New Penny Arcade Books Now Possible

JonLatane writes "Some of you old Penny Arcade fans may recall a time when Gabe and Tycho were planning to publish their work, only to lose the rights to all their stuff to some scumbag. Well, Gabe said today in the bottom of his post that they have gotten back the rights to their own work. This means that we may finally see some new printed works, especially since Gabe and Tycho are much more legally savvy as a result of this whole fiasco."

Comments

Details!?

[PeteyG]

The penny arcade newspost is very cryptic. Could the poster perhaps provide some background reading material on this case?

fp.

Umm, what happened, exactly?

[jonadab]

> Gabe and Tycho were planning to publish their work, only to lose the rights
> to all their stuff to some scumbag

For those of us who do NOT recall this story, can someone fill us in on exactly how this happened?

Re:Umm, what happened, exactly?

[abysmilliard]

As far as I know, what happened was that about four years ago, Gabe and Tycho tried to negotiate a book deal. Because they were stone ignorant of such matters at the time, they entered into a legal agreement with their publisher to publish a book.

First, the book never actually ended up coming to market, insofar as I'm aware. While they were objecting to this development (despite paying money, I think), they also discovered that they had signed away their legal rights to have any of their comics in print (or at least, they had signed away control).

Enter their manager that showed up a few years ago, and the proverbial, "WTF!?" moment. They ended up in court after that, and have been fighting ever since.

Disclaimer: This is what I've gathered, and is probably RIDDLED with inaccuracies and suppositions. I'm not clear on the details, but that's about as much as I know/have inferred. If anybody wants to correct me, please be my guest.

Re:Umm, what happened, exactly?

[aztektum]

First, the book never actually ended up coming to market, insofar as I'm aware.

Incorrect. My brother has a copy on his bookshelf of PA Year One. I would but at the time I wasn't a big fan.

Also, from what I can recall from their explanation at PAX04, I believe the publisher never paid them (although who knows, the contract could somehow say they never would see a dime since they didn't really know what they were signing) and held the rights to the first 5 years of PA strips. They were free to make books based on year 6 and up. The legal issues just tied up the first 5 years.

Now for the inside cover

[T-Kir]

All we need is a print of Strawberry Shortcake in all her naughtiness and the book would be complete :-)

Re:Now for the inside cover

[sahrss]

For the curious, some more info on Strawberry:

PA Link:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2003-04 -14&res=l

Copies:
http://onethumb.smugmug.com/photos/147054-O-1.jpg
http://dailyramblings.com/images/shortcake.jpg

The comics are funny, but the meat is the rant

[ribond]

It's tycho's writing style that take me back every day -- any book adaptation will have to include it. An index that categorized by game reviews would make it a must-own.

Finally.

[Threatis]

I'm a little bit of a hardcore fan. I own the first book, about 6 shirts, and a few other pieces of memorabilia. To be honest, they well admit this was their fault to being ignorant to the issues at hand, but at the same time, they where dealing with a scumbag. Seriously, how terrible a person can you be that you get 2 kids from Washington to sign over their work to you, when all the wanted to do is publish a damn book? some people should be hung by their toes over a shark pool.

Re:Finally.

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

some people should be hung by their toes over a shark pool.

sharks with ...wait for it...

frikin' laser beams on their heads!

Re:What?

[oskillator]

I can easily see why he'd be confused. Penny Arcade is the only web comic I know of that doesn't have the strip itself on the front page, which can make it quite confusing for the first time reader as to just what the point of the site is.

Re:What?

[spectral]

You don't know many, eh?

Some of them make the fact that they're gaming comic websites a bit more known, sure. But all those sites I go to primarily for the comics. All of them don't have the full comic on the front page.

Now, clanbob (specifically the life of riley) comic ISN'T the entire focus of the site. it's just a bunch of friends, one of them happens to draw a comic. The others use it for whatever they want, as far as I can tell. But penny-arcade has a link to the comic in each of tycho's posts about it, and a 'Latest Comic' link right at the top. It's fair to include all of these as being similar, I think.

How would a book work?

[ShawnDoc]

I'm just curious how a book of their strips would work. Too many of their strips don't make sense unless you read the news post that goes along with them. While many you could figure out (especially if you are an obsessive gamer type), there are others that really just don't work unless you know the context from the news post. Will they have the news post on 1 page and the strip on the next?

Re:What does this story have to do with games?

[Taulin]

I ask a similar qestion at anime conventions when I see weapon dealers.

Re:Too cool

[Anonymous Coward]

What you did would be like going into a Java article and going "Oh, Java is cool, but check out Ruby". This is an article about Penny Arcade.

Maybe if you had compared them to a greater degree or presented some actual facts (what the other thing is about, if it's like penny arcade at all, etc.), but instead you just put some personal opinion crap no one cares about as well. It came across very spam like even.