Before we go into anything else I want to emphasize something at maximum volume. I already made a big deal out of the fact that Gunfire Reborn - a game at the crossroads of every salient trend in the industry - was only twelve fuckin' dollars. Except now this twelve (fuckin') dollar game is on sale for nine dollars and forty seven cents! You could buy four of these, which is the correct amount, and give them to your friends. It's recently been approved for medical use as I understand it, for pain "caused by (or related to) consciousness."

I think I actually do understand what is happening with Gamestop, Short Squeeze, this type of stuff, but it's spreading into contexts like AMC with very different dynamics. There are so many metaphors out there in the marketplace, and they're all a little different, and all a little wrong, so generally you just believe whatever you believed before.

There was an issue a couple nights ago that involved me alt-tabbing out of Gunfire Reborn to type a skeletal version of today's strip into the doc. It was a fire-related scenario - the details aren't important now. And, ultimately, I think I'll be exonerated. The deeper you look, I think you'll find that mythic substrates were in play, and it's like (gestures wildly) you know what I mean?

You might have seen this video pop up, a 1991 slab of what seems like B-roll from Toys "R" Us:

A return to more commonplace horrors. Although, even this strip is essentially a documentary. We had a lot of rituals custom to the Olive Garden - styled "The OG" - and it was a place of comfort and solace but also of infinite soup and bread sceptres. Occasionally you will see a listicle situation online where it's suggested that Number 7 Will Shock You. The tale of the dark energies that coursed through him, desperate for release, a veritable Tour of Shitaly, shocked me like Number 7 might have if I'd actually clicked through and read it. It sounded pretty bad.

I'm very, very tired of people pretending the world didn't burn down. I'm sick to the back teeth of it.

He already told you the rest of the story behind the comic, because he actually knows it on account of being there, but I learned a lot from the tale also - and maybe, I learned a little bit about myself, too.

I really like getting new consoles and that has been the case since this photo was taken. 

Gabriel is at The Tooth Store, which I think is also called The Orthodontist, having some serious shit done to his mouth hole. The reason I know it's serious is that he didn't want to do a strip about it here. We did manage to do one for Club PA, if that's of interest, but it's an index of his horror at the affair that the way we typically process fear - by containing it within a creative process - wasn't of interest. The archive is stuffed with examples of us doing precisely that!

It's Penny Arcade league Race night! The Pit Crew will open up on Twitch tonight at 7:30PT for warm up and the race will start around 8:30PT. Stick around after the race for C.S.iRacing, where we look at wrecks and assign blame. Then we cap off the night with the livery parade where everyone gets to show off their custom paint jobs, tonight's theme is "Sportsball". See you in the Pit Crew!

I want to apologize for my ill-considered foray into teen nutrition. And also necromancy. I regret the necromancy. That is to say, I apologize if you were offended by my necromancy. Right? I mean… isn't life, just… Death? Man, I hope this works!

Connected to the idea that you might now be more conscious of your backlog than you have ever been, there's whole platforms full of partially gnawed games interred beneath cargo shorts or in the garage maybe, waiting to be awoken by the wall adapter, provided you have the right one because there was a period there on Nintendo handhelds where it changed. If you had a WiiU, you might get a little extra use out of the adapter for the big slate controller thing in this case. As soon as these systems started being able to host all their own software, as opposed to a rotating cadre of carts, finding one has all the dynamics of buried treasure. And maybe it is! Or maybe you buried it for a reason.

I'm not even sure which one it's said to be exactly, I would have to ask in more detail and my eldest definitely did not want to discuss it at length. They were clearly in pain; it was that admixture of shame and indignation that arises from reckonings of this kind, the call to action set against someone your psychological reward structure tells you is an ally. They've… lost a friend, essentially, in a way that feels absolutely real. I grew up with online services, even before the Internet; the c64 service Quantum Link, progenitor of AOL, was something like access to the astral plane. My mother had to contend with the twin scourges of Rap and Heavy Metal, but the parenting environment I've inherited is one where amiable phantoms waft in and out of your children's lives and occasionally they are revealed to be rapists.

Michael Keaton returning to the role of Batman after passing through a metaphorical looking glass in Birdman is almost too much. Like so, so much now, the arc feels written. There's an unsettling level of symmetry I would say generally but specifically here. I don't know how many times art has to imitate life has to imitate art before we understand that these things are just synonymous. If you ever wonder why people want desperately to control art, it's because consciously or unconsciously this is a recognized phenomenon.

We are playing Godfall again, I think maybe it's just us. I don't know why. I have theories.

After a couple weeks off, Gabir Motors is returning this week. It’s true that 2020 was a rough year but getting into sim racing and the creation of the Penny Arcade iRacing league was pretty awesome. We’ve got more than 200 drivers in the league now and my son Gabe has been working on making the Gabir Motors website he built a resource for the league. Obviously I drive for the world's premiere pretend motorsports company Gabir Motors but other teams have sprung up inside the league as well. If you’d like to join us you’ll need to pick up iRacing but then just look for Penny Arcade in the league directory and send us a request. We’ve got drivers of all skill levels and scheduled events every week. I personally make sure to hit the Thursday night race every week but there are events all during the week. It’s a great group and it’s managed by some real iRacing pros not me.