Penny Arcade (webcomic)

Penny Arcade is a webcomic and blog written by Jerry Holkins and illustrated by Mike Krahulik. It focuses mainly on video games, the video game industry, and gamer sub-culture.

Penny Arcade is among the most popular webcomics currently online, and it hosts both a children's charity (Child's Play) and a gaming convention (PAX) each year. It debuted on November 18, 1998 as a regular feature on the web site loonygames. The authors launched their own site in late 1999, and new comic strips are posted every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

The strip regularly features the two authors' cartoon alter egos, Tycho Brahe and Jonathan Gabriel ("Gabe"), who represent Holkins and Krahulik respectively. Holkins and Krahulik have explained that the characters were not originally meant to represent them, thus they are not caricatures. The decision to have the characters represent the authors was made very shortly after the series began, and the fact that they didn't at all resemble them has never been considered an issue. The two characters spend much of their time playing and commenting on computer and video games, forming the basis of the humor in the strip. Another theme, albeit less common, is the use of conflicts between the two in real life. The strip also sometimes refers to other Internet subcultures, and often features in-jokes that are explained by the news posts accompanying each comic, usually written by Holkins.

Both Krahulik and Holkins make a living from Penny Arcade, placing them in a very small group of web comic artists devoted to their creations full-time. Originally, Penny Arcade was supported solely by donations. A graph on the main page indicated how much people had donated that month. After hiring Robert Khoo as their business manager, Holkins and Krahulik switched to a different income stream based on advertising and merchandise revenue alone. According to Holkins, the website handles more than two million pageviews daily (excluding forum traffic). On 2005-11-13, the website was given a face lift in celebration of their seventh year running and to match the designs of the Child's Play Charity and Penny Arcade Expo websites.