Thursday, October 9, 2008

Welcome back party

Man, commentators have already beat me to the punch for today's strip

At first this looks like an amusing stand alone strip about Francis' desire for ice cream cake. But as people have already mentioned, Skull seems out of character in his nonchalant about it. Hell, he even looks uncomfortable in the last panel.

I actually liked today's strip, but I agree with others that the punch line is ruined by Francis' second word bubble in panel 3. 

Art nitpick: panel 1...what exactly is Francis doing? I get the head sunk in/shoulders raised thing, but with his arms hanging limp it doesn't really work for me.

I think Mr. Kurtz is building to something big here. I just hope he doesn't take too long in getting to the meat of it, before suspense wanes.

19 comments:

Unknown said...

I am building to nothing. Maybe a fart joke. These are just one off strips.

Brett Schiller (Sage) said...

Btw, can we point to here when people say "first you want a storyline, then you say end it for one-offs then you don't like those. You guys don't know what you want!"

These have been a week (thus far) of very good one off strips that don't want to make me punch myself in the head like the last batch (ceiling falls on Cole = insert Stewie's sarcastic laugh). These are the strips that are very good and that Kurtz does very well (95% of the time)

Kovac said...

Brett, there are all kinds of people who comment on the direction of PvP and we all have different opinions.

It does not make us schizophrenic, we have opposing views because the "people" are actually seperate individuals

Reader said...

kurtz said: I am building to nothing. Maybe a fart joke. These are just one off strips.

Really? Colour me surprised. Would you mind giving us an insight into your creative process in terms of the personality change in Skull? And to a much lesser degree the way you've drawn him.

Is it a conscious effort, or are you perhaps just a little rusty after having not written him for so long?

*crossing my fingers that Kurtz is still reading this and that he'll reply*

Ian said...

Skull has just seemed somewhat down and depressed overall since he's come back. I wouldn't call this out of character with the 'new' skull

The Trouble said...

I kinda wish Francis had said "Nom nom nom" there in the last panel. It would have made for a great gaming reference and more importantly it would have cracked my ass up.

Anonymous said...

@Kurtz

Then why the fuck does Skull suck so goddamn hard now?

Every single PVP character is the same now.

It sure must be hard writing for a strip when every single character is interchangeable.

Go write Ding! instead.

Derek said...

Hmm, reasonably sure Kurtz's blogger name is 'scott', not 'kurtz'.

Smells like imposter.

tim said...

That's come up before. I think we're convinced it's Scott.

Anonymous said...

@the trouble:

"nom nom nom" isn't a gaming reference so much as it's an internet meme.

Derek said...

That seems odd, considering this profile isn't visible but the other one is...

If it is SK, I gotta say I am on the bandwagon of 'folks who think something is up with Skull'. A good old door-watching joke or something similar would go a long way to showing us that the real Skull is, in fact, back.

Jim Cowling said...

Didn't Kurtz say that he wasn't reading the blog anymore?

Scott said...

I think the kurtz/scott thing has to do with blogspot existing before it was owned by yahoo. I have a yahoo account name and an old blogspot name and sometimes my browser remembers the wrong one. But Kurtz is me.

I think that Skull seems different right now because all the strips he's been involved in for months involve either his leaving or his coming back. So it's hard to be goofy-wacky skull in relation to that. I think he would be somber about that event.

But now that we've closed that chapter, we can move on and just have Skull be skull again. I can write strips that have him in it because he's there at the offices and involved in the daily happenings.

I dunno. Maybe in the back of my head I know that Skull has been through things and it's going to be tough for him to just go back to being a dumb-ass retard right away.

If he looks different it's cause I've been experimenting with his look. there's not a lot TO Skull. He's mostly outlines and round. One solid color with no big black areas. So I've been trying things out to give him some more expression, etc.

Scyze said...

Is it just me or, aside from the quirks in today's strip, has Kurtz been having a really good run of strips lately?

Sko said...

*resists urge to make a 'saltine to a starving man' crack* ;)

Derek said...

I agree with you scyze - specifically, the lego batman strip and iron man strip are as good as PvP has ever been, in my opinion.

Brett Schiller (Sage) said...

Yes, even thougb I disagree with the Ironman/Batman characterizations of Brent, this week has been very good. Also notice that the fore and back grounds have been less stark the last 3 strips

The Trouble said...

@ES, true enough, but it was recently kinda revitalized with the sandvitch in Team Fortress 2, so it could have been amusing, and it would definitely be something Francis would be aware of.

Kovac said...

My problem with this strip was that it didn't seem to make much sense making me think that it was going to lead into something... but no.

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