It's gaming month and that means that blah blah blah disappointing lack of female characters in comics about gaming blah blah blah my D&D experiences blah blah blah; too many people doing gaming comics about two college roommates blah blah blah women like shamelessly slaughtering orcs too occasionally blah blah game reviewer for Computer Gaming World named "Scorpia" who was really cool blah blah blah and once in awhile you found a woman who games with other women rather than a small cabal of smart-mouthed male characters against whom she is set as the "sane/reasonable" character who tries to be one of the boys but ultimately adores shopping blah blah blah PvP blah blah only computer game I've ever enjoyed was The Longest Journey and blah blah blah Final Fantasy blah blah why aren't there more chicks doing this stuff already.

Okay, I really needed to get that first paragraph off my chest. I feel much better now.

Let's face it: business has not been good in the comics industry during the last decade or so. However, despite this, there has been a swelling of diversification amongst genres, creators, and publishers, and maybe even a little upswing in the public's perception of comics. And, there is plenty of talent around too – arguably more than there has ever been. This summer, Scott McCloud quipped, "I'd be willing to debate that there is more talent now concentrated in people named 'Jason' than there were talented people in the entire industry when I entered it twenty years ago." So, if the industry now has a great deal of talent, diversity, and freedom of expression, why are things still only so-so for its status and prosperity?

I skipped the 80s growing up. This was surprisingly easy, as I was born in 1980 and didn't get much of a pop culture knowledge base until I was 13 or so. That, a lack of anything but cartoons and reruns on my TV diet, an abuse of my parents' music and choice in movies, and an obsessive streak that had me trying to read every book in the library, kept me from experiencing much outside of things done before I was born.

So it is without any nostalgia or bias against this decade that I beg you, comics artists, to stop drawing 80s fashions!

The mere mention of video games often evokes images of a solitary white ball bouncing between two vertically moving white paddles, with that distinctive Pong sound. Maybe it evokes images of a large gorilla hurling barrels at unsuspecting Italian men instead. No matter what you think of when you think video games, it is undeniable that games as a whole have affected our culture over the last 20 years. In the late 1970s, games like Pong revolutionized arcades, and in the 1980s, Nintendo revolutionized our living rooms with Super Mario Bros. Our generation grew up with names like Atari, Nintendo and Sega. The culture of video games has boomed in the past 5 years with the recent console wars between Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony. With the increase of video game fans came an increase in people writing and drawing about their favorite video hobby: enter Gaming Webcomics, a genre that is not so easily classified. What are Gaming Webcomics, what are they all about, and where are they going?

Above all, I love good stories.

Artful narrative.

Stickler and Hat-trick, in association with Comixpedia present…

Stickler and Hat-trick at the Keyboard

This week, they review PENNY ARCADE, created by Gabe and Tycho!

( Tonight's show is sponsored by Bigger than Life™ Prunes. Enhance the size of your after-dieting effects today with new and improved expanding prunes!)

Stickler: Welcome to a new year of At the Keyboard!
Hat-Trick: This week we're taking a look at one of the biggest and most successful webcomics out there, Penny Arcade, created by Tycho and Gabe, which updates on M-W-F schedule.
S: Well, let's just get this out of the way. PA is a great webcomic. When we were asked by Mr. Editor who lives under our couch to review Penny Arcade, I was a little nervous…
HT: We volunteered, dumbass. Thanks!

There are some subjects, common wisdom states, which should not be brought up in polite company. Religion and politics are two of the biggies, but as of late, computer operating systems and gaming platforms seem to be flowing in the same vein. The sheer amount of energy invested in the holy wars over gaming platforms is impressive, and more than a little puzzling to the outsider. Regardless, there seems to be no shortage of webcomics willing to jump into the fray with their BFGs blazing. Ctrl+Alt+Del, created by Tim Buckley, is one more pixilated soldier trying to wade through the slavering bad guys, hoping to find that Secret Area where the popularity power-ups lie.

Ted Slampyak broke into the comics scene in 1989 with The Case of the Beguiling Baroness, published by Caliber Press. This story turned out to be only the first in his stylish adventure series, Jazz Age Chronicles, which followed the blueblood adventurer, Clifton Jennings, and the blue-collar private eye, Ace Mifflin, as they pursued supernatural criminals in 1920s Boston. Soon after, he went on to work on projects like Quantum Leap and Neil Gaiman’s “Mr. Hero”, as well as providing illustration and storyboarding services.

In 2002, he returned to his roots, with The Power of Silas Rourke, a new Jazz Age story, and one of the original strips to run on the Modern Tales sister site, AdventureStrips.com. After the unfortunate demise of AdventureStrips.com, Ted remained with Modern Tales, repurposing his JazzAgeComics.com site as a single-creator subscription site, and the official home for Jazz Age on the web. The current story, No Escape updates weekly (the current strip is always free), with pages from his original Beguiling Baroness story and other extras added to the member section throughout the week.

If you've ever been in an online game, you've probably watched two barely literate guys duke it out using the chat functions. The typical lame insults are usually thrown around. One guy is a pussy. One guy's mother is a whore. It's basically a nerds' table slap fight moved from the high school cafeteria to the Internet.

Bela Lugosi's Dead, Johnen Vasquez is Alive, and the World is an Unjust Place.

Okay, here's the thing – or "check it," as I believe you crazy kids say these days – just because Jhonen Vasquez has a bunch of JTHM shirts at Hot Topic doesn't mean you're contractually obligated to emulate him.