Title: Penny Arcade: Attack of the Bacon Robots Volume(s): 6+ Creator(s): Jerry Holkins/Mike Krahulik Format: Unflipped; Left-to-Right Publisher: Dark Horse Comics MSRP: $12.95 Genre(s): Humor Rated: Mature (18+)

"Penny Arcade" shares a lot in common with Hong Kong superstar Jackie Chan. Yes, I'm beginning this review by comparing one of the biggest webcomics to one of the biggest Hong Kong action stars to grace the silver screen. Sue me. Anyway, Jackie Chan may be a martial artist/actor/all-around nice guy, but he's in such a different league from all the other Hong Kong action stars that it almost feels like he's more of a franchise than an actual person these days. Likewise, "Penny Arcade" has so much crap out there (from posters, toys, game accessories, game conventions) that it, too, feels more like a franchise than an actual comic strip. Okay, so maybe the comparison wasn't quite as clever as I thought it would be, but it does prove one point: "Penny Arcade" is HUGE! It's so huge, I'm surprised we are just NOW getting books of the comic (though I hear the reason for the delay was due to some legal problems)! Well, regardless of the reasons, "Penny Arcade" is now in print form, and the first collection is titled "Penny Arcade: Attack of the Bacon Robots." I warn you now: if you have to ask why the book is titled "Attack of the Bacon Robots," then this book is not made for you.

The beginning of something great.

With that out of the way, "Penny Arcade" is a comic strip about two gamers who crack jokes about games, the game industry, swear a little, kill each other at least once a month, has drunk (outdated) technology lying around the house, and at times has side characters spouting off complete nonsense. Oh, and all of this crap is HILARIOUS!!! The two main characters are Tycho (Holkins) and Gabe (Krahulik). Both characters have certain personality traits that you'll learn about as the series goes on, but the bottom line is that both these characters love games and take turns making fun of the creators of said games. Later years would have the comic finding humor in places and situations that didn't involve games, but for the first couple years, the comic was almost completely about games. Since the first couple years didn't produce as many comics as later years would, this book contains the first two and a half years of the comic (or, in other words, 1998 through 2000). It has been awhile since I read these comics (obviously), so I was looking forward to going back to the early days of the comic and reliving them. This is where the book became a double-edged sword. While it is certainly nice to have a definite collection of "Penny Arcade" strips, these early comics haven't aged as well as I would have hoped they would, and some people may not even like them at all.

DiVX may have died from competition from DVD, but it will live on forever in "Penny Arcade."

Many of the jokes here revolve around the Dreamcast, an old gaming site called Daily Radar (that no longer exists), Playstation 2 shortages (a topic which, thanks to the recent goof-up with the XBox 360, has been given new life), and LOTS of swearing! I find most of the jokes about these things funny, but some of the comics fell flat just because I didn't remember what they were supposed to be about. One of the jokes I had a problem remembering was the comic printed on October 20th, 1999. You can read the comic on the "Penny Arcade" website, but the punch line is that the comic was a knock on one of Sega's Dreamcast ads, where "It's Thinking" became "It's Drinking" in the comic. Funny, yes, but even if the Dreamcast IS one of my favorite systems, how the heck am I supposed to remember the ad campaign?! There are also several strips that made fun of things Daily Radar did when it was still in business. I laughed at a few of these comics (since I remembered the features), but there's a good chance not many people will get these jokes without the aid of the commentary. And speaking of commentary, seeing as how the norm with all web comic publications (save for "PVP") has been to include commentary for every strip in the book, you will find a commentary for every single strip here too. Some of the comics may be outdated now, but Jerry provides a commentary for all the comics, which (mostly) shed light on the strips that you might not get anymore (as well as being highly entertaining at times).

Good question: What ARE you doing?!

However, since some of the jokes ARE considered outdated, it should come as no surprise that the artwork for some of these early comics also isn't NEARLY as polished as it is now!! So for those looking at the gorgeous artwork on the cover, you might as well ignore it, because that artwork won't be found in the actual book. In fact, the artwork is pretty alien and darn ugly to look at sometimes. Thankfully, the artwork improves quite a bit midway through the book, so I won't spend too much time complaining about artwork that just needed time to be refined. In terms of extras, there are some, but not as many as I was expecting. We've got a few intros (one from Bill Amend of "FoxTrot" fame), the aforementioned commentaries, and some sketches that are a bit... well, disappointing. If only because the sketches are SO polished that they practically look like black-and-white versions of the color sketches! Heck, some of the sketches are ripped straight from the "E3 Sketchbook" comics, which just doesn't make sense to me since those comics were sketches themselves, so it makes no sense why they should show up again in the sketchbook feature since there is no change to them. I'm also going to point out that some of the comics aren't printed in the best of condition.

This reminds me of when I dared to tell my best friend that "Star Wars Episode II" sucked.

Also, I don't know if it's just me, but some of the comics printed in this book have a "fuzzy" look to them, as if the printer couldn't be bothered with clarity. This is especially evident for comics printed on November 25th, 1998, October 15th, 1999, and December 25th, 2000. Who knows, it could also just be the book I got, but hopefully future books will have more clarity to them than this one does. With all this said, I should probably point out that I'm a critic by nature, and while I DO have to point out the problems I see, I should also note that most of these problems probably won't apply to you. If you don't already read "Penny Arcade," then the chances of you buying this book are slim. If you don't know whether you'll like it enough to buy it or not, then you can just read some of their comics free online, and then you'll know what you're buying and whether or not you want to actually pay for it. In fact, this book probably doesn't really even need a review of any kind, I'm just writing one up anyway. So yeah, this review will probably do very few people good, but if there is one difference I want to make with this review, it's this: someone NEEDS to make sure ALL future books have page numbers in them!!! If you think I was writing down all those dates above to annoy you, you're wrong, I've been writing down the dates because there are no page numbers with which to reference the comics. I'm kind of surprised that this basic essential was overlooked by Dark Horse in the first place.

Truer words have never been spoken before.

When you make CDs, you post track listings. When you make DVDs, you have chapter listings. And when you make books, you have page numbers. This is such a no-brainer I'm surprised I have to bring it up in the first place. So, memo to book publishers: pages numbers are a good thing. Overall, I must say I am pretty happy with the book. It's not exactly the goodie feast I was hoping it would be, and some of the comics haven't aged as well as I'd have liked them to, but for any "Penny Arcade" fan, it's still nice to be able to read these comics on something other than a computer monitor. Now we just have to wait for the next book, "Penny Arcade: Critics Can't Touch Us," to come out. Good night everybody.

- -Review By Kevin T. Rodriguez- -