The second to last installment is now go, which means we'll again have to forage for news come Wednesday. It's been nice down here, beneath the hatch, out of the rain. It's been a Goddamned vacation, an opportunity to run my brain under cold river water, snowmelt coursing down thwarting crags to rinse my taxed meninges. I am overjoyed that I never had, or took, an opportunity to talk about this 2.4 shit, and algorithmic flexing of a community tripping over itself to act as proxies in this week's PR skirmish.

Substantially improved my day.  The man turns one of crazy animatronic pizza house bands into some bizarre interpretive art form.  Saw it here originally, but you should check out this site for the background.

I guess things can only heat up so much.

Oh, ho! It would appear that things are heating up! Particularly near the booster rockets, I would imagine, but that's not the only place.

It's the sort of thing that isn't covered explicitly by the rules,  but it does make for simple adjudication.

I guess this is just like post day or something. I'll try and put everything else I want to mention into one post here.

Our store now has Penny Arcade book 5. This one kicks off with a very nice introduction from Wil Wheaton and then covers all our comics from 2004. You can also pick up a five book bundle which will get you significant savings.

Also new to the store is our very first hat. This one comes emblazoned with Kiko's "Heroism" design.

In other news, these guys are playing like every single Mario game ever and their doing it live on Ustream. Under normal circumstances I'd call these guys bat shit insane. However, they're doing this in an effort to raise money for Child's Play. The only thing I can't understand is why they didn't call it the Mariothon. I mean, come on guys.

The next installment of our epic D&D adventure is now online. People really seem to like Jim Darkmagic so I made a wallpaper based on the art for today's podcast.

I don't know if it's the summer break or what but I've been getting a lot of mail from people who are just now trying out our game. Many of them end with questions about episode 2 and it's release date. I can't say for sure when it will be done but I can say that my work on it is pretty much complete and I've actually started sketching and visualizing some of the elements in episode 3. I've also had a few people ask about moving their character from episode 1 to episode 2. Your character will transfer over and you'll actually get some cool bonuses if you do. That's not to say that you couldn't start the series at episode 2 but those of you moving your existing characters over will just get a couple extra treats.

Like I said, my work on the second episode is done for the most part. I'm still looking over all the new cut scenes as they come in and that sort of thing but all the concept art has been done for a while. In fact I thought I'd share one of my favorites with you guys here. I don't want to go into too much detail about where you encounter these guys or why but here's the design for one of the new enemies.

By the end of this excursion, I vow that no line will be left unpainted. Part two of our Line Painting Extravaganza (LPE) can be found here. Because these comics are being stockpiled for his vacation, I basically have them all in front of me now. If you consider the premise ridiculous, and this would be understandable, know now that we have only begun to redic. Making games is a hard, hard dollar, and I think that Precipice will probably give me my fill of the practice, but God Damn what I wouldn't do for a turn-based, strategic game of Table Tennis with Paint the Line as its thematic underpinning.

Thanks for all the nice emails about the art in today's strip. I recorded the live show yesterday so you can watch the entire process here:

Gabriel's annual Fourth of July excursion usually forces us to resort to fetid continuity, the gnarled crutch of our craven enemies. But what if we could grip the beast by the neck - at arm's length - like some writhing asp? The snake metaphor disintegrates quickly.

The live stream will be starting at 12:30, so in just about half an hour. If you can't make the live shows but you still want to see the comic get drawn you can always hit the Ustream site here. I record and upload most of the shows.

I think this will be our San Diego Comic Con exclusive poster.

I played Alone in the Dark quite often as a child, I guess you might call it the prequel. The text of most reviews generally registers some disappointment, coupled with the assertion that the game really is trying its best. That's is really all I want to know in advance of my purchase: that it swung for the fences, even if it became dizzy as a result.