“[Never News review: http://nevernews.squarespace.com/main/2006/8/19/preview-penny-arcade-vol-2-epic-legends-of-the-magic-sword-kings.html]
Yes, we realize that Penny Arcade is online. That you can surf over there right now and read to your hearts content, eager and sweating with glee.
Well, let me tell you something: some day, you may not be able to. Some day something terrible might happen. Some day, boys and girls, Gabe and/or Tycho will die. It's a horrible shame. Something I'd really rather not think about right now, for fear of suicidal depression. Not only that, but some day something else equally traumatizing might happen: some day the internet might not exist; some epic fallout of culture and war might happen, something that not even Google can save us from, most likely as the product of George Dubya Bush fucking around like some sort of idiotic, in-bred, Camus reading monkey.
And when all this post-apocalyptica happens? How are you to have your Penny Arcade fix then? Are you going to set up a log, two sticks, and a rock and pretend that this contraption sees into the interweb? Of course the mouse would be the rock. Yes. I can understand that. But this won't work. So far, there has only been one medium that has proved its ability to last thousands of years. A medium that was around long before tiny, magical guns fired billions of frames into your eyeballs. A medium that pre-dates video games (of which these strips are primarily concerned with). A medium that has served a very big role in the world of the arts.
This medium is paper.
Of course you aren't concerned with dropping $12.95 on a book made of this paper when almost all of the content is on the interbits for free. Of course it's free on the internet. Every thing's free on the internet. You're reading this right now. Why are you reading it? Because this shit is free.
But I'm here to tell you that it doesn't matter that you can get 85% of this book for free. I'm here to boldly claim that Penny Arcade doesn't need to be on the computer screen to be funny. I'm here to slap you about the face and thrust this book right up there to show you that, yes, this is a good book. Yes. Books are good. Go to the damn bookstore, you fools!
This book documents a period of Penny Arcade from way back when Gabe was still learning what he was doing with the art. The writing is more simplistic, the punchlines much more absurd. This is a period, you see, that came to pass while you were pissing in your diapers, way back in 2001. Brilliant strips. But the best thing about the book (though I love the strips too much to say that they're not the best thing—having them all in a handy book-like place is boon from the Gods, akin to suckling sweet nectar out of the teats of bees or some shit) is Tycho's commentary on the whole of the run—he writes short explanations on what the strips are about with surprising hilarity. Also, in some places, he's included the rants that originally ran with the strips—including, in one case, his infestation of rodents which, for no due reason, left him homeless (of sorts). Also, you'll get some pretty hip supplementary protiens in the form of a gallery (from the Penny Arcade card game) and a few write-ups of projects that the guys have started and, for whatever reason, quit.
My favorite thing about reading comic strip collections has always been the same, from my tiny, itty-bitty days of reading the Garfield strips to my later digesting of the Complete Peanuts series, and it is this: watching the strip grow; a cartoonist's art slowly evolves as the artist gains more tricks and abilities. The same is apparent in the writing—you'll see how the strip grows and morphs by the use of better phrasing and smarter timing. This is something I watch when I read the Bloom County and Doonesbury collections. This is the same thing I watched as I read this book—something that, over the weeks of actual releases of Penny Arcade I don't notice as much. Though nothing is more jarring to a reader than hitting the 'first strip' button a lot of great webercomics have, there is no greater evolution than Penny Arcade's.
Gabe and Tycho know what they're doing. This book attests that they've always known what they were doing, no matter the gigantic vaulting of their skills.
Really, though, what can be better than owning a piece of comics history? And, yes, Gabe and Tycho have achieved that role.”
ColinMoon wrote this review Thursday, October 12 2006.
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