Penny Arcade sits on an understocked shelf at our house, next to Futurama and nothing else: a shelf of repeated references of dialogue in our day-to-day conversations. The phrase Ultimate Fucking Pussy Mode comes up frequently when playing Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Donkey Kong Country Returns. We refer to the UNR Wolfpack teams as the Dickwolves. Throwing old food in the garbage incurs a recitation of whether or not this "crystallized demon blood" is still good. So it's safe to say that in the Rosenberg household, Penny Arcade has the stamp of approval.
So it may surprise you to know that we didn't have all six books until, literally, yesterday. It came in the mail, finally, along with their TV show on DVD and my extra-giant Black Mantle hoodie. Last night, while imaging computers at work, I read the whole thing. Now, I'm not going to discuss the strips themselves, though this tome includes several good ones, not limited to just the one with the Ikea delivery poop guy. They've been on the internet for six years now (this book is of all of the strips from 2005), so if you want the strips without the accompanying text, you are physically capable of just reading them.
In a textual sense though, it started off really strong. The intro is by Chris Perkins, the creative director at WotC who also DMed for the PA guys, Scott Kurtz, and Wil Wheaton. In the intro he also digs at Wheaton, which is funny. Seriously, don't split the party.
I like having the books of the strips mostly for the text that comes with the strips. It's fine to go back and read the strips and the newsposts on the site. But usually the newsposts are fraught with news, and not so much the thought process that led to the joke in the strip. The thought process is what I really like, and I love that it has been immortalized for some strips in the form of podcasts and Fourth Panel videos. Some of the accompanying text includes this, but sometimes it just talks about the strip. I don't play and digest video games like other people do. I am certainly not teh hardcorez. I like Sims. I occasionally do a replay of FFX. I'm not good at FPSs and I don't play WoW. (Jesus, isn't this blog supposed to be about books?) Because of this, I can't really appreciate some of their jokes without an explanation, which sometimes tears a joke apart.
However, it did get points for referencing Arcanum, an RPG I wish I liked the gameplay of more, because the world needs more steampunk RPGs, and a game I had never heard of until Bryan lent it to me before I moved out of my parents' house.
Overall, it was a nice way to kick out some time. I had actually been reading something else, but when something like a Penny Arcade book lands in your lap, post-apocalyptic zombie fiction can go suck it for a night.
There were two things I had problems with. The first is less complex than the second. First, during the part about Jerry's first child's birth, there was a conversation documented about how their first sons were born on console launch dates. Mike's first son was born on the anniversary of the Dreamcast's launch. But the way that this was presented made it sound like Gabriel was much older than he could have been, somewhere in the vicinity of 11. Kid is 7. I had to do some Wiki searches to confirm this, because the book made it very weird to wrap my head around.
The second is something that I actually feel shame about. The last section of the book is dedicated to immortalizing the world of Battal, which was a high fantasy setting that was essentially community-built. The Elemenstor Saga strip came into being in 2005, and began a creation of a fictional franchise that was essentially a parody of the development of other fantasy franchises. There was a fictional cartoon series, a fictional fetish community, and apparently a thirteen-book cycle that was present in this section, including the first book of said cycle being rewritten four times. There was a four page timeline! Four pages. That's too long.
I do feel shame in not wanting to read it. I understand that most of the data in this community-built world was lost to server crashes, and I appreciate that it was included in the book for those that like that kind of thing, but GOD. That was boring. It was high fantasy, which I already don't like, and that timeline killed me. Timelines are not for me. They are the pizza crusts that get left on my plate and other people berate me for not consuming. I imagine the comments may feature some of this argument, but I just don't enjoy shit like that.
Like I said, I appreciate that they included it for the people it is for, but it isn't for me. (Do you see what I did there?) But it is still a Penny Arcade book that includes text by Holkins, who would instantly dethrone Anne Bishop as my favorite author if he would just get off his ass and release a novel.
9.25/10
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