The guest artists fucked it up. That’s about all you can say really. The promise that was in the lines “And I will show you how to put them right” and “Here are boys who did not heed their master” was completely ignored by the new artists.
Under the new artists, some boys have already been turned to stone/killed, and their master hasn’t taught them a damn thing that they didn’t already know. In fact the master just threw them in the deep end of the pool, and sat back to see who floats and who sinks. This was not the story that we all came to see, and certainly not the story that Mike and Jerry envisioned.
Unless there is some more satisfactory solution awaiting us in the conclusion, I’d say this ‘guest artist’ experiment was a failure. Tycho, in his page, has so little to say about the comic and if you can read between the lines, it’s pretty obvious he thinks its shit.
And worse yet, Jerry and Mike probably won’t be able to finish the story they first wanted to make because now that they’ve handed it over, they can’t re-do it later without basically saying to the new artists, “you got it wrong”.
I didn’t vote, but I would have voted for Lookouts. The fourth panel really won me over. The beautiful background, the dialogue and the look of the characters felt great. Very adventurous.
I didn’t get any of these at all, and I had no idea there was anything we were supposed to vote on. Of course, for most of the webcomics I read, I read the strip itself and nothing else. In this particular case, well, PA frequently does one-off strips that are clearly referencing and commenting on one video game or another that I’ve never seen or heard of, and I’m afraid I just assumed these were more of the same.
It astonishes me that people can -do- this for Penny Arcade. I mean, I don’t read the ‘rants’ on most of my webcomics, but PA so -routinely- throws out strips that make ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE without the clarifications in the ‘rants’ that I pretty much have to read them.
Plus, Tycho is the closest thing I’ve found to someone who reviews games and has tastes that are actually similar to mine.
Not necessarily. You just need to have half an ear on gaming news (which, if you read PA, you probably do), or otherwise be able to extrapolate. I read PA without reading the rants and it usually manages to be good.
I read the rants because they’re the things that told me about the PA/PVP D&D Podcasts, which was the most brilliant thing in my mind to come along, and that’s why I’ve been reading PA- as before that I didn’t really enjoy the comics, but afterwards, it really put a face on the people and I’ve started enjoying the comics more so with the context provided by the rantings. Though I do tend to skip the gamer heavy rants and reviews, but much prefer just to read about their thoughts or opinions on non-gaming issues.
Well, to be fair, I think the story is that you only turn to stone if you lock gazes with the basilisk. In the next-to-last panel, the guide blindfolds the basilisk. Of course, that doesn’t excuse the last panel, where you can see the basilisk’s eyes.
Well, at least the leader does blindfold the thing in the second to last panel(although it’s a little hard to see, given the art style). And I guess the throw stuff at it to make it look away? Yeah, not exactly thrilled by the execution of this one.
But this is after the careful instructions to only look at it via reflection or otherwise indirectly! :smack: The boys completely disregarded their lessons. And you’re (both) right, I missed the blindfolding, and the last panel blows all of that anyway.