[Webcomic] PVP Discussion

Man, I forgot to check PvP out again for a few days, and... Still the same comic.
I went and checked, there have been 11 updates since August first. That's 11 in 45 days, or about 2 per week. For an alleged 5-times-a-week comic.
This is a new, fresh reboot ; a chance to start over and attract a new audience with a line hiatus before it to prepare new material. The art is still mostly reused bits pasted together.
How can Scott think he's doing okay? If I phoned in my work that badly I wouldn't have a job left.
I don't mind irregular or slow updates, and I don't mind reused art, and I don't necessarily mind not every strip having a brilliant punchline of joke, but all three? Along with the most generic of settings and no memorable characters left?
What's the point?
There's no point. Regardless of whether the reason for the poor updates is helping his dad or just out of pure laziness there's really no need to carry on the comic.
 
He's doing updates fairly often for Table Titans stuff via his Patreon, where he's showing the entire process of how he writes the book to how he draws it. I suspect that's where he has a lot of focus on ATM, as getting the book out is likely an important source of income for him. He's also pushing his Adventure Journal Kickstarter fairly hard, which is likely another good chunk of change. That's on top of streaming his work on Twitch.

Honestly? He's probably just focusing on paying projects right now, which is probably the most responsible thing he could be doing. Just announce a hiatus for PVP, Scott!
 
EDIT: You guys beat me to making this point, not sure why I didn't see the last two posts, I think I had my browser window open too long.

I threw a few bucks at his Patreon to see what was in there and... it actually hasn't been updated since June. He's not even posting the comic to it, to say nothing of any kind of behind-the-scenes content promised.

Know what is getting regularly updated? The Table Titans patreon. New lineart comic pages are getting put up multiple times a week. I don't know how much of that creative process is actually Scott or if it relies more on someone else on their team, but basically Scott has two Patreons actively going on with entirely separate content, similar in size and income, one of them is getting regularly updated, while his "main" one has given his paying subscribers fuck-all for the last 3 months.

I think I'd love to see Scott at least admit that PVP is dead and try to move his subscribers over to Table Titans. PVP is his baby, if he wants to slow it down and update infrequently that's his right, but while still actively collecting monthly payments from fans and delivering nothing? It's just a middle finger to his PVP readers at this point (which I guess is fairly on-brand, that's how Halforums was birthed, after all). I kept going back to PVP, giving Scott the benefit of the doubt, 2020 is fucked for everyone, dealing with his Dad's decline he can't keep up with the comic right now, ect. But looking into the Patreon situation, it firmly looks like he's just bored and his attempt to reboot failed to hold his interest.
 
Update today, Sept 23rd.
Scott's gonna be 50 next year. Changes coming. See my Patreon.
So mostly the usual.

--Patrick
I thought you meant comic update. But no. Just news.
So... mostly the usual.

I'm making some changes to the way I produce my work, and shifting focus between some of the projects I'm working on. PvP is going to be moving to a 3 day a week schedule. We’ll be posting new strips every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for the foreseeable future.
Is it just me or is he saying this like he means that he is LIMITING the content of PVP strips by going to a three-day schedule?
 
He's apparently working on another graphic novel. Honestly, if that is what he wants to do with his time and just crank out graphic novels for print, I think it'd be a good career move for him.
 
So we're 6 months into PvP 3.0 and...I don't see the point. By far the biggest storyline has been scratch finding his way back to being a cat, aka how it was before the reboot. There were some new side characters promised at the beginning but they've barely been there. It still feels like they're setting up the status quo for the new timeline. It felt like Brent & Jade's daughter was supposed to be the new main character and the other characters at the office being the rest of the main cast, but its just turned into the Scratch Fury comic like it has been forever.
 
So we're 6 months into PvP 3.0 and...I don't see the point. By far the biggest storyline has been scratch finding his way back to being a cat, aka how it was before the reboot. There were some new side characters promised at the beginning but they've barely been there. It still feels like they're setting up the status quo for the new timeline. It felt like Brent & Jade's daughter was supposed to be the new main character and the other characters at the office being the rest of the main cast, but its just turned into the Scratch Fury comic like it has been forever.
Part of the problem might be that the new characters aren't very funny or interesting. Incompetent yoga guy is just that, incompetent yoga guy. Sassy receptionist is just that, sassy receptionist. Even new Francis is basically just Cole. Sure, they might turn into interesting characters with depth somewhere down the line, but right now they're not, and it seems like Scott doesn't quite know how to develop them either, so he's defaulting to what he knows: Scratch's antics.
 
Since the reboot, there have been:
53 comics about the humans
34 comics about Scratch.
Out of a total of 79 (I've counted some twice as it was humans interacting with Scratch)

That's 79 comics in 185 days, or almost exactly half a year. Oddly, despite some weeks going by without any updates, he's actually on-schedule assuming a three-times-a-week update schedule. There's some very definite padding comics in there, but you can't *really* fault him for that.

As storylines go:

14 comics introduction
5 comics "Cole is old now"
6 comics "Cole visits the new staff" (why is this storyline even here? This is just introductions all over again)
12 comics Scratch as AI, trying to get a new body
6 comics Skull and Scratch
4 comics "Infuencers are weird LOL"
14 comics "Teens should talk to their parents"
17 comics Scratch creates Frankencharlie
(I'm one short somewhere, but I'm too lazy to go through it all again)

We're half a year in, and we've had variations on "Meet the new cast!", a bunch of Scratch-related "getting back to the status quo", an aborted storyline about influencers, and an arc about Katie talking to her mom.

Now, 3/week isn't a problem. Scott should probably learn to spread them out more and work with a decent buffer, so he would've actually hit 3 every week instead of hitting 5 some weeks and 1 on others, but the number of updates isn't bad.
The real weakness is the storylines. About 1/3rd of everything has been introductions, 1/3rd has been about going back to the old, and 1/3rd has been new storylines...One of which went nowhere and the other was so bland it could've fit into any sitcom style comic or show, Scott simply doesn't seem to have any inspiration for stories here. "Influencers, weridoes, am I right?" is a very, very weak hook and he did absolutely nothing interesting with it. "You should talk to your mom" and "I have marriage issues and I need to talk about them" aren't hooks at all - they're a basis to construct a narrative on, not actual content. In 14 comics, we've learned exactly nothing interesting about Francis & Marcy, or Katie & Jade, that couldn't have been implied or shown between gags or another storyline.

I could make a compare-and-contrast with the new Real Life Comics, as there definitely are some parallels, but...Really, there's no comparison. RL has been consistently updating, commenting on real life (hah) developments while maintaining the main story arc, has blended major and minor arcs, has clearly evolved from the earlier iteration, and is clearly going somewhere new and interesting post-reboot.
They're both reboots of "big" webcomics from 20 years ago, they both still rely heavily on re-use of art, they're both technically 5x/week updaters, and they've both been going for about half a year (May 18th for PvP, June 15th for RL). RL has better art, more interesting characters, made the bridge between old and new, is more on point, has better single-day punchlines and better pay-offs for earlier set-up, storylines with more content. It's really kind of hard to justify continuiing to read PvP for any reason but nostalgia at this point.
 
You're clearly confused. That's last week's Wednesday update, we're Monday now so there should be two more since.
In fact, that's the fifth update since my post earlier. That means it's the November 30 update. Clearly not the last one.
Yes.
You know, when Scott announced he was moving to three comics a week my initial thought was "he's going to increase production? That won't work"
 
You know, when Scott announced he was moving to three comics a week my initial thought was "he's going to increase production? That won't work"
Yeah, I was kinda hoping he'd made a bit of a backlog and that 3/week was going to be more attainable for him than 5/week. You know, better 3/wk when expected than 4/wk but you never know what day there won't be one. Sadly, it hasn't gotten any better , on the contrary. As I outlined above - for the past 5-6 months he's managed an average of 3/wk, it just wasn't consistently spread out. If he had a bit of a buffer, he should've been able to keep that pace going.
 
And so much for the possibly fun decorating the office hijinks. Now it's another Scratch Vs Christmas storyline that, at Scott's current comic pace, will be resolved just before Easter.
 
Dear Scott,

Calling your Santa "Sinter Klaas" is insulting, offensive, and frankly, cultural appropriation. Santa is inspired by Sinterklaas, but is most definitely NOT THE SAME CHARACTER. He also has his own holiday 3 weeks over, which is only a good thing because that'd mean the Christmas storyline would be over faster.
 
Dear Scott,

Calling your Santa "Sinter Klaas" is insulting, offensive, and frankly, cultural appropriation. Santa is inspired by Sinterklaas, but is most definitely NOT THE SAME CHARACTER. He also has his own holiday 3 weeks over, which is only a good thing because that'd mean the Christmas storyline would be over faster.
and saint nick would like a word with all of you pretenders. :p
 
In that case, he was some punk bitch long 'time 'go with brown skin who went 'round stealin' kids and negroes off of decent people who's worked hard to afford those slaves. Damn commie bastard.
 
And, completely predictable, new storyline so he manages to update on time. I give it 2 or 3 updates until he runs out of steam on this and lets it peter out again.
 
And, completely predictable, new storyline so he manages to update on time. I give it 2 or 3 updates until he runs out of steam on this and lets it peter out again.
I know she's blogging but having her stare at the 4th wall like that in each frame is unnerving.
 
Came across this today in my stuff from the move. I still haven't gotten around to framing it yet but I should.
When Scott was going full digital he offered to sell his past strip drawings for pretty cheap to make sure they went to a good home.
They were all random but I got lucky and ended up with a Halloween comic.
I did like the comic once. Back when it was actually a funny strip about a bunch of nerds.

1611941966586.png
 
I admit, sometimes things got out of hand with us back then. Some locks and ban hammers were warranted. But most of us, that I recall, were hardly "jerks" to him.
 
Top