:
What the fuck's going on with his upper head, too?
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A disease of the mind and body called "Selling out"

cybertoaster said:
Isn't that the job of that asian marketing guy who is the only reason why these two are not a couple of broke over-40s still doing webcomics in 2024?
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the chink is their lead executive and I think he's head of Child's Play but those two run it in the same way a small business own runs the construction company he occassionally tours the jobsites of.
 
Ghostse said:
the chink is their lead executive and I think he's head of Child's Play but those two run it in the same way a small business own runs the construction company he occassionally tours the jobsites of.
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So they do nothing then? just show up once in a while?
 
i know i'm probably a few years late in saying this but it is absolutely fascinating to see that ishida's soapbox leanings have gotten to a point of *just* being below jinjerzilla in their overtness. (or maybe thereabouts if he praises hitler too, i'd have to check) not something i expected to see from him when he went radfem JUST as that stuff was being mocked absolutely everywhere at the early peak of anti-SJW internet spaces. even graham linehan never went on this kind of bender.
 
cybertoaster said:
So they do nothing then? just show up once in a while?
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From my understanding regarding PAX, yes. They haven't had an active hand in PAX since outlawing booth babes and the 3rd PAX spinoff, its all run by employees now. Same for Child's Play, they still promote it on the main site when it comes time. But PA is not even close to the primary driver of either of those projects anymore.

Regarding PA as a whole, generally yes. They show up and see how things are doing but they aren't day-to-day running anything PA related and haven't for like a decade. They meet with VIPs every once in a while, and they strictly speaking have approval/veto on any big decisions. They poorly draw the unfunny comic and make new posts but that's it. They were never business minds, salesmen, or even good at art, so they don't bring anything to the table other than being the ones who started it all. They used to be fairly tied in with "the gamer community" but I don't even think that's true anymore since they put out their Vanity Game; which is less about them putting out the vanity game and more that that was about the time they were both fathers and started focusing more on home and kids.
 
Cave Fisher said:
I was more into VG Cats and Brawl in The Family when it came to gaming webcomics, but I just can't imagine how this shit became popular enough to get a character in a Telltale game.
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I thought Tycho's nose was bleeding the whole time until I realized that's just how his mouth looks. What the fuck's going on with his upper head, too?
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I read PA regularly almost since the very beginning until probably, I dunno 8ish years ago. The thing about PA is that it's so old that it's gone through numerous iterations, most of which could barely even be considered the same webcomic.

It's a great comic between 2001ish and, I dunno, 2015 or so? The art style will be your guide. In the beginning it looked like a shitty low effort comic by two gamers who just wanted to make jokes about games, which is what it was. Fun, but hasn't aged well. By the very early 2000s it settled into the classic style most people from the webcomic era think of when they think "Penny Arcade".

At some point in the mid 2010s the art turned into this awful Goof Troop Meets Tumblr style that's just fucking gross and it hasn't stopped shifting from unpleasant style to unpleasant style since. The writing quality also dropped significantly around then, but not nearly as much. The art is legitimately bad now and has been for almost ten years.

It's still overall decent with maybe a couple memorable strips a month, but it's clear they both have the seven thousand year itch and want to do the big important work they both know they're destined for instead.
 
Just so you can see how much the art has regressed compared to maligned gamer webcomic Ctl Alt Del
CAD from 2004
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PA from 2004
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Latest CAD from 2024 (I guess Lucas is gay now or something?)
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Latest PA from 2024
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Megaton Punch said:
It's a great comic between 2001ish and, I dunno, 2015 or so?
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I dropped it around 2007-2008, its when it started being boring/stale for me.
Megaton Punch said:
they both have the seven thousand year itch and want to do the big important work they both know they're destined for instead.
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Those two literally hit the lottery with that marketing guy as anyone else would've charged them out the ass just to draw that proposal. They now have to money and contacts to do all kind of cool stuff and they do nothing instead.
 
Edit:
Doing research, their pet chink Robert Khoo resigned in 2016


I forget the lore with their chink director as... PA was always too hit-or-miss/too random with no story for me to follow regularly + retarded psycho-obsessed fans + they didn't run in the "webcomic community" really; they considered themselves "Gamers" first and foremost and webcomic guys second, and that seemed to amp up as they shifted into being a business and basically proto-influcencers.

But that dude knew what they could be and he was the one who got them to go ad-free and branch out in Charity and PAX.
So I don't know who they have running the shop, but I know its not them unless they went and got a business degree while I wasn't looking. (Which they may very fucking well have)


They were working on a TTRPG which was an interesting combo of deckbuilding and traditional combat which I don't think went anywhere; I just remember they were play testing and they had an interesting wound mechanic where the different classes would have hands of different sizes. When you took damage you shuffled wound cards into your deck and if your hand was filled with wounds you were dead.


And also just want to mention its not just the art that's gone to shit; while its not exactly high art this is a decent short story.

And the randumb jokes used to at least be be funny, with art aiding the joke instead of trying to use overly contorted expression to be the joke.
 
Ghostse said:
Latest PA from 2024
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I mean, I get why he's drawing Gabe and Tycho that way. Tycho head big on top because smart. Gabe head big on bottom because loud. It also does the "two characters who are exaggerated in opposite ways" thing that used to be super popular. Scratch and Grounder, Pain and Panic, etc. It's clever. But it's also super ugly and I hate it.

But at least it's not as bad as this:

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Every character had a red polygon nose like this. It's like Tumblr Nose but somehow even grosser. That plus the neotenous head shape and facial features are just really unpleasant to me.
 
Megaton Punch said:
I mean, I get why he's drawing Gabe and Tycho that way. Tycho head big on top because smart. Gabe head big on bottom because loud. It also does the "two characters who are exaggerated in opposite ways" thing that used to be super popular. Scratch and Grounder, Pain and Panic, etc. It's clever. But it's also super ugly and I hate it.

But at least it's not as bad as this:

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Every character had a red polygon nose like this. It's like Tumblr Nose but somehow even grosser. That plus the neotenous head shape and facial features are just really unpleasant to me.
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What is the joke of this even supposed to be?

"Heroes of the Storm sucks because you have to do things in a video game?"
 
Honka Honka Burning Love said:
What is the joke of this even supposed to be?

"Heroes of the Storm sucks because you have to do things in a video game?"
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They do actually have a point here. HotS maps are so complicated you sometimes barely play the actual game. It's more like two teams playing two parallel single player co op games and whoever finishes first wins. It's why I stopped playing very quickly despite being a huge MOBA fan back then. Maybe things have changed, but it always had a reputation as a game that tried too hard to be different and fell flat as a result.
 
Megaton Punch said:
They do actually have a point here. HotS maps are so complicated you sometimes barely play the actual game.
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I hard disagree, I thought the fact that HotS maps had objectives and you would have different maps with different objectives made it miles better than LOL.

The thing that made me get bored in shit like DOTA 2 and LOL is that its the same map every time.
 
Ghostse said:
They were working on a TTRPG which was an interesting combo of deckbuilding and traditional combat which I don't think went anywhere; I just remember they were play testing and they had an interesting wound mechanic where the different classes would have hands of different sizes. When you took damage you shuffled wound cards into your deck and if your hand was filled with wounds you were dead.
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Seems that it was actually a thing:

Your description made it sound like it was more of a freeform framework but this is still interesting.
 
Coolio55 said:
Seems that it was actually a thing:

Your description made it sound like it was more of a freeform framework but this is still interesting.
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No, something different. It was based off their Magical World Boyscouts "test comic" they made back in like 2010 when they still gave a shit.


After a small research this is it:

When they were initially talking abou tit it was more like "D&D just with deck building for attacks instead of dice & monsters ran off "ai decks" " but looks like they turned it into like a board game thing where you play out comic panels or something.
 
Ghostse said:
Latest PA from 2024
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I legitimately thought Kara was supposed to be Tycho's daughter at first until I read the rest of the strip and realised Gabe just drew his almost fifty-year-old wife looking like a squat teenager. And holy shit, Gabriel the younger would be twenty now, fuck I'm old.

I was more into CAD than I ever was into Penny Arcade, but then Loss happened and I found myself giving PA a real shot and enjoyed it. I liked the series, the intial run of the podcast, and also going to PAX with friends. I even bought the collections because I like the old strips, they bring on the nostalgia. But around 2013 I lost interest. Mostly because of shit like this:

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Arthur Morgan said:
I legitimately thought Kara was supposed to be Tycho's daughter at first until I read the rest of the strip and realised Gabe just drew his almost fifty-year-old wife looking like a squat teenager. And holy shit, Gabriel the younger would be twenty now, fuck I'm old.

I was more into CAD than I ever was into Penny Arcade, but then Loss happened and I found myself giving PA a real shot and enjoyed it. I liked the series, the intial run of the podcast, and also going to PAX with friends. I even bought the collections because I like the old strips, they bring on the nostalgia. But around 2013 I lost interest. Mostly because of shit like this:

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What's wrong with his face? :cryblood: I hate it when people resort to "wacky facial expressions" as a punchline when it doesn't fit.
 
Arthur Morgan said:
I legitimately thought Kara was supposed to be Tycho's daughter at first until I read the rest of the strip and realised Gabe just drew his almost fifty-year-old wife looking like a squat teenager. And holy shit, Gabriel the younger would be twenty now, fuck I'm old.

I was more into CAD than I ever was into Penny Arcade, but then Loss happened and I found myself giving PA a real shot and enjoyed it. I liked the series, the intial run of the podcast, and also going to PAX with friends. I even bought the collections because I like the old strips, they bring on the nostalgia. But around 2013 I lost interest. Mostly because of shit like this:

View attachment 6641025View attachment 6641028View attachment 6641029
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I only hate-followed CAD through its original run, mostly to be able to join in mocking it in another forum's webomic section (otherwise I wouldn't have cared).
PA until the "art style switch" I mainly just waited for other people to repost and act as a filter. It was too hit and miss with no consistency to grab me. But basically once Gabe stopped giving a fuck about his art the writing also cratered. It was around the time they were doing a closer collaboration with Kutz and they brought on "the trenches" and that horrible red nose art.

That strip isn't funny but it is amusing, but the art just ruins it for me. Like except for last panel the facial expressions don't match the dialogue.
 
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