Product Description

Join us, intrepid explorers, as we journey once again into the depths of the Penny Arcade archives, facing eldritch curses and monstrous perils aplenty in our quest to unearth the ancient treasures of the year 2004 A.D.! Marvel at the mysteries laid bare within - at these tales of epic gaming, appliances gone bad, square-dancing blood feuds, and so much more! Face, if you dare, the ominous foreboding of The Last Christmas, the challenging depths of Twisp and Catsby, and the poignant tragedy of The Wandering Age!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17979 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 120 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781593078140
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Customer Reviews

Gift for my husband. He loves it.
My husband really enjoys this gift I got for him. He mostly wanted it for the commentary. Jerry is a word genius.

PENNY ARCADE VOLUME 5: THE CASE OF THE MUMMY'S GOLD BY JERRY HOLKINS AND MIKE KRAHULIK
The Penny Arcade team are back again with their next long-awaited volume of the online comic: The Case of the Mummy's Gold. Volume 5 features a Hardy Boys classic looking cover as Gabe and Tycho stand wary by a door in geeky-looking outfits that bare a resemblance to classic Star Trek uniforms, as a pair of mummy's arms stretch from the open doorway.

Volume 5 features some familiar characters, including our infamous fruit crushing friend, as well as some new concepts like their take on the Oriental Last Rites comic. With the advent of popular Mass Multi-Player Online (MMO) games like World of Warcraft and the Star Wars MMO, Penny Arcade embarked on a new chapter of online comics with lascivious praise on some games like the former mentioned above, and scornful berating and insult on games like the latter. Penny Arcade also became aware of their growing popularity and the fact that many people read the blogs and the comic and took the advice they offered. With this power they began ridiculing and mocking different companies in the games industry much to the amusement of the fans. It's what really launched the comic into superstardom as it began fighting back for the fans.

Whether you're picking Penny Arcade up for the first time, or simply addictively adding the next volume to your collection (like me), The Case of the Mummy's Gold will be a welcome recruit, with lots of extra sketches from the different conventions they attended, including the actual paper tablecloth doodles they made to pass the time. And if that's not enough, there's always the entertaining comments they've made on each comic about whether they liked it, or thought the concept totally failed, or simply have no recollection of what they did or were attempting to do.

Find more reviews, as well as a selection of my writing, and a link to the book review podcast BookBanter at www.alexctelander.com.

PA branches out a little more
"The Case of the Mummy's Gold" is the fifth randomly-named Penny Arcade book; the strips covered are from 2004. The extras - random sketches from Comicon 2005 - aren't really that interesting this time.

Krahulik and Holkins do wander further afield in terms of writing - golf, square dancing, a Cthulu Christmas sequence, and a number of other things depart from the gaming and geek humor that still make up most of the strip. The humor there is less trapped in topical events and knowledge of gaming/geek culture; even when the jokes are extremely topical, though, the commentary can keep it in context. Holkins' commentary itself is rarely overexplanatory, often adding humor of his own.

There's less change in the art; it's never bad, and the character designs continue to evolve, but apart from where they step outside of the normal strip format (Twisp & Catsby, Cardboard Tube Samurai, and the Cthulu Christmas sequence) there aren't the leaps or experiments of previous volumes.

Krahulik and Holkins can still tell a joke, of course. "Case of the Mummy's Gold" is an extremely funny book.

****1/2