Yeah, that struck me as a newspaper-comic-style tech punchline.
I guess I laughed at the idea of possessed dice, the third frame I don’t really care about.
Indeed – as a person who once needed a 3 or better to critical hit a frost giant and rolled two 1’s and a 2 in a row and ultimately threw the die into the nearby pond in a fit of rage – I don’t get it.
I’ll agree that from the ones I posted, the dice one is the weakest.
Sorry for the no-effort post before, but I stand that these (outside the first one) aren’t very good. In all of them, the punchline is either muddled and unclear or unfunny/overused.
Dice one - as mentioned, the second panel is really the thing everyone finds amusing. I don’t understand the tumblr bit (although I suppose it is in reference to Tycho’s consistent perversions?), and it screams “we didn’t know what to do with the last panel, so we just threw in a reference to the internet and called it a day”.
Dog jerking off - our two characters are standing in a room arguing and Tycho reveals that he “volunteers” at a shelter by jerking off dogs without any staff knowing. BEHOLD, GAMERS, THIS IS THE HUMOR YOU DESIRE. Maybe it’d be kind of funny if South Park didn’t exist and monopolize this type of gross out humor.
Assassin’s Creed - I legit have no idea what’s happening in this comic. My understanding: Assassin saves a bird, enjoys as he watches it fly free, attempts to kill man who was holding bird as a pet? The joke is, I guess, that this guy avenges captured birds. It’s not clear at all, and the weird way the arm with the sword is drawn does not help matters. Also, wonky noses!
Rust - this joke has been made a million times with Day Z (he was just trying to help and you killed him!) but we get bonus insane, naked Gabe. I don’t really count that as a bonus, just, uh, weird and off-putting.
Saga Banner - any time Tycho talks directly to the camera it just says “lazy strip”, to me. Like in the dog jerking off one, I guess they’re relying on Tycho’s wordplay to be the joke, but it doesn’t really carry well, plus it just seems like such a damn waste. Gabe’s art style is… different, at times, but still well done and interesting, and that second panel looks really cool. I don’t understand why they couldn’t have made the joke within The Banner Saga universe instead of having Tycho just monologue.
I have my own personal issues with Penny Arcade (Dickwolves, the IT job posting) that has soured them on me over the past couple years so maybe I’m being unfair, but I’m still an easy laugh, and none of these really did it for me (except the first one). They might be super busy running their empire, but I would hope that more effort be put into the thing that started it all off.
Let me help you with this one: In the Assassin’s Creed games, you visit coops to recover carrier-pigeon messages which tell you who to kill. The joke here is that the messages are from the birds themselves (or the assassin thinks they are).
Aha. Well, now I look the fool. Those noses sure are weird though, huh guys?
I think, though I may be wrong, that they’d drawing a blog comment analogy. “you will boil in the fetid shit of a billion corpses” is only exaggerating the typical anonymous internet comment a little. They’re suggesting the lunatic trolls who post such things are probably demons.
That doesn’t make it a good joke, but I think that’s the joke they’re making.
EDIT: possibly they’re also suggesting that they’re so used to receiving threats like this that a rant by an actual demon sounds like one of their tumblr comments.
I took it to mean that “boil in the fetid shit of a billion corpses” was something that the demon-thing might have thought Tycho was into, having perused his Tumblr.
This makes the most sense to me, and was my initial impression. I had hoped to be wrong, though.
South Park monopolizes this type of humor in the entire world? Damnit I haven’t received the newsletter about it!
/rolleyes
Saga Banner - any time Tycho talks directly to the camera it just says “lazy strip”, to me.
Uh. Lazy.
It’s a 3-vignentte comic strip, it’s not like they can do a lot with these. Two dudes walking on the street or sit on a couch or a guy or in this case talking straight to the camera. I don’t see that resource more lazy than the others. It’s all the same, a vehicle to make a small insightful comment about the industry or do a brief joke. Or even both, if possible. With some nice art with it except the noses that are evil.
New one, we all have been there. Right? Right? …
That’s a weird strip. Because when you have a naked guy wearing a horsehead mask meeting two fully clothed people, normally he’s the one seriously in the wrong. But here, nudity is expected, and she’s in effect saying “I’d rather have sex with someone else.” Yet even knowing that I still have the first, knee-jerk reaction.
I sorta prefer to think–given Tycho’s thousand-mile-stare in the last panel, that the blond gentleman was brought along for a bit of threesome action but happened to enjoy men (or horses) far more than the other two participants counted on.
The glasses are the difference.
I’m not sure anybody’s supposed to be really right or wrong here. They just had very different expectations of what “something new” meant.
I agree, the thousand-yard stare implies something horrible happened to him, not just disappointment. Which is a rape joke. That’s why I’m thinking in terms of right and wrong, rather than unfulfilled expectations.
I don’t think you need to go that far, shame and embarrassment do the job. Tycho’s preference for farm animals has been consistently communicated to the reader, but in a way that other characters in-world are, generally, not aware of it. So, he knows it’s shameful, but this was supposed to be a “coming out” of sorts with his wife. Not only is she not into it, she’s into a guy who’s way better looking than Tycho. If she was into the horse thing, Tycho was probably planning on coming out to the world at large as well. Instead he’s both shamed and emasculated.
And, that’s way too many words spend analyzing that joke :)
We could do a Twitter campaign about it!
P.D: my innocent mind only took it as a simple misunderstanding/differences joke: one is into kinky/creepy sex with horse masks, the other has a more normal idea of sex at the next level: a threesome. Which happens to be with another guy. A taller, more handsome and muscular guy. Poor Tycho.
Which is still a problem. “My wife has made it clear she’d prefer to have sex with a much better looking guy” is definitely in the right-or-wrong category, not just differing expectations. Maybe my perspective on such jokes is a bit different, since my ex-wife cheated on me, and hence I don’t give things like that a pass.
I refuse to acknowledge a limit on how many words we can spend on analyzing a joke! At least, as long as it’s anywhere near as ambiguous what the intent was, as this is.
I honestly don’t know. Given that it’s Penny Arcade, home of the Dick Wolves, it could be either one.