Penny Arcade's New Ideas: Sand, The New Kid, Queen of Bells

Cafe Society
1

Last year, Penny Arcade ran a contest where they threw out three new character concepts and had readers vote on them. The two highest votegetters, Lookouts and Automata, received an expanded miniseries that told more tales in that setting.

Last week, they did it again and showed off three new concepts:

Sand

The New Kid

Queen of Bells

Like last year, I was only really wowed by one of these. I think Sand is the only one with any potential, but Tycho really loves The New Kid. The writeup for Queen of Bells isn’t available yet.

So anyway, what does everyone think?

2

I like both Queen of Bells and The New Kid as starters. Sand, I’m a lot less enamoured of. But I voted for Queen of Bells.

3

Sand. The other two lack originality IMHO, but Sand’s got all kinds of Weird West tinges to it. Me likes. Plus, I’m in the mood for peckerwoods and hoopleheads.

ETA: BTW Justin, which one was your one and only pick last year ? Mine was Automata. I had absolutely zero interest in the other two.

4

I thought Automata was the best of the three last year. This year I’m going with Sand but The New Kid was a close second. I had no interest in Queen of Bells.

5

Automata all the way. Lookouts had potential, but we all know what happened to that potential in the follow-up series’s.

6

I find these two sentences pretty funny. ‘Sand’s so original, it’s part of a genre with a name!’

None of them show any real promise, though The New Kid has at least an ember of something interesting.

7

New Kid seems like it would make a good TV series or something, where he’s introduced to a new planet every season. But the basic idea of a kid moved from planet to planet doesn’t seem like it would work in a comic strip thats only going to run for a week or so to try and develop both the character, his family and whatever weird planet he finds himself on. I liked Lookouts and Automata because they basically each had a simple idea that didn’t need a lot of set-up, but was still interesting enough that you wanted to see what the world was like.

The other two are kinda vague as to what exactly they’re about. Sand apparently has supernatural cowboys and Queen of Bells just looks like generic fantasy, so I guess I’ll go for Sand just to see where its going, but I wish they’d just spend the time doing another Lookouts strip.

8

My main problem is that I had no earthly idea what was going on the Queen of Bells comic.

9

I was puzzled by “Queen of Bells.”

If it’s a short thing, “Sand” might be cool, but now I kind of want to see where “Queen of Bells” goes.

I’m not sure what use it is for me to vote, though. I tend to think it has to be driven by the writer’s desire.

10

I like their regular strips better than all three of 'em.

11

Agreed; these are a waste of time. Though I also don’t think PA has been consistently funny in years…

12

It’s not a genre with a name - Deadland’s the only universe I know of that mixes Far West and Lovecraftian-like supernatural/horror. Which is why I had to link to it, because “weird west” isn’t a thing.

13

‘Weird West’, is, in fact, a ‘thing’.

There’s a pretty good list on that page, especially in the comic book section. Which, completely unsurprisingly, includes Weird Western Tales.

That Deadlands is the only example you can think of doesn’t make it ‘not a thing’ - it just means it’s not something you’re familiar with.

Of course, the Deadlands wiki page you linked to not only uses the term, it links to the article. And has since…well, I don’t have the patience to figure out just when it linked it, but it was no later than March 15 of this year.