You might have heard - either from me, or my dastardly opposite number Grobriel - that, having made the watch from the strip for reals, we immediately felt compelled to battle for it. Primed by years upon years of gruesome comic imagery we warred for days without ceasing on the lip of an active volcano until we realized we could not finish the other. It was then that we chose our allies, and the shape our conflict would take.
Sure. It may look to all outside observers as though we're running a campaign of some kind for Overwatch. It may even be true (it is true). But it's also a manifestation of an ancient conflict between opposing poles with ramifications that fork into every human endeavor. My team is as follows:
He's got a super low resting heart rate, which is what you need on the point. Dabe Alan made the awesome Overwatch: For The Watch poster on the Overwatch: For the Watch site. He chose to make me "Tantric" Tycho on there, which is what I would have suggested, but he also put it in quotes, which seems like it might diminish my vigor somewhat but it's fine. It's fine! We started playing MOBAs together a ways back, enough to know he's got an incredible mind for the big picture, and his instincts as a support are second to none. We've got some combos set up that are straight bullshit and I can't wait to drop it on their fucking heads.
Ryan Hartman works hard making PAX shows what they are, so I wasn't sure I'd be able to get him, but I got him. He's also the most competitive person I know. The amount of salt this motherfucker generates has made me seriously consider desalination strategies for the match. The hope is that this competitiveness will create a fear of failure that I can twist into a kind of psychic dagger - one I can wield against the opponent. He's talking some nonsense about playing with a fucking gamepad, for which I called him a mutant and a heretic. But there's always a method to his madness.
You already know Nika Harper, and you love Nika Harper. She tweets here, but you're already a follower so whatever. Used to rock it over at Riot, a thousand years ago, and now she legit writes fiction and maintains a con schedule I can't even comprehend. I was talking with her about some normal stuff once, like you do, and all of the sudden she dropped science on how to really connect and engage with people four years ago that I'm still trying to digest. I knew our paths would cross at PAX East, and what's more, I knew that her mercurial energy would stymie the foe. Slytherin as fuck.
Graham Stark (no relation)
Well before Graham Stark delighted audiences in Strip Search, he had already founded the LoadingReadyRun comedy cult collective and raised a bajillion dollars for charity via Desert Bus For Hope. I knew his mercurial energy would… No, I used that for Nika. Hang on. Let's go with something like, "I knew the same mind that collaboratively created an empire from nothing could help me manufacture a mausoleum for Gabriel and whatever hideous, half-dead menagerie he has managed to pile up."
He is essentially a kind of technofetishist ronin; a Josh Of All Trades, and master of several. We met him when he worked for Monster Cable, after he took our comic about them with such good nature. Since then, he's been fucking busy. He wrote for us, Games Radar, PC Mag, and probably someplace else. He did the Astro A40(!!!), the Plantronics Rig, most recently the Corsair VOID, and now he's at SteelSeries as the "Senior Product Manager For Controllers And Emerging Technologies" which he assures me is a real job and not some kind of Employment Fridge Poetry. He's a PC gaming stalwart and here's what's up: he's going to punch a hole in these people and every important fluid - the fluids they like best - are going to shoot out everywhere.
One of the conceits of Penny Arcade is that Gabriel is the bad one and I am the good one, or if not good I can at least be reasoned with. None of that is true. I am the bad knot in the shoelace; I am the lottery ticket whose every number is adjacent to the winning ones. And I super, super hope he plays a character that spends a lot of time in the air, so I can snatch him out of it and drag him down into a hole in the Earth - a hole intended for the dead. A dead-hole, if you will. I'm going to drag him down into a hole they don't even have a word for.
(CW)TB
