[PA Comic] Friday, June 7, 2013 - Conversions

Geth

Conversions
http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/06/07

Nocren

The faces in the last panel give me a big modern cartoon vibe.

freyrrabbit

Been reading this forever, nothing in PA has ever disturbed me as much as Gabe's teeth in panel 2.

el_vicio

Panel 3's grumpy Tycho is the best Tycho

Henroid

I love when Gabe can get clever one-up-manship on Tycho.

Peter Ebel

Oh, it's a suitcase. I thought it was some kinda non euclidean dresser at first.

Fulgore

I feel for Tycho on this strip.

Maz-

Oh dear, the little "awesome" hearts are blue now instead of black.

I CAN'T DEAL WITH ALL THIS CHANGE

Dark Raven X

The agrees appear to have monocles too. Classy!

There was a line to this effect in Strip Search too, Mike was all "writers, dime a fucking dozen, change em out like lightbulbs" while Jerry sat there with a panel 3 Tycho face.

MichaelLC

Gabe should be careful. People who were wear glass shouldn't throw... pens?

ArbitraryDescriptor

Peter Ebel wrote: »

Oh, it's a suitcase. I thought it was some kinda non euclidean dresser at first.

I cannot unsee the M.C. Drescher, but it makes me smile more than it probably should.

Skull2185

I value Jerry's writing more than Mike's art! There, I said it. My all time favorite PA strip is "I Hope You Like Text".

Don't get me wrong, I love the art in PA too, and Mike is obviously an awesome artist. Jerry though... he's a wordsmith. A Wordomancer even. Nobody's writing can produce the deep belly laughs for me like he can. I so desperately want him to write a book. Like, a fantasy novel or something. Epic Legends of the Hierarchs, anything!

I mean, I don't plunk down $20+ on PA books to read archived comics I could read on the internet for free, I buy them to read Jerry's commentary.

I guess what I'm saying is, I have a gigantic man-crush on Jerry Holkins. TeamTycho!

Unknown

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Bill_Peschel

"Why they're giving you Google Glass and they're giving me no Google Glass."

This is why you can't swap out writers. Artists ... meh.

Gaslight

Hello yes I would like some of your Google Glass, please.

Give me all the Google Glass.

Commander Zoom

Nocren wrote: »

The faces in the last panel give me a big modern cartoon vibe.

Gabe's style seems to be undergoing another significant shift. Frankly, I don't care for it. It looks... sloppier?

metroidkillah

That face is terrific.

Delzhand

Skull2185 wrote: »

Jerry though... he's a wordsmith. A Wordomancer even.

Time has dulled the effect, but there was a stretch when this first came out that I literally could not even think it without laughing out loud, grinning, or smirking in public:

Tycho wrote:

I actually couldn’t watch the “rap” all the way through the first three times I attempted to. Gabe had only caught about seven seconds of it when he began to bleed freely from the nose and mouth. Was this some haunted video, then, like the one in The Ring? Would I soon die? I have wished to; since I took in the vile width of this thing thoughts of my own death are the only salve. There is an especially demonic portion of the video – let us say thirty-one seconds from the hated beginning, which was the end of all pleasure on Earth. Their Godforsaken stooge begins to wave around a PSP faceplate he has printed out, but they have sped up the footage so that by thirty-six seconds in there can be no doubt: the man has been lobotomized. There is no man left. In the video, the meat continues to twitch, electrical accidents birthing grotesque jerks in the unknowing beef. It speaks! But it is not language. It is like the wind blowing through a pile of skulls.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2006/12/13

Godfather

Ouch, get some Neosporin for that burn

Skexis

I just want to say that I had the worst day at my job, and this comic forced me to grin, which is already helping to make me feel better. Thanks, PA.

Inquisitor

My favorite bit of Tycho writing has to be the Carrot Cake Soup story:

Long story short, I’m getting my chicken soup on, it’s Sunday afternoon, and Gabe’s reading some Preacher in the Den, which is also the living room, the bathroom, and the foyer. I am interacting with pasta dough in what I think is a stern way, when I hear him say that he might like the soup better if it were, in fact, carrot cake. It hits us, hits us both, simultaneously, like a semi made out of lightning which is also a professional boxer. Carrot Cake Soup. You cube the carrot cake, some pieces have frosting and some don’t, and you put a handful of these chunks into a bowl full of milk. So let’s go do it. We’ll do it later this week, he says. But I know that’s the same as not doing it. Why not now, I say? I know a store where we can get all the stuff. You can just buy it, the way you can buy stuff in the household cleaners section and make a bomb big enough to kill God. The stuff is just lying around there and nobody’s doing anything with it. It’s not a crime to buy them separately, and what we do at home isn’t any of their fucking business.

I think someone might have been following us as we pulled into the parking lot, we walked toward the grocery store and tried to keep the conversation natural. We certainly didn’t discuss carrot cake or the soup one might make by cutting it into cubes and swimming islands of it in cold milk, pleasure islands, like you’d see in a magazine. At the bakery counter, a woman asks if she can help me, and I’m so nervous that as I’m pointing to the carrot cake behind the glass, my finger starts to tap in Morse Code that reads:

I AM ABOUT TO COMMIT A CRIME AGAINST GOD AND MAN STOP

And where is Gabe with that Goddamn milk? There he is, in the self-checkout. Idiot. There’s cameras all over that thing, it’s like a Goddamn surveillance tree. It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together. A red light flashes on, and off in my mind. At another checkstand, I pay with untraceable cash, assuring the woman that I will eat the cake by myself, without assistance from cows. I smirk. This woman has no idea that she’s just sold me the trigger to a flavor gun. Carrot Cake Soup is like the taste of watching girls make out. It has an extraordinary power that oscillates between gentle and overwhelming, between light and dark, between pleasure and more pleasure. When it was over, I realized that I was panting. I was in possession of carnal knowledge. And I knew that, somehow, every taste beyond this point was in the service of the one that still lingered, waited, to remind me that nature has laws, and those that break them are criminals, and though they roam free enough the knowing will hold them, and keep them, until the last.

Also his writing in the Rain Slick games has always been choice.

Athonwy

Funny comic as usual, but not accurate. Jerry's writing is more important than the art, always has been. A well written comic with crappy art is still a great comic (xkcd anyone?) but a comic with great art but crappy writing is still a crappy comic. I still like to go back and read the very first PA's, even though the art is way inferior, because they still hold up as funny, thanks to great writing.

Don't get me wrong, LOVE Mike's art, but the writing is still the heart of PA.

TychoCelchuuu

It's not "Jerry's writing." If you listen to the podcasts/watch the 4th panel, it's clear that they collaborate really closely on the words, and Mike often comes up with the funniest stuff (or at least the punchline).

Athonwy

Yeah, it's definitely a collaboration, but I was just going with the dichotomy the strip imposed.

TychoCelchuuu

A dichotomy it jokingly imposed. Pointing out that the strip is innacurate is like pointing out that Mike doesn't actually bite out the tracheas of people when he's nervous about how to pronounce ".gif."

SethTheHuman

To be fair, a decent writer could probably write 1000 words in about the time it takes a decent artist to do a picture. I mean, doesn't the average strip take Mike three hours or so?

DrCongo

Look at the current news page. Tycho in the "Strip Search" screenshot = Tycho in the comic thumbnail

Screencap: http://oi44.tinypic.com/2pruvef.jpg

Skwigelf

Personally I would be positively jubilant should Jerry ever decide to do his own LiveStream show.

Mike has "Gabe Art". A fundamentally sound and illuminating show which details the "nitty gritty", if you would, on how Mike goes about creating the body of the comic, much the way Doctor Frankenstein patched together his monster from the looted parts of the deceased. A little Steven Silver here, some John Kricfalusi there...you get the gist.

But what about the "electricity"? The intellectual spark that breathes life into the often impressive doodlings of our erstwhile artiste?

What this world needs, nay yearns for, is Tycho's Polysyllabic Scrivenings™.

KalTorak

EmperorSeth wrote: »

To be fair, a decent writer could probably write 1000 words in about the time it takes a decent artist to do a picture.

are you saying that a picture is worth some number of words

Korbei83

I think Mike screwed up the colour of Gabe's shirts in the first panel.

belacossa

reminds me of an old the gutters comic, Tycho's time is coming

http:/the-gutters.com/comic/377-richard-clark

belacossa

reminds me of an old the gutters comic, Tycho's time is coming

http:/the-gutters.com/comic/377-richard-clark