Come to My Window
Yo Yo Yo, what is up my peeps? How is my peep-ulation doing?
Sorry that’s bad but I do bad well :). It has been a nice couple of weeks with minimal to nil involvement with PVP because I’ve been in Herndon, VA (lovely town) for continuing education, setting up for the closing on my house, and helping my fiancée study for her nursing boards. Add that little vacation to the fact that Scott has stayed out of my inbox and I’m a happy recharged man.
Art – As is common with PVP the art is done well throughout and the drawing of the guy in the last frame (whose identity is revealed here later) was done well enough where I recognized him off the bat. The drawing of the break-room, the full body shot of the panda, and the drawing and interaction with the blinds are all done very well.
The only big flaw I see is the copy and paste of “the Panda’s” body in the first and second frame. While the position is ok in the first, having his head whirl around without changing any part of his body gives ME a crick in my neck. Lowering his right arm and turning the body to that side would have been more natural. I am a therapist: body positioning is part of what I do (for those who question why I critique it)
Story – I guess from the fact that the gentleman in the last frame is a dead ringer for Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace and from Whale Wars, that we are heading into a “Panda Wars” story arc. Not really the OMGWTF?! then. I really haven’t liked anything that has involved “the Panda” in the recent years (Panda Whisperer, Panda Protection agency, etc) because he’s a mute character and none of the people around him were particularly interesting in those arcs.
However, it’s the opening salvo so I reserve judgment of the whole until it’s rolled out further.
Btw never have seen an episode of Whale Wars, but this week (because they are promoting the hell out of it) the whalers are using audio weapons (cool in their own right) to fight off those who are attacking them. Maybe the only one I watch but there is potential for some good unintentional humor.
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17 comments:
I think Whale Wars is funny.
These idiots tool around in a boat named after the late Steve Irwin and attempt to physically harass the Japanese whaling fleet. They fire weapons, throw things,...and whine like bitches when the Japanese capture them, or worse, ignore them.
Most of the harm that comes their way is because of their own simple lack of basic navigational skills, their stupid attempts at Hollywood-style stunts with their insufficient emergency-grade equipment, and a fundamental lack of respect for one-another.
After watching 3 episodes of that show, I hate those people.
I was happy to see Panda, again. I had been thinking about him the night before. But, I get a strong sense of gloom and foreboding from that last panel.
That second frame just looks so wrong with the twisted head on the copy/pasted body but the first one doesn't look right either. Going on his height from the third frame, the body isn't bent over that the head would be completely obscured.
It'd have to be bent, forced into his chest cavity so that you could see the top of his head/ears from that position. I'm all for cartoon reality but there's just too many liberties in this one comic, like how the black strip on the panda's front almost halves in height between frames three and five.
I hope this arc doesn't end with an "oops, never mind" when they find out that PVP is a legitimate Panda Sanctuary.
Wouldn't you think that one of the girls would have a bamboo plant sitting on her desk for the panda? Their diet is strictly limited.
Heh. All I could think to mention was that the coffee maker is in three panels -- but no two are the same (The first is missing buttons, the last is missing a simple line). I wanted to make a "ghost coffee maker" joke (On account of it not being colored in -- similar to how "invisible" things are drawn in old cartoons) as well, but the outlines aren't white and there IS evidence of shading (Which is, amusingly, a lack of shadow) on one side of the machine.
Night Shift : Think the plot will finally show it's head by Wednesday?
And -- who knows -- we might even get a joke by then!
Only if we get a strip.
San Diego's coming up. Time to work ahead or fall behind.
But not gettin one yet allows us to really give the last one a good look, and appreciate it more fully!
For instance, is it the first recorded instance of Brent actually doing his job as PVP Magazine's graphic designer? Well, that is, ALMOST actually doing it. He's really just talking on the phone (I wish you could see it in the other panels. Could easily flip the other panels horizontally and draw in the Bluetooth headset, at minimum effort. Seeing a cartoon character talking into "nothing" is even worse than seeing real people talking on cell phones you can't see -- because the assumption in a comic strip is that there's someone just out of frame who is being talked to) and looking at a monitor... but I think we've all done that kind of work.
There's realy no excuse for why the tip of the headset isn't visible in panel 3, anyway. Brent's head is in the exact same pose that's used in panel 1, where we CAN see the headset.
Over the past several years, I don't think we ever see a character doing their main activity. We only see the humorous asides. When I think about it, that seems to be what separates comics from graphic novels.
After all, you actually get to see Batman doing what he claims to do, professionally.
[scene: PVP offices, Brent's workspace - Brent is feverishly working to produce the most awesome graphics a gaming magazine has ever put on the shelves.]
Brent [inner monologue] - I AM SO AWESOME!! Nobody can compete with MY superior Mac skills. {as we see the familiar tell-tale signs of cut/paste on the monitor...}
Heh!
Oh, so THIS is "part one" of the new storyline (...What?!).
A few notes:
- The intersecting cheek lines in panel 3 shouldn't be crossing over each other. Looks like the artist forgot to clean it up, except that he's done the same thing a few other times recently. Perhaps the artist should consider why he doesn't let any OTHER bits of linework run too long and intersect each other... because the same reasoning should still apply to the cheeks. Pretty minor detail, of course, on the same level of "missed a couple of buttons and then a single line on the coffee maker" from yesterday.
- Is that supposed to be a Nike swoosh? I'm not familiar enough with the show being mocked, but if it's "the" swoosh then it should be flipped horizontally (Easily fixed... just flip the whole panel. Bam).
- "millions of dollars", "sweet helipad" and "camper rv" do not do much to help me understand that the money WASN'T spent on a crew for the TV show. The only indicator that helps any of it make sense is the fact that there's a helicopter on the camper. I feel pretty sure that this must only be a way of lampooning what that guy does, because there's no way that could remotely work as a helipad. If it's just "being wasteful with money" that's being mocked, then a helicopter (For a mission that surely couldn't require a helicopter... The location is an office building) makes sense. A picture of a cheap camper and no ACTUAL helipad does NOT immediately make sense of which option the panda blowhard chose, especially when we're told it would cost millions (Perhaps Kurtz is also making fun of the guy's tendancy to lie on camera?) and would be a helipad.
I really should try watching an episode of that show, I hear that I'd get a kick out of how terrible the activists are. And now it might help me understand a PVP storyline, too! Totally win-win.
So is the comic strip hilarious to people who've actually seen the show?
I haven't so everything so far has been a bit meaningless.
Nah I think its coming off as a diatribe against either Paul Watson or Whale Wars itself (i know nothing of either as well)
And we all know how well that goes in PVP strips.
@ Jai - The whole thing about the truck and helicopter are simply to mirror the Steve Irwin, it's zodiac, and it's helicopter.
This allows them to run away missions without putting the Steve Irwin/Kwai Chang Caine within firing distance of the whaling harpoons/thrown magazines(?).
And the crack about the crew wasn't about the camera crew. Their paid for by The Discovery Channel. The crew he's referring to in the strip are to run the Kwai Chang Caine and it's helicopter.
It's pretty much exactly what I described at the top.
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