We've been trying to figure out what kind of psychic whorl has seized Respawn Entertainment such that the work of their hands - the Titanfall series - hasn't found success in accordance with its manifest quality. We posit a possible theory in this, today's incomparable strip.

Gabe's kids got him back into Titanfall 2. I think they might already have moved on from it, but he and Kara are still in there. They added a whole Wave Based Horde Mode thing, there's a new Titan, it's wild. But there's a stalwart community that remained in there, and they've slavered for exactly the kind of prey that Gabriel represents. Somehow engaging in perpetual battle with this brutal new pantheon hasn't scared him off yet.

Being a parent is always fraught. There's always been a profundity of horseshit associated with the practice, but you can't forget in the prosecution of these duties that being terraformed by hormones is a lot to handle too. So while they're being remade at the molecular level and you're trying to explain to your son on the spectrum that, uh, yeah, basically all people lie fucking 24/7, you have to seek out, identify, and protect the moments where you can see each other clearly. And also you have to lie 24/7.

We'll see what today's episode of The Mandalorian brings us, I guess, but the first three episodes are essentially a trilogy of television length shows that constitute - in aggregate - the best Star Wars movie Disney has produced. Solo and Rogue One evoke certain genres - heist and war, respectively - nestled in yards upon yards of comforting, nostalgic fleece. The Mandalorian just feels like Star Wars, because Star Wars was already a Western. They resonate at the same frequency.

I actually tried to get into Transformers Trading Card Game, but I couldn't, physically couldn't, because it had been consumed entire by a flock of ravenous robot worshippers. I never had a chance to do anything with Devastator or whatever. I think they have Devastator. I don't know. I've never played it. Remember? Look back up at the top of this paragraph.

Here is a comic strip about Disguised Toast getting on that Zuck Truck for Fuck You Bucks.

It's here! And I don't want to play favorites or anything but holy shit. I gotta have some of these.

There's so much that's surprising about the Half-Life: Alyx announcement. I mean, if you didn't already know about it. I think a lot of people knew about it. In fact, I think a lot of people knew about it and were telling other people about it, which was why they had to announce it. Otherwise, it's weird timing.

I'm shocked as hell that Gabriel is finally playing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which you (as an intellectual) will readily recall is a game from 2015. It's even more surprising that it's been the release on the Switch that finally did it, but it doesn't matter to me how he came by it too much. The main thing is that he has an opportunity to learn what we learned, and now irrevocably know: that ghosts, statistically speaking, are real pieces of shit.

Penny Arcade turned twenty one yesterday which is pretty hard to believe. It feels like just yesterday I was laying on the floor of the apartment I shared with Jerry, drawing the first comics with pencils and pens. I've been making Penny Arcade for half my life now and I still love it. I asked folks on Twitter to share their favorite strips and memories from the last 21 years. The resulting thread was a lot of fun to read and is still growing, so I figured I'd share it here:

I didn't mean to taunt Gabriel by not taking his advice on The Mandalorian, but Metal King Studios just put out an official mod for their incredible skirmish campaign wargame Relicblade in Tabletop Simulator and it's the most important thing that's ever happened.

Something people who like Star Wars sometimes discuss is the prevalence of Carbonite Freezing in the setting's various Expanded Universe excursions. It's undeniably one of the more rad things about Empire - and the Han that emerges from that device is decidedly more horrifying than the one we see in Jabba's palace. It's a skin-tight sarcophagus. There are a lot of things to be scared of here. But it's so novel, so experimental, that Han is simply a test of the device. The implication is that it's not common. But it seems to show up a lot. So.

I can't think of anything to say that would promote the set better than just… showing you. Behold:

I'm aware that there are concerns around the truncated Pokedex for Sword and Shield, and there's no more robust defender of the old ways than my son, born eight years after the game launched. He has levied gruesome criticism since the first trailer, was incensed by the worst excesses of the Let's Go era, but as the date has inched ever closer his mind has been seized against his will. I like Pokemon but not enough to beat them. I like to catch a few and give them punny names and then quit. He finishes the Dex. So maybe he's in a better position to understand precisely what these divergences represent; he's like his Uncle, in that respect.

I enjoy watching Judge Judy whenever I watch it, but I haven't watched it in maybe fifteen years outside of the clips Gabriel shows me. My life is not constructed in a way that makes frequent Judy Watching possible. I wasn't aware that it constituted essentially a fundamental aspect of citizenship or that Judge Judy's hunger for justice was only matched by her hunger for manflesh.

I picked up the new Xbox Elite Controller last week and have been using it as much as possible ever since. I really like the series one Elite that I had with only a few minor gripes. I wasn’t a fan of the paddles on the back as I found myself hitting them accidentally. This series two controller has a bunch of updates but I’ll just mention the ones that jump out to me after a few days of playing.