Monday, February 16, 2009

Valentine's Delays

Hey guys,
Sorry about this weekend but it was Valentine's and me and the woman had a great weekend planned and it turned out that way. As much as I love you guys: a) I'll take my kisses from her b) She knows where I sleep and I can't be kicked in the testicular region by you guys :).

Anyway, I did wait on Friday until that strip was posted because I wanted to combine critiques

Over His Head
More Problem Solving

Art - In both strips the overall quality of the artwork is excellent. I really liked the first strip as the backgrounds showed their movement from outside, to at the manager's door, to inside his office well. Also, Francis and Brent continue to be drawn well and Francis' cuffs (in panel one) are not glove-like.

The drawing of the little person is good as well as I'm sure it is either a reference photo or someone he knows so I guessing the features of the character comes from a real life example; drawing a little person can become an insulting stereotype but I don't see that here.

My one problem with the art is that the way the little person is drawn, just with his upper torso lower than Brent and Francis, didn't really help with whatever joke he was going for. When I first read the strip I took from Brent's reaction that something was off but I couldn't tell the problem from the drawing.

If you don't have Brent saying "...bigger" couldn't you assume the guy is just sitting at his desk? My first reaction was that the guy was in wheelchair and had to look closer to see that he was a dwarf/little person. Scott has been doing a lot of behind the head drawing and showing the view from Brent/Francis' perspective (showing the guy STANDING and being short) would have helped the punchline.

Story - My biggest problem and the reason I waited to see the 2nd strip was with Thursday's ending. Where is the joke? I know that Brent is saying "...bigger" and then a small person is in the room, that's the joke, but the context of the conversation before that wasn't about physical size and it just was not funny.

I hoped the second strip would lead me to say "well I hoped he had just combined it" and well I still kind of feel that way. If there were eight panels having them walk into the office, no reaction from Brent, explaining the situation and then Francis' anime-like response to the little person would have been better then separating them into to strips as it makes both strips feel stilted

PS - Yeah Friday's title was hokey.

7 comments:

The Trouble said...

It was pretty much immediately apparent to me that the guy was a midget. You can tell by the proportions, specifically the length of his arms, that he's considerably shorter then Brent and Francis.

The building up of Francis's expresion was pretty amusing...

Brett Schiller (Sage) said...

I think it could have been fixed even by pulling back the camera

TheOriginalJes said...

I can respect the no-holds-barred aspect of using a dwarf in the gag. But, I can't help but feel that Mr. Kurtz is going to draw himself into yet another corner.

Anonymous said...

Sage is right that the camera should be pulled back a bit - I picked up on him being a little person immediately, but my mother (who reads pvp) didn't get it at all until I pointed it out - she just thought he was sitting down at a desk or something.

But what do the little people in the pvp audience think of this? Kurtz has already pissed off his gay audience - is he doing the same to you?

Anonymous said...

(I'm of the opinion that just because pvp is an adult comic which regularly features sex, bad language and fart jokes, doesn't mean it shouldn't be pc :P)

Sko said...

"But what do the little people in the pvp audience think of this? Kurtz has already pissed off his gay audience - is he doing the same to you?"

I did wonder why SK had suddenly swapped out Cole (who'd been with the storyline right from the start) for Francis all of a sudden - but then in these last few strips, it's become clear. Scott wheels out Francis whenever he wants to say something dumb and blame it on being 'something an immature asshole like Francis would say'.

Sko said...

So, the PVPMMS main page boned for anyone else?

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