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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.
That sucked.
I think that this "book" is a lot less scary now that an asteroid is coming to kill us all anyway.
WASTE - The Secure P2P
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 doing this for fun AND/OR not caring about whether the fans enjoy their work, any publication requires its fans to enjoy the work. To say otherwise is simply posturing...
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.
But, yeah, this whole story kinda sucked. Hopefully now we can get back to things that are actually funny. The artwork was nice, though.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
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.
Glen
Track your fuel economy
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 that keeps me reading when they do boring continuity bits like this. If I wanted Cthulhu skits, I'd go to Userfriendly. From a cynical perspective, perhaps this means that they do the normal material to keep the money rolling in, and every once in a while they do the bizarre/lame projects like Cthulhu's Christmas or Twisp and Catsby to keep themselves interested. For another possible instance of this, see Ctrl-Alt-Del's Chef Brian.
i mena really this entire "Holiday fhtagn." has sucked a major amount of ass
talking about video games, per their mandate
http://www.callofcthulhu.com/
That's right, I forgot! If it's free, quality doesn't matter!
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
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.
"86 bytes in body"
Yeah, more like 128227 bytes in body.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
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".
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 genius!
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. People stop visiting their site, their strips stop getting press on gaming sites and mags, advertising rates drops, and then all of a sudden they have to get jobs in retail. Penny Arcade becomes "that site that used to be about video games." Just like PvP before Kurtz got old and resorted to doing gags from a high school newspaper comic.
Were I their handler - and obviously I'm not - I would suggest they do this sort of stuff as a sidebar and post it secondary to the main strip of the day. (Which should be on the first page, for smeg's sake.) Go ahead and do whatever you boys like, just don't let it get in the way of daily business. I may not pay them directly, but my continued pagehits maintain their advertisers' satisfaction.
I wish I could shluff off my job for a week when I'm visiting relatives for the holidays too.
good job! :->
What goes around comes around, kid.
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.
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 worst of these kinds of books is "God Loves Little Lamb" which involves the tastiest critters in the barnyard giving thanks to the Good Lord. Really. It comes with a special plush lamb adhered to one of the covers so you can pet it and encourage it to put on a little weight in time for the next major holiday meal.
"Wow. Now THAT'S a lot of angry Indians." - Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
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.