Me niether, it's hasn't been the same for a while now.
[Webcomic] PVP Discussion
- Thread starter Dei
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"he announced it over twitter" is nice, but I'm a regular visitor of his site, and I still have no clue. No matter the reason, a post on the site is a minimum.
figmentPez
Staff member
One.
Well, one strip that was late by the syndicate's standards. I'm not sure how many weeks were reruns.[DOUBLEPOST=1389131555,1389131296][/DOUBLEPOST]
Twitter doesn't count. I follow his Twitter and I had no idea he'd said anything about the hiatus. If it's not on the site where someone goes to read the comic, it's not announcement to all the readers of his comic.
1, 1 week of a rerun. Because of a 30-minute late strip.
On the other hand, there's Schlock Mercenary which hasn't missed an update, ever, running seven days a week since June 12, 2000. Including when the servers hosting it literally exploded in June of 2008.
I'm going to add Bill Holbrook to the amazing updates list. He has 3 different 7-days a week comics, and I can't remember him missing an update since I started reading his stuff in '99. It's possible he may have missed a day or two somewhere, but I swear he's like an updating machine.
Bill Holbrook effectively is a traditional newspaper cartoonist but using his own online distribution, rather than going through a syndicate. I believe his work *is* printed in some newspapers, too.
Basically, Jeph Jacques, Howard Tayler, and Bill Holbrook all have their cartoon as their day job, and they actually put the effort in to having consistent updates, as well as additional products (books, games, merchandise, etc).
What was the last piece of merch PVP announced?
Basically, Jeph Jacques, Howard Tayler, and Bill Holbrook all have their cartoon as their day job, and they actually put the effort in to having consistent updates, as well as additional products (books, games, merchandise, etc).
What was the last piece of merch PVP announced?
Scott has been incredibly blessed early in his career with links from some major sites. Even the recent shout out from RDJ I'm sure drove a lot of traffic there. No doubt he's lost a lot of readers from his hiatuses and poor story telling. I've felt like he's lost his passion for PVP a few years ago and is struggling to continue from nothing more than lack of interest. You wonder how much bigger could PVP have been had he not been so inconsistent with updates and spent time honing his stories. I remember reading an article regarding Bill Watterson and he mentioned for every Calvin and Hobbes you saw in the paper there were a dozen in the trash. He was such a perfectionist he wouldn't put what he thought was a mediocre strip out.
Just thinking about Scott even trying to compare himself to Bill Watterson makes me... well to be completely honest without overexaggerating.. mildly annoyed.
I'm not saying he has compared himself to Watterson (not that I'm aware of anyway), but Watterson has clearly been an influence on Scott just as much as he has on pretty much every strip artist.
Scott definitely does consider himself a pioneer. I don't know if Watterson would use the term "pioneer", but he absolutely was outspoken about his beliefs just like Scott has. Scott has always been about digital art being a valid media that should be taken seriously, and Watterson about strips being considered an art form that should be controlled by the artist and not the newspapers or marketing.
I've heard that Watterson got along with a lot of fellow strip authors, including those who got onboard with character merchandising (especially considering that most of them did).
I have a feeling that Watterson probably wouldn't approve much of Scott's current work. It doesn't even feel like it's about the strip anymore with Scott. He's grabbed onto the fame that Mike and Jerry are getting (and earned) and sort of just riding along. Now that he's on easy street I feel like he's just sort of given up caring, and just showers himself with the benefits.
There was a time when Scott cared. Kept to a regular schedule. Appreciated his fans. Worked hard.
Nowadays I don't even know what to think. I mean he has definitely improved on his art. I think his characters are really well drawn. Story-wise I definitely have my complaints. I don't see him working hard anymore. All of these breaks. The short cuts he takes with his art.
Honestly I only check the damn thing nowadays because I'm a man of habit.
I'm not saying he has compared himself to Watterson (not that I'm aware of anyway), but Watterson has clearly been an influence on Scott just as much as he has on pretty much every strip artist.
Scott definitely does consider himself a pioneer. I don't know if Watterson would use the term "pioneer", but he absolutely was outspoken about his beliefs just like Scott has. Scott has always been about digital art being a valid media that should be taken seriously, and Watterson about strips being considered an art form that should be controlled by the artist and not the newspapers or marketing.
I've heard that Watterson got along with a lot of fellow strip authors, including those who got onboard with character merchandising (especially considering that most of them did).
I have a feeling that Watterson probably wouldn't approve much of Scott's current work. It doesn't even feel like it's about the strip anymore with Scott. He's grabbed onto the fame that Mike and Jerry are getting (and earned) and sort of just riding along. Now that he's on easy street I feel like he's just sort of given up caring, and just showers himself with the benefits.
There was a time when Scott cared. Kept to a regular schedule. Appreciated his fans. Worked hard.
Nowadays I don't even know what to think. I mean he has definitely improved on his art. I think his characters are really well drawn. Story-wise I definitely have my complaints. I don't see him working hard anymore. All of these breaks. The short cuts he takes with his art.
Honestly I only check the damn thing nowadays because I'm a man of habit.
Maybe a more apt comparison for Scott would be Jim Davis (creator of Garfield, in case someone wasn't familiar with his name). Davis has made no secret that he was originally in marketing/graphic design and wanted to create a character that he could use to merchandise. Sort of the antithesis of Watterson. Obviously it worked, and I believe Davis handed over the daily art and writing duties to "ghost artists" 20(? something like that) years ago. I'd also say that Garfield still exists in daily strip form because of it's familiarity through marketing, because it really hasn't had a laugh out loud strip since maybe the 80's, possibly the early 90's.
Then again, there's a swath of comic strips that remain in syndication because they're familiar, not because they're funny or entertaining anymore. Sad as it is to see them go sometimes, I have respect for artists that know when they're done telling their stories and end their strips.
Then again, there's a swath of comic strips that remain in syndication because they're familiar, not because they're funny or entertaining anymore. Sad as it is to see them go sometimes, I have respect for artists that know when they're done telling their stories and end their strips.
Speaking of artists who stop when they feel the comic has run it's course, does anyone have any idea about the existence of a particular newspaper comic; I believe it was called "James" and it ran in the late 90s or early 2000s. It only lasted a year or two, and maybe filled up two collections. It was a very simply drawn comic about a toddler named James (assuming that was the name of the comic). I had one of the collections, and I was amazed by how intelligent and adorable the comic was. I would go so far as to compare it to Watterson on an intellectual basis.
I had intended on posting some examples, but for whatever reason I can't seem to find any proof that the comic existed at all. I can't even locate my collection, as I think I may have carelessly destroyed it over the years. There isn't any indication online that the comic exists. At least not under the name James. Although random searches for "toddler comic strip", "little boy comic strip" yield nothing as well. Maybe one of you fine folks has a lead.
Just when I was about to give up hope I came across the collections by digging deep through Amazon.com
The comic is indeed called "James" and is by Mark Tonra.
I also found he has another comic called "Top of the World"
[DOUBLEPOST=1389386007,1389385973][/DOUBLEPOST]
The comic is indeed called "James" and is by Mark Tonra.
Thank you, sir! You beat me to the revelation.
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Scott finally showed a copy of the magazine.
I've never really believed they were in the magazine business anyway. In fact I've never believed they made or sold anything in that strip. Well I guess I knew they did, but it hardly ever seemed like anything important to the series. Every once in a while one, when Scott runs out of video game jokes I guess, one of the characters will say along the lines of "oh my gosh. The business is going bankrupt.". Then they spend a week or two fixing it. Happens quite a bit. And honestly that entire two weeks I'm bored out of my mind because I don't care. As far as I care, if they lose the business that means more strips dedicated to video games and that's a good thing.
GasBandit
Staff member
Penny Arcade still links it from their site. Which is probably its only source of hits.
I also don't think Kurtz has anything to do with the comic anymore. Previously he was just doing the art, and now someone else is.
He was doing the art... then he had his gofer doing the art... now someone else is doing that art because apparently even his gofer is too good for it. Which is a shame because I actually like Trenches more than PVP, even as flawed as it is.
About the Artist
second artist:
Ty Halley is a ghost with an extensive resume in convincing mortals he is alive. He runs his own webcomic, Journal Comic, was a contestant on PA's Strip Search, and does a secret third thing that if you knew would give you power over him. If you want to contact Ty for flash animations or writing, be sure to include pictures of burning sage so it'll go through his ghost-spam filters.
Third and current:
You might know her from the Penny Arcade webseries "Strip Search" or perhaps from her webcomic "Phuzzy Comics" that's been running since 2007. But even if you didn't know her until now, none of that matters. Now you can know her as the fancy cartoon artist on "The Trenches" since late 2013. You may also continue knowing her as that other stuff I mentioned before. She's more than capable of being multiple things at once. That's just the Monica Ray style.
second artist:
Ty Halley is a ghost with an extensive resume in convincing mortals he is alive. He runs his own webcomic, Journal Comic, was a contestant on PA's Strip Search, and does a secret third thing that if you knew would give you power over him. If you want to contact Ty for flash animations or writing, be sure to include pictures of burning sage so it'll go through his ghost-spam filters.
Third and current:
You might know her from the Penny Arcade webseries "Strip Search" or perhaps from her webcomic "Phuzzy Comics" that's been running since 2007. But even if you didn't know her until now, none of that matters. Now you can know her as the fancy cartoon artist on "The Trenches" since late 2013. You may also continue knowing her as that other stuff I mentioned before. She's more than capable of being multiple things at once. That's just the Monica Ray style.
New PvP introduces a new character...The accountant, a black woman we've never seen before (he lampshades this himself).
Last Table Titans introduces a new character...a black guy.
Did he look at his own strips, go "oh my, I'm too white-centered since I forgot Ray existed! better introduce some people of color!", or am I just reading too much into this?
(more generally, I get really tired of most American shows having one (1) black person, one (1) hispanic-looking guy, one (1) intelligent/important woman, etc. In some contexts it makes sense (police teams are quite mingled). In others it doesn't. Shoehorning in a white/black/whatever character in a family sitcom often feels out of place. I know - "white guys won't watch a show about a black woman" - well, they never will if you don't make those shows. This is filling in quota to be PC and jsut underlines that color/gender is still an "issue")
Last Table Titans introduces a new character...a black guy.
Did he look at his own strips, go "oh my, I'm too white-centered since I forgot Ray existed! better introduce some people of color!", or am I just reading too much into this?
(more generally, I get really tired of most American shows having one (1) black person, one (1) hispanic-looking guy, one (1) intelligent/important woman, etc. In some contexts it makes sense (police teams are quite mingled). In others it doesn't. Shoehorning in a white/black/whatever character in a family sitcom often feels out of place. I know - "white guys won't watch a show about a black woman" - well, they never will if you don't make those shows. This is filling in quota to be PC and jsut underlines that color/gender is still an "issue")
Um, maybe there's a trend but I don't think you can say the characters have been shoehorned:
- It's too soon to say with PvP, but it's a dumb strip anyway
- The Table Titans character had already been introduced and it's probably the one that makes most sense to add to the group short of creating a new one
- It's too soon to say with PvP, but it's a dumb strip anyway
- The Table Titans character had already been introduced and it's probably the one that makes most sense to add to the group short of creating a new one
Yeah, think of all you could have done instead.
I can't remember the last time I looked at this thread OR PVP but here I am. Totally not surprised that the same problems are happening.