Where did Penny Arcade come from?

It launched on the gaming site Loonygames in November 1998 and moved to its own domain, penny-arcade.com, in 1999[7].

What does Penny Arcade mean?

The name refers to the strip itself; it is one of the earliest "two gamers on a couch" webcomics and gave its title to the wider Penny Arcade brand that later launched the PAX conventions[7][3].

How do you use Penny Arcade?

Readers typically follow the three panel strip together with Jerry Holkins's companion news post on the official site, which explains the game or event being satirized[1].

Is Penny Arcade still popular?

It is a classic of the webcomic space and still publishes through penny-arcade.com and its PAX events, though the strip is no longer as central to games discourse as it was in the 2000s[3].

Who are Tycho and Gabe?

Tycho Brahe is the pen name for writer Jerry Holkins and Gabe is the alter ego of artist Mike Krahulik; both characters are the couch bound gamers at the center of every strip[7].

What was the first Penny Arcade strip about?

The debut strip shows Gabe waiting on a level to load in the first person shooter SIN, a game known at the time for extremely long load screens[7].

What was the Dickwolves controversy?

A 2010 Penny Arcade strip referencing "dickwolves" and the merchandise that followed set off a multi year argument over rape jokes in games media, tracked in detail on the Debacle Tumblr timeline[6].

Why did Fullbright pull Gone Home from PAX?

In June 2013 Fullbright publicly withdrew Gone Home from the PAX Prime Indie Megabooth, citing Krahulik's Dickwolves history, tweets about trans people, and a PAX Australia panel description dismissing sexism and racism concerns[3].

What did Krahulik say about HappyPlayTime?

He defended the mobile game covered by Kotaku on the grounds that "women have vaginas," which critics said erased trans women; he later addressed the fallout in a Penny Arcade blog post[5][2].

Does Penny Arcade only cover video games?

Gaming is still the main focus, but strips also cover television, sports, and parenthood[7].

Penny Arcade

Q: What is Penny Arcade?

Penny Arcade is a video game culture webcomic started in 1998 by writer Jerry Holkins and artist Mike Krahulik, built around their in-comic alter egos Tycho and Gabe[7].

1998webcomicclassic

Published September 21, 2026

Penny Arcade is a video game culture webcomic launched in November 1998 by writer Jerry Holkins and artist Mike Krahulik, running through in-comic alter egos Tycho and Gabe1. It helped define the "two gamers on a couch" format, later grew into the PAX convention empire, and generated some of the loudest culture war fights the gaming internet has ever hosted3.

webcomic memes gaming late 1990s memes culture war memes console war memes

Overview

Penny Arcade is a three panel gag strip built around Tycho Brahe and Jonathan "Gabe" Gabriel, the fictional stand ins for writer Jerry Holkins and artist Mike Krahulik7. The pair sit on a couch, argue about whatever game they are currently rage playing, and the punchline usually lands in the third panel with Gabe doing something violent or stupid. Even after the strip broadened into television, sports, and parenthood material, gaming stayed the anchor topic7.

The comic reads as a diary of the industry it covers. New releases, patch disasters, and console launches get skewered inside days of shipping, which is why fans treat the archive as a rough oral history of PC and console gaming from the late 1990s onward. Alongside the strip, Holkins writes a companion news post that gives the joke context, and that blog is where most of the studio's biggest fights played out, from apologies to full essays defending editorial choices1 2.

Beyond the strip itself, Penny Arcade grew into an events and charity operation. It runs the PAX conventions in several cities, publishes on its own domain rather than through a syndicate, and used its blog to host multi day dust ups that pulled in press coverage well outside the usual webcomic audience3 4.

Origin & Background

Platform

Loonygames (host site) / penny-arcade.com (own domain from 1999)

Creator

Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik

Date

1998

The strip was created by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik in November 1998 and originally ran on the gaming site Loonygames before moving to its own domain, penny-arcade.com, in 19997. The very first strip showed Gabe stuck waiting for a level to load in the first person shooter SIN, a game notorious at the time for punishing load screens, which set the tone for a comic that would mine everyday player frustrations for jokes7.

Holkins handled the writing under the pen name Tycho Brahe while Krahulik drew as Gabe, and both continued to run the site directly rather than through a publisher, giving them unusual editorial control for the era1. That direct line to readers is what later made the comic's blog posts, rather than the strips themselves, the flashpoint for the site's biggest controversies2.

How It Spread

How to Use This Meme

Penny Arcade is read rather than remixed. New strips post on the official site with a companion news post by Holkins that explains the reference, and long time readers typically follow both together. The "Tycho and Gabe on a couch" layout became a template that later gaming webcomics openly copied, so newcomers looking to understand webcomic gaming humor often start by scrolling the archive from 1998 forward7.

Penny Arcade

Overview

Origin & Background

How It Spread

How to Use This Meme

Frequently Asked Questions

References (7)