Wednesday, July 23, 2008

To the WABAC machine, Sherman!

Thanks to a PVP reader more astute than the rest of us, I have gone back and dug this up:



I smell a retcon in the works.

18 comments:

R.W.McGee said...

OOPS.

Also, even back then Cole seemed strangely willing to act as the voice of Francis' parents. Interesting.

R.W.McGee said...

(Although, to be fair, in this older comic Cole is probably correctly interpreting the will of said parents, rather than being a judgmental and arbitrary douche as seen currently)

Anonymous said...

I think Kurtz will be avoiding retcons for the foreseeable future.

The question we should be asking is how should he handle this, if at all? I think the most reasonable explanation would be that it has simply been a long time and memories are imperfect. Like Kurtz, Cole and Francis may have just forgotten.

Flipping through the upcoming strips quickly, I didn't spy anything dependent on this strip so I'd say let it go. Maybe comment on the issue in a blog entry to let the continuity fans know the status of the college fund.

Anonymous said...

Holy shit! He's talking about me! I'm the one that pointed it out!
This is the greatest day of my life. Someone has recognized my talent!

Anonymous said...

Liar! I was the anonymous who pointed it out. Don't give credit to that sham anonymous.

Anonymous said...

"The question we should be asking is how should he handle this, if at all?"

I think he should probably just wait until one of his readers provides him with a 'Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free' style excuse that is both implausible and reaching that he reckons he can get away with and just adopt that as if it was his plan all along... like last time.

"I think the most reasonable explanation would be that it has simply been a long time and memories are imperfect. Like Kurtz, Cole and Francis may have just forgotten."

Oooh, that was quick. I hope Kurtz is taking notes ;)

Anonymous said...

Remember kids, good writers never let things like facts prevent them from making a joke or trying to prove a point.

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately, lousy writers also don't have such hang-ups, either.

Anonymous said...

I'd been waiting for Thursday to roll around as I'd taken a peek ahead (I know *slaps wrist*). Just have to say that today's strip has to be the epitome of lacklustre one-off's.

The setting and the "Here's a situation, let's see what wackiness arises!" stench reminds me of those awful staged clips people send into Home Video Blooper shows.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, but isn't Robbie not talking to any of the PVP gang after the wedding fiasco?

I don't know what Emily Post says about situations like this, but it might seem rude to ask about that college money at this point.

Hope that wasn't too implausible or fanboy-ish.

(Granted, Kurtz probably just forgot he wrote that.)

Unknown said...

I'm actually going to let the continuity issue slide. I think that at this point, we might as well accept that PvP, like The Simpsons and Family Guy, has very soft continuity.

That is, sometimes there's continuity, when it's funny or makes a good story, but there also isn't continuity at other times, for the same reasons.

I mean, PvP has been running for ten years, but it's been way less than that in "story time", so that leads to some continuity weirdness right there, with character ages and dated pop culture references and ten Christmas and Halloween stories in what's been probably less than five years of elapsed time for the characters.

For instance, the payoff of Francis actually losing his virginity on the predicted date? Funny, good story, so there's continuity there.

On the other hand, the fact that all the characters are close personal friends with a multi-millionaire who's perfectly happy to help them out gets conveniently ignored when the story or gag needs money to be a problem.

So yeah, Robbie set aside college money for Francis. But y'know, Homer and Marge Simpson met, got married and had kids at any of several points between the early Seventies and the early Nineties.

Not to say that I think 'Unaccepted' was good. I just don't think there's much point in critiquing it on the basis of adherence to a continuity that only barely exists.

Duck said...

Excellent comment by that guy right there about continuity. I was going to say something similar, but it wouldn't have been nearly as good, so thanks for that, Internet commenter guy who's better than me.

Anyway, if we're looking for plausible excuses for this, I'm guessing that Robbie is not the most dependable guy in the world, and if anyone forgot, it was him, although I guess they kind of all had to forget. This is exactly the reason that even attempting to create continuity for a strip like this has to just be a nightmare. And you guys aren't helping.

Anonymous said...

does Cole always run around with his shirt untucked? Seem kind of odd for his professional character.

Anonymous said...

Even if Robbie isn't the most dependable guy there is no way that both Cole and Francis forgot about what is presumably thousands of dollars. Even if they did somehow forget with all the craziness that's been going on, this conversation would have triggered the memory.

On a side note, the one problem with magically aging three years is it doesn't give you money a lot of time to appreciate. :)

Lastly, that lamp comic is the single worst PvP ever posted... if he needs some time to prep for ComicCon run a guest week or something, today's was just embarrassing. The last panel is copy/paste art at it's worst.

Anonymous said...

I'm sure Kurtz will want to spin it as 'soft continuity' or use one of the many excuses he'll be offered but we all know it's just a plain screw up.

I think he'll be attracted to the soft continuity one, personally. It'd let him pretend that all future goofs were intentional too.

Anonymous said...

Someone really needs to tell Scott that he doesn't look good in sunglasses. He really seems to think he does if that drama-queen/vid blog is anything to go by. But he doesn't.

Anonymous said...

Haha. I like that old comic.

Anonymous said...

Has everyone forget about that fan-boy movie that Francis made with Batman, Dr. Jones, Stormtroopers, etc. It was recently in RePvP section. Francis got $10,000 for college from the studios for the rights to his film. Now there's two college funds that Kurtz ignored.

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