Webcomics Weekly #29

This weeks podcast is two hours long, but worth listening to, if only to hear Kurtz curse like a sailor. It provides a few insights into how Scott approaches his business.

Favorite Strips?

Hey folks -- do you have favorite strips? From time to time it would be nice to be able to point to a strip that's at the top of its game.

I wish PVP were set up with Oh No Robot. It would make searching a hell of a lot easier.

Get Well Soon

Staph infections are no joke. Take care, Scott.

Make it quick please.

One-panel strips (close enough -- Nature Waits for No Game)? I'm a fan. Quick, to the point, little room for error, lots of room for focusing on the joke.

Safety is for Chumps

Personally, I couldn't care less if safety is accurately portrayed in a comic (Safety first, kids). It's like the warning on coffee cups that your coffee is HOT!

I firmly believe some people shouldn't be let out of the house until they realize that the coffee they buy is going burn them if it spills, and that flying, paint-filled projectiles can take an eye out.

And that comics aren't real.

Kurtz FTW: The BEST ending EVAR

Scott K. went to town with today's strip (Yet Another Letdown) and let loose. Twice the panels, twice the excitement, dare I say four times the emotion -- it was awesome.

Some might say it's unprofessional and maybe it is, but this ain't the newspaper, this is the web. I highly doubt this would ever make it into a PVP book, in fact, it's an opportunity to sell more books. I'd wager a good 10-15% more folks would buy the book with the "real paintball ending!" in it than would otherwise.

That's good stuff. Good humor; good business. Good to get that off his chest, perhaps.

(And BTW, before anyone starts taking bows: There are plenty of other sources of criticism in PVP's very own forum -- no need to assume this is thanks to us.)

Uppercut! Uppercut! (waiting for the Body Blow...)

There are two things that really bother me about the latest strip (Shoryuken):

1. There has been nothing to indicate that the other characters know why Skull freaked out -- how did Marcie know he had eaten mushrooms?

2. The transition, or lack thereof, from the second panel to the third is really jarring. It would have been nice if the second panel had had some sort of exclamation from Miranda, making the third panel feel less like a non-sequitur. In fact -- it would have been kind of awesome if Skull had booted all over Miranda (a perfectly reasonable response to coming off of shrooms :), then he really would have deserved that uppercut.

There is one thing I really like:

1. Skull in the last panel is great. I love the extra touches like the lines in the teeth and the shade lines around his eyes.

There is one thing that bugs the anal grammarian in me:

1. "Mushroom induced" should be hyphenated.

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Now that I think about it, this whole storyline could have been an opportunity for some serious character development. With Skull going off the rails, it would have been interesting to let the characters react to that in different ways. Some who know him well would assume something bad had happened to him, those who didn't could have wondered if he had gone wild somehow (especially after grabbing Francis). It could have made for some nice tension. Alone in the Dark and Night Games opened the door for some darkness which I was sad to see go with Marines, we are LEAVING!

I'm not really criticizing here, just imagining... It's possible Kurtz didn't want to include such heavy elements after the divorce and in-law stories, which, as much as I didn't care for them, had some nice character development.