It’s more video gamish than comicsish, but GameCritics has a pretty good interview with Penny Arcade writer Jerry Holkins:
Getting back to the strip, has there been a time when you felt that you crossed the line somewhere, or took something too far? Has there been any really heavy fallout or backlash either from readers or developers?
No, because the process for writing it… it isn’t like a switch is thrown and the script is created and then the comic is created in a moment, and then we just upload it immediately. There’s a whole writing process, and we discard many, many ideas that we consider to “cross the line,” whatever line that may be. Typically, it’s a line of good taste which I realize is difficult to believe, but we do have standards, of some kind. In fact, if you listen to the podcast , you can hear all sorts of ideas that we discard.
Has there ever been any particular strip that you thought was fine, but the readers hated?
Well, there are going to be readers that hate every strip. I mean, that’s why we are lucky to have a system in place where we have three opportunities to enrage a person each week. Hopefully, one of those will not be absolutely revolting. But yeah, I mean it’s pretty rare that a strip is a 100% success with the entire readership. People like Penny Arcade for different reasons and different strips embody those reasons in different ways.
