Jerry Holkins

I realized when I picked up the recently published collection of Penny Arcade comics that I've actually been reading them in real time for nine years.

When I first found Penny Arcade they'd been making comics online for a couple years, and I was madly in love with this fancy new "webcomics" thing. Funny how my dedication hasn't faded.

Containing the comics from 2005, The Halls Below is as much fun as I remember. We get the first appearance of Annarchy and The Elemenstor Saga. And Merch. The show more comics are irreverent, snarky, occasionally vulgar, and always funny.

Someday I'm dragging my husband to PAX. He doesn't get to say no. show less

"The Case of the Mummy's Gold" is the fifth randomly-named Penny Arcade book; the strips covered are from 2004. The extras - random sketches from Comicon 2005 - aren't really that interesting this time.

Krahulik and Holkins do wander further afield in terms of writing - golf, square dancing, a Cthulu Christmas sequence, and a number of other things depart from the gaming and geek humor that still make up most of the strip. The humor there is less trapped in topical events and knowledge of show more gaming/geek culture; even when the jokes are extremely topical, though, the commentary can keep it in context. Holkins' commentary itself is rarely overexplanatory, often adding humor of his own.

There's less change in the art; it's never bad, and the character designs continue to evolve, but apart from where they step outside of the normal strip format (Twisp & Catsby, Cardboard Tube Samurai, and the Cthulu Christmas sequence) there aren't the leaps or experiments of previous volumes.

Krahulik and Holkins can still tell a joke, of course. "Case of the Mummy's Gold" is an extremely funny book. show less

Since both Gabe's art and Tycho's writing improve nicely in this second tome, featuring collected strips from the year 2001, and the inclusion of the occasional original post from the website ups on the hilarity, I was going to give this one four stars.

But then again, a quarter of the book is dedicated to showing the images of some card game they did. Now don't get me wrong, the art is great, but nearly forty pages dedicated to this in a 160 page book, without any commentary whatsoever, is show more a bit too much. At the very end, they show some projects that they did outside of the main comic, which is nice, but still, three stars for this effort. show less

I am thoroughly stoked to have this copy of the first year of Penny-Arcade strips with Tycho's commentary. Usually, the commentary is hilarious, although every now and then Tycho doesn't say much (but that is fine). It's a treat to remember Gabe's earlier style of art and to see it in print and laugh all over again, remembering how the video game industry is still worthy of much ridicule for as much as we enjoy it!