Penny Dreadful

Penny Dreadful

(Her Royal Hackness, Penelope Rose Annabel Lee Dreadful)

Penny is just an average British expatriate teenager (albeit one recently exiled for some vaguely-defined but evidently horrific hacking crime) trying to make her way in the fast-paced world that is Corporate America. As the sole I.T. support staff of Know/Idea Industries, Penny pursues on a daily basis those goals that make life in today’s I.T. landscape worthwhile – that is, abusing users and mocking the boss(es).

Bad Penny

Bad Penny

(Penny’s Evil Twin? Clone?)

Bad Penny is the other half of the Tuppence. Originally a separate embodiment of all that is bad within Penny Dreadful, Bad is most recently an itinerant Penny clone raised in a vat of G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate. She has a knack of turning up at unexpected intervals.

Johnny Latex

Little Johnny Latex

(The Inflated Surgical Glove-headed Boy)

Little Johnny Latex, Drop the Cow”s resident audience surrogate, refuses to be called a supporting character: that would make it sound like he approves of Penny’s actions. Nor is he Penny”s conscience – just maybe the closest thing she has to one. He also doesn’t like the term “foil character” due to an understandable fear of sharp things.

The Bobs

The Bobs

(Bob and Bob, General managers)

Bob and Bob, aside from being identical twins, share the position of general manager and day-to-day boss at Know/Idea Industries, the company they co-founded and named themselves. If you ask Bob, Bob takes far too much credit for entirely too many of Bob”s ideas, but it”s a fault Bob can live with, since Bob was, after all responsible for finding and hiring Penny, the sharpest employee to walk through Know/Idea”s doors since … well, since the last one.

Nixon Ug

Nixon Ug

(The Unix Guy)

Nixon is old school – way old school. Nixon’s favorite shell is bash… And, coincidently, that’s his favorite thing to do with commercial software. If software’s not free and distributed with the source code, it has no place in his world. Nixon is angry that recent distros have sold out in their quest to be more like the commercial vendors. Actually, Nixon is angry about a lot of things, and he’ll sendmail you right from the command line to say so.

Dr. Cy Klopps

Cy Klopps

(Dr. Cyrus Klopps, PhD.)

Cy is Know/Idea’s resident genius. He views the world a little differently than everyone else, and as a result, often sees solutions to problems that others miss. Unfortunately, he sees them without the depth perceptions that most of us take for granted…

Shakespeare

Shakespeare

(A Code Monkey)

Originally brought in by the Bobs as a member of a large outsourced software development team, Shakespeare has remained on as an unpaid consultant of sorts at Know/Idea. Considering he was the only member of his team to have graduated from an institution of higher learning, you’d think he’d have known better than to stay.

This Guy

This Guy

(Generic placeholder for the next great character)

This Guy, although he does enjoy the occasional non-speaking part in the strip, really comes into his own here on this page. Yes, it is This Guy that serves the very valuable purpose of relieving the cartoonist of the need to reveal other cast members before their time.

The Cow

The Cow

(The Aptly-named Sirloin Not Appearing In This Strip)

Although The Cow has a great and fond spot in our hearts, he was, alas, dropped from the cast. In his absence, he continues to serve as bovine inspiration for us all.