Tycho: We decided to get our own warehouse up here in Seattle, for lots of reasons, but primarily to have after-hours shootouts with The Triads. Brian and Robert are heading down to Austin next week to pick up all the stuff and move it up, but while they are in transit, you can take advantage of INCREDIBLE SAVINGS! The store closes down on the 6th - yes, in like four days - but if you enter the code mov1ng when you check out, you'll get ten percent off everything you buy.I didn't mean for that second part to be bolded, that ...

Tycho: The Blood and Oil have finally run out in this, the fifth chapter. What a tremendous amount of fun that was, and we must all thank Ben Caldwell for drawing it and Gary Whitta for writing it. It's rare that Gabriel and I get a chance to "read" Penny Arcade along with actual readers, but we had no preview really of what was about to hit the site on this project. It was exhilarating, and it helped us understand how interesting Automata could be. When something just falls out of your head, as things tend to do around here, we ...

Tycho: Child's Play is incredibly vast, so vast that - even though Gabriel and I ostensibly created it - it extends far beyond our influence. That's how it had to be: in order for it to endure, it needs its own strength. But it's still surprising for me to realize the extent of its autonomy sometimes. The toy drive used to be the focus, but Child's Play is a banner now for a broad array of charitable impulses. For example. Gears of War is soliciting feedback on a story point - namely, whether or not this game's Carmine will survive. You ...

Tycho: Blood And Oil. Part Four. One more to go. I met a guy from DigiPen many years ago - eventually he quit the school, but found his way into the industry regardless. Before meeting him, I thought that Starcraft was a game where you built up your defenses and then teched up to the weird shit and then fought your opponent in the middle of the map somewhere. Watching him play that game - a game I owned, and played, and thought I knew - practically ruined the genre for me. I wouldn't see shit like that again until the ...

New Comic: Blood And Oil, Part Four

New Comic: Blood And Oil, Part Three

Tycho: I've got more blood for you, and also more oil, in the ongoing series we're calling Blood And Oil - here's part three. This is a guest work; we did not draw or write this. I'm not entirely certain we could. Weird features like Dragon Quest IX's "Canvass Mode" or The World Ends With You's "Truly Crazy Button Selling Thingamajig" are well suited to Japan, where mass transit is a thing that exists, though I'd imagine that you could do pretty well in Europe also. In the United States, the best scenario for passive trades is probably at conventions, during ...

Tycho: The new Episode of PATVwent up on Friday, but I forgot to link it, because my mind body connection had been severed. It is good, and funny, and good! Please to enjoy. Also, strip's up as well. It's fucking incredible. (CW)TB

New Comic: Blood And Oil, Part Two

Tycho: It may be wise if, going forward, you think of the ongoing Blood & Oil seriesas something which needs to slow roast; the strip will be here, but the RSS feed will be your best friend regarding updates to the site. Once again: Blood & Oil is an Automata story written by Gary Whitta and powerfully realized by Ben Caldwell. It's in five parts, running all this week and into next Monday. Buckle up. My psyche is always so abraded by the social onslaught of a convention - I'm not entirely certain we're built to see this many faces in ...

New Comic: Blood And Oil, Part One

Tycho: Today marks the debut of a guest Automata "event," drawn by the incomparable Ben Caldwell and "Book of Eli" scribe Gary Whitta. We don't have any right to talent like this, and giving the site over to them for a week or so will probably get you accustomed to work of genuine quality, at which point they will usurp us and we will have to get new jobs. So, maybe not our best plan ever. I guess we'll see. Dragon Quest IX and my Nintendo DSi entertainment system are now fused, representing a single, dedicated entertainment apparatus. Anything not absolutely ...

New Comic: The S Word

Tycho: The room scenario described in the strip is brutally mega-real. My response was to haul out the big guns. Actually, it's my policy to leverage the big guns exclusively. I had a few little guns for awhile, and I sent them back. "Won't be needing these," I said. Heading south. A few items: - Should you be one of those attending the San Diego Comic Con this year (a group which must include a statistically significant portion of the readership) please stop by our boof, which is located conveniently at shanty number "1237" in the strange and temporary society of ...

Tycho: Gabriel specializes in names like "Mantis Eaglehawk," that is to say, names that puncture the carefully calibrated drama of their setting. He has retained Dudefella lo these many years, long enough for me to substitute "Du'defaella" in my mind whenever I see it, with its notes of an elven upbringing grimmed with the dust of prophecy. He's got plans for Cataclysm, name-wise - big plans. And if those plans fall through, there are plans within plans. I'm waiting for him to take the serious name ironically, because honestly I don't care why. I'm still playing Transformers, still, which must put ...