Bad webcomics

[geckogoy]

Just saying but 'take as much time as you need. slay, my fat lazy nigger queen' is how you go from 5 updates a year to 0

 

[Arthur Morgan]

People had patience with creators fifteen years ago when OOTS was newer, but the economy has turned to shit and everyone has to work harder for less, besides the earlier days of crowdfunding where backers were burned by unmet goals. There just is no excuse for this level of output for so much compensation. He just released Dim Sun, a comic special. Why don't you finish your main fucking story for your backers. Maybe I'd be a patron if his work ethic wasn't absolute trash.

Back when he did the kickstarter to reprint the books, one of the stretch goals was that he would put out a page a day for a whole week, I forget if weekends were included but it was reached and... he did it. I checked the site sporadically so I didn't see them until much later, but one day I looked and there were either five or seven new strips ready to be read (It was in book five when Durkon fought Malack and got bitten). This just proved that, if he wanted to, he could get more pages out. He just doesn't.

I think part of the problem as well is that we're getting closer to the end. He's said that there will only be eight books and we're in number seven, so assuming book eight is set inside the portal he's going to lose his main source of income once the story wraps. He'll probably do another print run kickstarter but are there enough fans still left to reach the numbers the last one did?

What is really infuriating is befor Gabe went on mood stabiliziers and was sent to Leftard reeducation camp and was still a gamer, he and Tycho at would at least do something moderately interesting once a year or so. Cardboard Tube Samurai was a shitty oversold meme given there's like 10 comics of said character, but while fairly lazy retreads, the dialogueless story telling was different. But they haven't done anything with it. Same where they had the week where they pitched some different comic premises to gauge reaction. Their D&D comic was shit but the others had promise. But we got one Arc of the Noir Robots comics, and then nothing. They did like 3 twisp and catsby comics and never thought of it again. Just the same CAD-tier shit over and over as Gabe's art degrades.

It's funny going back and reading the old print editions, which they stopped doing because Kurtz convinced them they were a waste of time because he was too lazy to keep making his, and seeing how long some of those arcs were. They used to spend multiple weeks doing stories unrelated to Penny Arcade, or focused on characters like the Merch or Fruit Fucker, and now they don't. At least I assume they don't, I only dip in occasionally.

I think part of it could be because a lot of their attempts at side projects fell apart. They did that Treches strip with Kurtz and that fell apart because they were trying too hard to match each others' sense of humor and failed to mesh, and then would take months off in between 'seasons' of sixty strips. They did those one off strips that were pitches for other projects you mentioned that got a lot of buzz, but failed to materialize into anything real. That Automata thing they kickstarted flopped. The Lookouts graphic novel never happened. And there were other projects that were announced but also never came out.

The only thing that got finished was the video game and the Thornwatch card game but who even remembers those anymore?

 

[Ghostse]

I think part of it could be because a lot of their attempts at side projects fell apart. They did that Treches strip with Kurtz and that fell apart because they were trying too hard to match each others' sense of humor and failed to mesh, and then would take months off in between 'seasons' of sixty strips. They did those one off strips that were pitches for other projects you mentioned that got a lot of buzz, but failed to materialize into anything real. That Automata thing they kickstarted flopped. The Lookouts graphic novel never happened. And there were other projects that were announced but also never came out.

The Trenches had bad art (or I guess unattactive character design) and was just too late. Kurtz tried to inject his own new SJW religion into it and it just didn't work. He aped The IT Crowd without absorbing the lesson that people liked the IT crowd & Dilbert because there was no long term over arcing plot.

I think Penny Arcade projects failing is on Mike & Jerry nearly entirely. They had some great concepts and then they just stopped caring. and the complete lack of caring coincides with Gabe going on mood stabilizers post-Dickwolf saga and cucking out.

And I guess.... its all the more tragic because looping this back OOTS, if it was just a lack of talent the PA niggers would have had the resources and connections to bring in people who could deliver on the vision.

The issue is that a lot of their projects have no sticking power because they are about half a notch above Highdeas.

 

[Troon Whisperer]

A lot of the Penny Arcade success was due to Robert Khoo tard-wrangling the two and forcing them do things in order to improve the PA brand which earned them more money. It's kinda telling that pretty much everything except PAX fell off a cliff the moment he quit in 2016. PAX survives because they just licensed the name to an event management company, and that deal alongside their D&D stuff is probably what keeps them afloat.

 

[Ghostse]

A lot of the Penny Arcade success was due to Robert Khoo tard-wrangling the two and forcing them do things in order to improve the PA brand which earned them more money. It's kinda telling that pretty much everything except PAX fell off a cliff the moment he quit in 2016. PAX survives because they just licensed the name to an event management company, and that deal alongside their D&D stuff is probably what keeps them afloat.

It was more than that.

You are correct and to thier credit the PA guys fully and readily admit that Khoo was the one who took PA from a comic to a brand and Khoo worked as near volunteer for first couple years. On his departure they hired a replacement and structured his job. But PA was on the shit spiral long before Khoo checked out officially, partly because he had already done a soft-leaving but I think Khoo leaving was a consequence not a cause; You can read between the lines on their thank you message to Khoo and the years after that Mike and Jerry were completely out of the loop. PA had become a brand, and they were comic creators retards who lucked into shit not business guys. They had lost control, and given they had wives and families, they had steady paycheck had no interest in trying to grow beyond what they had. They had made Penny Arcade, Child's Play was a success, PAX had grown beyond them.
"Pigbald looked around and wept for there were no more lands to conquer that didn't require too much work"
Or tl;dr: They set out to do what they started, had some big successes, hit some stumbling blocks with other projects and then just said "fuck it" and checked out on growing/innovating; Khoo I think had checked out sensing the same energy/lack of energy.

Once PAX grew into PAX east and west, and I believe as direct fallout from the Diskwolves kurfluffle, PA guys fully separated from PAX except they are probably the brand holders. The PA guys also make no secret that Penny Arcade Expo no longer has anything to do with Penny Arcade, and even before Dickwolves they were pretty much "Show up, go home" levels of involvement, especially for PAX east and south.

 

[Disc]

I used to feel this way but then the years kept going. Look at this, it's pathetic.
Wyświetl załącznik 9183273
His Patreon account numbers 4,665, and memberships are either $2 or $5 per month. Garbage tier grifting from a lazy artist of a quality comic.

Just for comparison, I decided to look up twokinds, the gender-bender furry comic made by Markiplier's brother (yes, really). both these comics started in 2003, and have around 1300 pages, so it's a surprisingly apt comparison.



The last few comics have been one a month, but last year it looks like he did about 33 pages, compared to OOTS's twenty-two updates in the same. (though some are multiple pages. Even then, there are 27 pages with a 2025 copyright on them in OOTS, so he still loses out.)

Thomas also actually shows his patreon amount, which is just under 9k per month. It's largely filled with various sketches, available for free on the patreon or deviantart. He also makes it clear that everything that can be free is free, with the only thing being charged for being that the $10 tier gets you sketch requests. It also has a yearly discount option.


Also worth noting is that even though the comic is currently one update a month, the sketches are still daily, and about this quality technique-wise. Some contain stuff like backgrounds and multiple characters, but I just picked the first one that wasn't horny in some way. Multiple of them also get the full colour and background treatment each month.


Worth noting that the 4665 number for rich is inaccurate; according to the patreon, only 2759 of those are paid. The $2 tier gives access to high-quality versions of the vector stick figure comic and also two $3 black-and-white comics consisting of 38 pages combined, and being able to ask questions in his Q and A posts on patreon. (For context, Questions #11 was in Jan 2025, Answers #11 was in October 2025 and had 12 answers in it, and Questions #12 doesn't exist yet.) The $5 tier consists of the same as before plus a free download of the first book (which comes with by my read about 20 new comic pages and 24 pages of various author's commentary stuff), and a 20% discount to download the PDF versions. No, there isn't a single thing sold there where you might save more than you spend, why would you ever ask such a foolish thing?


It's kind of impressive that Twokinds is offering literally one uncertain thing for half the price and somehow comes off as the less greedy one.

This means that Rich is getting somewhere between $5518 and $13795, with no real way to know where he lies except probably somewhere middle-ish. I'd guess between 7k and 11k is pretty safe.

Also fun fact, both sell 6 compilation books. Digital pdf downloads are $15-19 dollars USD based on size (120-280) for Rich, and come with similar amounts of add-on's as the first book mentioned above. Twokinds digital pdf downloads are consistently $15 AUD (meaning about $10 USD) and have anywhere from 120 to 180-ish pages, though they only come with much smaller extras.

Paperback copies of Twokinds are 6x8 for about 23 dollars aud (about 15 USD), and the premium hardcovers are 8 * 10.5 and about $59 AUD, or $40 USD. OOTS Books are 8*10, hardcover or paperback unknown, and the smallest ones cost uhhhhhh... 2400 Indian Rupees???? So about 25 usd, I guess... and they can jump rather quickly right into the 40s.

Yeah, this gets to the last point. One of these two has actively maintained websites, and the other is the Order of The Stick. Both have dedicated forums, though Twokinds is noticeably more rudimentary. Everything else is just noticably better at Twokinds - it has light and dark modes, a whole booru with custom styling which will directly link back to the source page of every image including fan works, light and dark modes that switch automatically, a seemingly actively-maintained page of links to various pieces. There's only two things outright wrong with it -placeholder explaining chapter 22 on the archive page (most chapters have a paragraph synopsis with links to key pages) and a character description of 'the masks' which is incomplete and has a dead image.

comparatively, the OOTS page is a fucking mess. According to the wayback machine it has had the exact same formatting since at least 2006. There was a gag made in 2009 about the cast page that was already called outdated then and that was seventeen years ago, and it still hasn't been touched. The store pages lists four different stores - their gumroad seems to be working fine, their cafepress is apparently deprecated but is presumably still up until the product runs out, there was a miniatures store that now links to an open domain, and their main physical website is ookoodook, which has nearly nothing in stock and switches randomly between the actual prices in USD (where the first book is actually priced at $37 so it fucking better be hardcover) and a glitched out version with what i can only assumed is indian regional pricing??? Despite the fact that the only shown currency options are USD, CAD, and GBP. the only major changes have been removing the extra stories, removing the tabletop gaming talk section, and removing any referecnes to Erfworld.

Here's the first and most recent pages of each comic. When the degenerate furry who put his characters in a single mansion for so long that his brother went from being a guy mugging at golden freddy to hosting and acting in movies SOMEHOW looks like the one improving by leaps and bounds, you know you've fucked up.


Minus any context, I do like how the playful banter actually feels pretty natural for what's clearly a couple.


Didja notice how the bricks in the wall change alignment with the floor in nearly every single panel? I sure did.
TLR; despite being on basically the same budget, Twokinds shits on OOTS in just about every category, with the only one OOTS has on it being sheer raw official page and update count. And at their current rates, even that won't last.

 

[Ghostse]

with the only one OOTS has on it being sheer raw official page and update count. And at their current rates, even that won't last.

You forgot "not being furry gooner bait" and "not having a world that uses cat girl piss as currency" as two other categories OOTS utterly mogs TwoKinds in.

 

[RazorBackBacon]

Absolutely frozen artstyle. Pure 2005. Not an ounce of progess in 20 years. It's almost impressive in it's own way.

 

[m1ddl3m4rch]

I enjoyed the Penny Arcade rpgs well enough. They could patronize more creative works and become an arthouse. Nerd culture webcomics are consumery by genre and it's sad Penny Arcade doesn't add their creative voice directly anymore. A small Swedish game studio Ludosity made Slap City, a smashbros like fighting game with a lineup from all their IPs. Nothing is stopping PA from doing fun stuff just like that.

 

[Arthur Morgan]

You are correct and to thier credit the PA guys fully and readily admit that Khoo was the one who took PA from a comic to a brand and Khoo worked as near volunteer for first couple years. On his departure they hired a replacement and structured his job. But PA was on the shit spiral long before Khoo checked out officially, partly because he had already done a soft-leaving but I think Khoo leaving was a consequence not a cause; You can read between the lines on their thank you message to Khoo and the years after that Mike and Jerry were completely out of the loop. PA had become a brand, and they were comic creators retards who lucked into shit not business guys.

So I have the Penny Arcade show on DVD and in the deleted scenes they outright admit this. Mike and Jerry point out that they sold the comic to Efront and almost lost it completely, only getting the rights back because the company went under, and then sold the print rights to another guy who screwed them over. Khoo's first meeting with them, he says within five minutes he knew they had no idea what they were doing, and the pair admitted that they had to hire a boss to keep them on track. In the second season, which was 2010, there's an interview where Khoo admits that he's planning on leaving the company in 5-10 years, which is essentially what happened, and the pair are shocked at this news when the camera crew reveals it.

There was also an episode where they talk about the meetings they have about possible merch, every two weeks there was a sit down where they looked at the previous six strips and tried to see if there was anything they could make a shirt out of. Mike and Jerry, despite being the strip creators, were not in these meetings, though Mike did poke his head in. There was also an episode of the podcast revival where they mention Khoo bringing in a new hire and Mike and Jerry laugh at the fact that they had no idea what he was supposed to do for their company.

They intentionally kept themselves out of the loop because they'd fucked up hard in the past. The problem is eventually you have to grow up and learn but they didn't want to do that. They just wanted daddy to keep doing everything for them, even now when they're fifty. Hopefully they've kept something aside for retirement because I don't see this lasting too much longer.