Studs Up

Since today’s cartoon went up I’ve gotten a bunch of emails and messages from you guys asking for more on his background and history. I love the guy and I’m glad so many of you have taken to him as well.

So here’s the low down. Pengy’s original appearances came in a quick two-parter that really had no conclusion. The first part is here and second is here. You may notice some similarities as I have a real fondness for putting my hands on the heads of men, women and children who are shorter than me. Apparently this has translated into the comic.

Why a Penguin? Well, I loved to draw when I was in primary school. In fact this was the last time I had drawn regularly until I started Studs Up as a way to bring that passion back to my life while also making fun of people (my second passion). Two of my lasting artistic memories from my childhood were drawing a penguin and a kangaroo. I have no idea why we were tasked with that or even what my renditions really looked like, but I just remember loving it.

So I decided to work a penguin into a comic and, for some reason, decided to also give him psychic powers. I thought carefully about what having this power would be like. What if you could really predict the future? You’d probably be wrong some of the time, so what if you could predict it to even 90% accuracy?

Well, I imagined it would be incredibly annoying. Once people got wind of your ability there would be endless queues of folks with endless questions about the future. If you decline to predict, they’ll call you selfish. If you throw them a bone just to shut them up and they happen to be on the receiving end of a rare error, they’ll stil make it their life’s work to tell you what a fraud you were.

Stressful.

So Pengy is sick of it, and he’s not afraid to let you know how he feels. Yeah he may predict the future for you, or he may just make some shit up so you’ll bet the house and he can laugh in your face later. Only Pengy knows, and he likes to keep it that way.

You know the famous quote “with great power comes great responsibility”? This is more like whatever the opposite of that is.

P.S. His badge says “Pengy 4 Eva”.