PVP - Player Vs Player

They say that to forgive is divine, but they also say an elephant never forgets.

Me, I’m a divine elephant. I never forget what it is you did that required me to forgive you. Max is our buddy now, but there was a time when he was our greatest rival. You think Justin Duckershiem is a total doucher. Max Powers was once the king of zing!

May the Zing be with you.

Zings like old times

Where no man has zinged before

And don’t forget the animated zing

Max Powers used to be a trip-dee (triple doucher).

Never forget.

It’s the beginning of a new week and that means a new story spotlight.

Like many geek-Americans, I got hooked on “new Who” when the Sci-fi channel started to air the Christopher Eccleston season. And shortly after, I got my wife hooked. Needless to say that, like the rest of the world, we fell in absolute love with David Tennant. Every Who fan has “their doctor” and I guess ours will always be David. And of course, this love made its way into the panels of PvP the comic strip.

Interesting tid-bit about this story, it lead to PvP going color. Doing greyscale shading for the sequences where Brent was dreaming made me realize I could shade all of my strips without really affecting my workload. And after shading the strip for a couple months, it dawned on me that I could shade with color instead of grey and spend the same amount of time.

Also: although it’s not a part of this particular storyline, this Who-centric comic strip is one of my personal favorites.

It’s still hard to believe that we asked you guys for 50 large to make a webseries and you said “yes!”

Even harder to believe that we didn’t budget any of that money to pay ourselves very much. How were we supposed to know that you guys were willing to fund million dollar projects? We shoulda reached for dem stars. Damn it!

Regardless Kris and I are very proud of the work that we’ve done on Kris and Scott’s Scott and Kris Show. In fact, last night someone gave us a twitter Pulitzer for it. Which is a lot like a real Pulitzer except that instead of being a prestigious award, it’s a pretend award on twitter. We’ll take it.

In this month’s episode, fear and jealousy exact a terrible price. Do watch. It’s funny.

Click here to watch our zany antics!

Do you live in Australia or are you rich enough to book a trip to Australia on a whim?

Kris, Wil and I will be going to Australia in April to host the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and we will also appear at the Supanova convention the following weekend.

Video Games Unplugged:
Symphony of Legends

7pm, Thursday 12 April 2012
Plenary Hall, Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre

Have you longed to hear awesome music from some of the greatest video games ever, played live by a big orchestra? The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is about to make your dreams come true. This is a world-first presentation of this amazing show featuring The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Bioshock 2, Final Fantasy, Uncharted 2 & 3, Assassins Creed 2, Soulcalibur V, Civilization IV and Secret of Mana, with more games to be announced.

Hosted by Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub of Penny Arcade TV‘s Blamimations and the Scott and Kris Show, with special guest Wil Wheaton.

Produced in conjunction with Eminence, conducted by Philip Chu and featuring the Concordis Chamber Choir directed by Andrew Hunter.

Kris, Wil and I (and our respective wives) are all very excited about this trip and are looking forward to this unique opportunity to meet our Australian fans. Click here to purchase tickets.

Monday means a new story spotlight.

The most universally loved and remembered story I’ve ever done in PvP has to be the time Brent and Jade had a pregnancy scare. It’s the most appreciated set of comic strips I’ve ever written.

These strips were inspired by the fears I experienced when my wife and I first started talking about having children. I never expected other guys had similar fears.

Bit of trivia: I have come close to redrawing this arc more than once. I would love to take another crack at it, as I think that I could improve it with a second pass. But my fear of making things worse always supersedes my hatred of my old art and writing.

Maybe one day.

So Jade got me hooked on Downton Abbey, and now I can’t stop dressing up in Tuxedos to sit around my house. We burned through both seasons including the Christmas special and I’m hungry for more accents.

So I headed over to Netflix, ignored every single title it recommended me (The Nine Lives of Chloe King, Netflix? Really?) and started to check out some other British series.

Doc Martin is a charming show, about a surgeon who returns to a seaside village called Portwenn to become a general practitioner after developing a fear of blood. The show’s star Martin Clunes is brilliant (that’s a word they use a lot in the UK).

Kingdom, which stars Stephen Fry seems is a charming show about a Norfolk Solicitor (lawyer) who is always helping the odd locals in his small town. Fry is heartwarming to watch, as always.

Now if you want to really get into some smart comedy you need to check out the work of David Mitchell and Robert Webb. Peep Show is a britcom (see what I did there?) shot from the point of view of its characters. I mean that literall. As if you are looking through their eyes. Also check out That Mitchell and Webb Look” for some brilliant sketch comedy.

I was shocked at how Mitchell and Webb ended that sketch comedy show. Instead of going silly, they went for meaninful. They really delivered a final moment that left an impression. Do yourself the favor of watching all four seasons. You won’t regret it.

That is, of course, assuming you’ve already watched the first season of Sherlock. In which case, you should watch that first because it’s amazing.

Cheers! Which is British for goodbye.

Tuesday’s just got a whole lot…two-er…what?

Season two of my second webcomic The Trenches starts today. Last season, fate brought together a rag-tag team of game testers as they tried help an MMO go gold. Well the game has gone live and now the real work begins. When you live the in the trenches, the only thing being tested, is your WITS. Whoa. Khoo, trademark that phrase immediately.

Also, Kris and I have cooked up another episode of The Blamimations. Eat it while it’s hot.. After you watch the episode, if you feel like making your own blams and you own an iOS device, have we got a treat for you.

We’ve partnered up with the crew from Tinkerhouse Games to produce an official Airhornsman app. YES! The Airhornsman app lets you insert Errol Hornsby into your own iPhone videos. Then you can export them and upload them to YouTube just like any other video. Select your weapon: choose from different horns or just Hornsby’s disappointed glares. These are some hi-def, crys-clear horns, my son. And not only can you make and export your own debates with the Airhornsman app, but it’s also got a separate airhorn soundboard for real-time horn action! Hook your iPhone into the PA system at your school’s debate club meeting for the ultimate argument ender.

Oh, I forgot—we’re having a contest to see who can use our app to make the best home-brewed-blam. You could win prizes and adoration from Kris and Scott. Which some would argue is the ultimate prize.

I’ve never Larped, but I kinda want to.

I’ve had people invite me out to try Live action role-playing. Usually I’m told I would make a good ogre, giant, or half of a dragon. One of these days I’m going to try it.

Back in fall of 2004, the PvP gang tried live action role-playing with mixed results. The character of Miranda had just been introduced and I was still trying to define her has a character. One strip in particular is one of my favorites featuring Miranda and Jade and earned me one of my most glowing reviews.

Going over this storyline again made me think about Kadath and Flindell from the Blams. Maybe sometime in the near future, the PvP gang will larp again and encounter the champions of Hawksmor. What do you think?

Hey guys, I just got an email from Lucille Delacorte. She said it would be very helpful if I could get you all to take a reader survey. Her exact quote to me was “I normally don’t say thank you, as it’s a sign of weakness, but YOU should thank them in advance for taking the survey.” Easily done. Thanks in advance for helping us with this very important data gathering.

Heck, if Lucille likes what she sees, maybe she’ll save PvP. Fingers crossed!

Click here to take our spring 2012 readers survey.

Whoop! New email from Lucille. She says thanks. Begrudgingly.

As you may or may not know, next week I’ll be leaving for a trip to Australia.

I’ll be away or in the process of traveling for two weeks. During that time, I’ll be turning over the reigns of the comic strip to two very capable creative teams.

The first week I’m gone, PvP will be written and drawn Ethan and Malachai Nicolle, the brothers who created the viral internet sensation Axe Cop. The Nicolle brothers have a very interesting writing process. You see, when their webcomic strarted, Malachai (who is responsible for the ideas and stories) was five years old. And next week, we’ll see what Malachai thinks would happen if Axe Cop met the LOLbat. That’s right, the world’s craziest law enforcer is going to cross paths with the world’s first memetic superhero. And it’s all happening here on the PvP website. I mean, check out that amazing promo art up top!

But that’s not all. The following week, PvP will be handed over the Reuben Award nominated team of Mork Krabalic and Jormy Holkmans, the hard-boyz behind Pennies Arcade. The guys were heartfelt about creating a story that fit into actual PvP continuity. I told them to go for it, and boy have they delivered. This will be canon folks. They’re adding to the PvP tapestry of mostly fart jokes. You won’t want to miss that.

Does this mean our strip Friday will be a bit of a cliffhanger? Indeed it does. But lucky for us, I was able to line up two event-caliber teams to take over while I’m gone.

It’s gonna be two-times-two-times the fun.
nailed it.