Customer Reviews

Penny Arcade 6: The Halls Below

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book contains every PA comic from 2005. That wasn't a bad year for PA, so you're getting good comics... all of which are still perfectly available online. To me, the only point of these volumes is to have a physical copy to read while "dropping the Cosby kids off at the pool." Here's the thing: The first five PA volumes were published by Dark Horse. This sixth volume was published by Del Rey/Ballantine, and some changes have been made... and not for the better.

Until now, I never really gave too much thought to the books themselves; they're just typical comic paperbacks. But now that they've changed publishers, the drop in quality is instantly noticeable. The paper stock is lighter/cheaper than previous volumes, particularly the cover. Volumes 1-5 all had printed inner covers, they were covered by gray-scale patterns in keeping with the theme of each volume (e.g. the inner cover of Birds Are Weird was printed with a pattern of pigeons.) I never even noticed that before, but I notice now that I'm looking at vol. 6, which has blank white inner covers. They've used a weird new font for the titles of the strips, which is mildly annoying. In previous volumes, Holkins' commentary for each strip was always, ALWAYS directly beneath the strip he was commenting on. In this volume, sometimes the page layouts are such that there's no room for the commentary below, so they put it on the opposite page instead; seems kinda sloppy. (Though the commentary is as fun to read as ever, usually... a few of them do seem a bit "phoned in".) Moreover, vols. 1-5 all shared a common graphic design philosophy whereby at a glance it was obvious that they all belonged to the same series. Vol. 6 has a completely new design style, so if you put them all on the shelf together, suddenly there's an odd man out. Mildly annoying.

To sum up: Great comics, great commentary, mildly annoying drop in production quality, series consistency has been chucked out the window. On the bright side, at least now I have a new appreciation for how well vols. 1-5 were put together.

The comics are excellent as always, but the printing of the comics is awful!

They're so blurry they're often hard to read. I could print better versions of them from their site with my Ink Jet Printer.

Also where volume 1-5 are printed pristine, and each comic has thoughtful, modern, commentary on it, this one often has either ramblings nothing to do with the comics, or Jerry explains that he has no idea what was going on here, its like they got lazy.

I am *very* disappointed with this. The other books were an awesome part of my collection. This one soils the series.

I LOVE Penny Arcade, and I wanted and expected the beautiful versions I got from Volumes 1-5, but this is bad, really bad.

The first 5 penny arcade collections, published by Dark Horse, were great quality, heavy paper stock with great quality printing.
This is the exact opposite of that. Thin paper, blurry prints, Lazy commentary.

2005 was a good year for PA comics, but do yourself a favour, read them online, this collection really isnt worth paying out for.
Its obvious someones saved a bundle choosing to print these at sub par quality, but we as the consumer arent seeing any of these savings.

Dont bother with this collection, the only good factor is the rather classy front cover.

The editing, layout, paper, and binding are a step down from the Dark Horse editions. The content remains compelling.

Let's face it:
1) Penny Arcade is available for free online;
2) The book doesn't feel very sturdy, compared to the previous prints it is quite floppy.

The strips are highly topical and generally require at least SOME awareness of what is going on in the games industry, often times quite a bit of awareness. The humor is not for everyone and if you aren't a gamer, this isn't for you anyway.

So, if you like Penny Arcade enough to have a hardcopy and can live with the paper being floppy odds are you've already clicked "add to cart". If you're sitting on the fence, read the strips online.

Two of the other reviews (as I write this) mentioned poor print quality and I'm not sure there wasn't just a bad run. My copy is fine.

The make up of the book is the standard: strips + explanation/commentary, plus some extra content (which I haven't yet read), so much like a DVD: what you're buying and bits to set it apart from the free to air (or cinema) experience. The commentaries rekindle memories for me and I don't feel they are a core of the experience, though other reviewers are complaining ... I honestly don't understand the upset here. They didn't feel different to previous iterations.

I don't think the floppy feel of the book (three mentions, must be an issue?) is something I would ding the score on normally, but it does make the product feel cheap... not fragile so much as ... not holding anything in your hand ... but this is obviously subjective. Judging by the other reviews though, this is an issue to many people ...

One bonus point about this book is that it contains my all time favorite strip: [...]

This is the year I think where Penny Arcade has the dirtiest jokes. One comic has a debate about how cool it is for XBox to let people send pictures of themselves over the internet. The counter-debate? Manberries. These jokes were laugh out loud when I was in college, and was a frequent icebreaker of my local college club. Penny Arcade 4-6 were the best years of Penny Arcade and since then the jokes have gotten stale. Get Penny Arcade when it was at it's best.

I've been a dedicated Penny Arcade reader since before they were Internet rock stars with their own convention, children's charity, webseries, and video games. As such, it's not so odd that I've only picked up a print version of the comic at the publication of book six, seeing as how I've already read every single strip. Should I feel the urge to go back and reread, these strips are still all available for free online. The value of this book is in the added features, just as it would be for a DVD: new commentaries on each comic, slick packaging (though not as slick as previous editions, I am told), and extra content at the end. I'm an enthusiastic fan, so I'm pretty easy to please, but these added features should be enough to sway any fan of the series.

This is not a graphic novel, but a more traditional collection of comic strips with occasional spurts of continuity. For the uninitiated, Penny Arcade is a hilariously crass webcomic that revolves around two gamer protagonists, Gabe and Tycho, along with a revolving misfit cast of recurring characters. Gabe and Tycho are rough analogs of the two personalities behind the comic: artist Mike Krahulik and writer Jerry Holkins, respectively. The humor is a little inside; working knowledge of gaming culture and at least a passing familiarity with current gaming news is usually necessary to get the jokes, though there are occasional exceptions. However, the often obscene strips have a lot to offer for anybody who has an appreciation for the absurd, especially if you enjoy dark sarcasm, snappy dialogue (Holkins/Tycho is an unabashed logophile that uses a symphonic vocabulary both in the strip and in the accompanying commentary), or, well, poop jokes.

This volume collects all the strips published in 2005, and although I think 2004's bouquet might be a little more piquant, this was a pretty good year for Penny Arcade and its readers. I'm especially fond of Krahulik's art in this period, although I think that might just be nostalgia talking. Penny Arcade has existed for over a decade now, and the artwork has evolved along with Krahulik over that period. The latest change has occurred in the past year or so, with the characters beginning to look increasingly like they were drawn by John Kricfalusi. Now, I will concede that it is a fascinating exercise to watch an artist try new things and incorporate their various influences into their work as they mature. But I've never liked John Kricfalusi's artwork, and so I'm feeling a little sullen about the new look. This book covers the heyday of the clean, angular art that drew so many people to Penny Arcade in the first place, and I really enjoy the novelty of having prints from that time period, if not for entirely objective reasons.

The actual content from this year included more hits than misses, and introduced more than one long-standing character or meme. The Merch is a notable exception, but I'm heartened by Holkins' commentaries on these strips, which seem to indicate that he was as skeptical of that particular angle as I was. Balancing that out in this volume are two classic, fantastic subplots: Annarchy, and the Elemenstor Saga. The first involves a rare bit of story continuity revolving around Tycho's eleven-year-old niece Ann, providing a surprisingly funny and poignant take on both Tycho and on Penny Arcade's general content. Annarchy is living proof that a warm, fuzzy teddy bear lives deep inside a lot of cynical, foul-mouthed gamers like me. The second started as an obscure one-off comic and sparse wiki, and through the machinations of the Penny Arcade fanbase became a sprawling faux-franchise, allegedly covering over a dozen novels, two animated series, and a collectible card game. This meta-narrative is admittedly a little hard to appreciate, being that it lives mostly outside of the actual comic and is purposefully obtuse and ridiculous. However, anybody that has ever read a licensed fantasy novel or attempted to immerse themselves in the lore of an RPG or CCG will find this absolutely hilarious. The premium content at the back of the book is devoted to the Elemenstor Saga, consisting of an introduction to the joke's concept and some excerpts of the vast fan-authored wiki page. My only disappointment is that The Halls Below doesn't really cover the second half of this enormous in-joke: the rival "franchise" Song of the Sorcelator, and its flamboyant mastermind, L. H. Franzibald. Yes, it's as funny as it sounds.

It's kind of hard to recommend this to curious readers who aren't already familiar with Penny Arcade, since the actual website is the best place for that. But speaking as a longtime fan of the strip, this is a nice little curio, and worth buying just for the additional commentary on each strip.

Another great collection from these guys. A lot more flimsy than the last editions, but they switched companies so oh well. Still good!

If you're looking at volume 6, I must assume you know Penny Arcade already. That being the case, you know what you'll find here. You'll find a good series of strips from a hillarious webcomic. They aren't all winners, but if you're a gamer I challenge you not to laugh at this book.

As many of the other reviewers have noted, this volume doesn't feel quite as nice as previous volumes. It wasn't something that ruined the experience for me, but it is noticable. Hopefully with the next one they'll do a little better.

The Penny Arcade duo - Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik -- are back with the next printed volume of their web comic, collecting all their strips from 2005. Continuing with the same format of the strip and then a fun commentary beneath, this volume features an introduction by Christopher Perkins, who works for Dungeons & Dragons, an introduction which can certainly be considered a harbinger of what Penny Arcade would become. By 2005, Penny Arcade was strongly entrenched in the world of the Internets, having already had their wrists slapped on multiple occasions; they no longer cared who they insulted or whose feelings they hurt, for they were speaking for the players and the ever-increasing gaming community.

Familiar characters and faces make their presence known in this collection, including a certain little machine for turning fruit into its juice through a very unorthodox method. What's interesting is the commentary, as they creators attempt to remember why a particular strip got made; there are a number of strips in The Halls Below that have Jerry and Mike wondering how or why they ever came up with this, or the complete opposite to an outrageous scene, with reality happening in that exact way. A couple of the top strips from the collection include their ideas for some unusual gadgets one might find in an in-flight magazine: "the where is mommy map," or the "cover up unsightly snakes with a large black thing!" [...], and my personal favorite of Skeletor updating the He-Man Wikipedia entry with: "He-Man is actually a tremendous jackass and not really that powerful. He hangs out with a bunch of jerks like Peela and Dork. He has a cat who is also dumb and _" ([...]

Originally written on October 29, 2010 ©Alex C. Telander.

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