Jon22: The Website of Jonathan Dobres

Watch out! The boys over at Penny-Arcade are engaging in democracy. In need of a long-form story for the month of July, Jerry and Mike have previewed three possible story ideas over the last few days. Now, as Ryan Seacrest likes to say, America decides. America’s options are Lookouts, Automata, and Jim Darkmagic. The online poll is still running, but it contains only the question at hand, leaving no space for comments. I found this vaguely upsetting, and then remembered that I have a website.

So here’s why you should vote for Automata. First and foremost, it’s currently winning, and everyone loves a winner (unless you live in Iran). If populism isn’t your bag, I can do better. Let us examine the candidates.

Lookouts is a fun concept; imagine a Boy Scout troupe in Fangorn Forest. Mike Krahulik’s art here is wonderful, and while I’m sure that Tolkein’s ghost whispered seventeen paragraphs of text into his ear, Holkins produced compact, evocative prose. It’s clear that both their talents have grown well beyond what a three-panel comic can contain, which perhaps explains the need for a larger project. Lookouts clearly resonated with Penny-Arcade’s audience, and I like it, particularly after listening to the illuminating podcast. However, I think Middle Earth and its thinly disguised kindred realms have been done to death since, say, 2001 (or maybe 2002, or 2003), and I’d much rather see Penny-Arcade explore territory that hasn’t been so thoroughly trampled.

Then there’s Jim Darkmagic, which I didn’t enjoy. Jerry and Mike have been producing three comics per week for ten years. They’re funny more often than not, but today they badly misfired, and it’s a shame that it happened to Jim. Jim Darkmagic (of the New Hampshire Darkmagics) is, of course, Krahulik’s character from the Wizards of the Coast D&D podcasts. The naming of Jim is one of the laugh-out-loud moments of the first podcast, and he’s been a hit with fans ever since. The problem with Monday’s comic is that Jim is portrayed as a boob. In the podcasts, he’s as competent a wizard as any in D&D, but has a truly massive, shamelessly self-promoting ego. Allow me to paraphrase Krahulik’s comment in that first podcast: “Remember, when I say ‘Jim does this,’ or ‘Jim does that,’ I’m not referring to Jim. He’s referring to himself, in the third person.” To put it another way, in the podcast he’s Steve Carell’s Maxwell Smart. In the comic, he’s Don Adams’s Maxwell Smart, and the character is less interesting for it. That, and I just don’t think the writing is all that funny on this one.

Which brings us to Automata. Of all three “treatments,” Automata’s reveals the least about itself. You have to go to Holkins’s own description to get a little more background, and it sounds like a very cool premise for a story. Androids in the 1920s are almost interesting enough by themselves, but androids as an oppressed, semi-legitimate minority in the 1920s is even better. Let’s be honest. X-Men is at its best when it treats the mutant population as a metaphor for real-world minorities. The best parts of Star Trek: The Next Generation almost always deal with the intersection of Data and the rest of humanity. This is rich territory, rarely explored. The guys at Penny-Arcade approach their work in subversive, intelligent ways, and I’d love to see them apply the pen and the paintbrush to a world like this. The art is great, and the premise intriguing.  Vote for Automata.