Automata is something of a side project or genre exercise for the game nerds at Penny Arcade. Their decade-long running webcomic usually comments on the video game industry by way of the characters Gabe and Tycho, pseudonyms for the strip’s creators Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik. Tech hardware, table top roleplaying and virtually every other niche and practice of the nerd lifestyle are also covered on the site and often get lampooned or meditated upon in newspaper funnies fashion: three panels, three times a week.

But occasionally Gabe and Tycho take a break from the kind of strips that have made them the most successful and consistently funny webcomic on the internet and create new worlds. They don’t allow themselves to indulge in this sort of thing too often, but if they have a stretch of time scheduled away from their offices - say for a comic convention or book signing - they will offer up something closer to a mini-graphic novel than their usual paneled punch lines.

Often these works are about new characters, entirely outside of the usual Penny Arcade continuum. Last June they created Automata: a six page comic noir set in a 1920s-inspired world where robots are often hard-boiled detectives, frequent speakeasies, and listen to jazz. The concept really seems to have resonated with Penny Arcade’s fans,  these side-projects may not be about video games or roleplaying directly but the comics  seem related to those subjects tangentially. Gabe and Tycho are nerds and they seem to simply write the kinds of comics that they would like to read themselves.  

Now, a year later Automata has returned. With San Diego Comic Con going on this week, Penny Arcade couldn’t be created and updated with its necessary timeliness and so the site enlisted some guests to create a new story in the Automata universe. Drawn by graphic novelist Ben Caldwell and written by screenwriter and former PC Gamer Editor-in-Chief Gary Whitta, Blood and Oil started its run last Friday and continues through next Monday. The concept seems to be in good hands as several clever twists on noir and robots have been made and they’re still only two pages in!

Start reading Blood and Oil from its beginning here and if you’re interested in the series origins, the first story from 2009 can be found here.