By Grits
To say I’m a fan of Scott Kurtz, artist and writer of PvP Online, is an
understatement. I’ve been reading his strip for over seven of the ten years the strip
has been running. It was hard for me to remove the fan-itude out of the serious
interview I wanted to do with him when we caught up with him at Staple! in Austin
but Scott’s an old hand at this sort of thing and it comes through in his answers.
Scott talks about finicky readers, competing against the big boys, and his father in
this interview with Busy Gamer’s own Grits.
Busy Gamer: This is Grits with busygamer.com and I am here with Scott Kurtz of
PVP Online and we’re going to be doing an interview with him. First let me say that
it’s been a real pleasure to meet you and I’m glad you had some time for us;
thank you for that. Let me just ask you, how did you initially become interested in
comics?
Scott: Well, I’ve always been drawing since I was a little kid, but when I was in the
4th grade my mom bought me the first Garfield collection and I kind of became
enamored with the format of a comic strip. It was the first comic strip I read that I
was really excited about and really got into the minutiae, and I really wanted to get
into that myself. Ever since then, I’ve been making up my own comic strip
characters and story ideas.
BG: Where did you come up with the idea for PVP Online?
Scott: It was kind of out of necessity. I was offered the job before I had the strip.
There was a website in 1998 that was looking for content for their site and they
offered to pay me to do a comic strip, but they didn’t want to own it or anything, so it
was ideal because I would never want to sell any of my ideas away. And so they
said “All we want is for it to be about video games.” So I took a comic strip I had
submitted to syndicates, it was called “It’s Elementary”, about elementary school
teachers and I converted it from a school to a magazine about video games. That
was how it got started. It’s much different than that now, but that’s where all the
characters came from.
BG: So it’s just kind of grown from that original idea. Have you ever had to sit
down and revamp what you’re doing to continue to be creative with it?
Scott: You kind of revamp as you go in small increments so they’re not super
noticeable by the audience, but once you get a distance of time and you look at the
first five years versus the second five years, it’s a very different strip. The changes
came gradually, both in artwork and in writing, and as an artist, as a cartoonist,
your interests change, and you also get influenced by other artists you meet and
you want to do stuff like what they’re doing. It’s just a slow influx of new ideas
and new experiments, new formats, and it just grows very naturally over
the years.
BG: Have you ever had an idea for a comic and you sit down to start doing the
dialogue, and all of a sudden a little voice says “Well, Brent would never say
that!”? Have you ever had anything like that happen?
Scott: Yeah, all the time, and sometimes to facilitate the strip, I’ll kind of have the
characters speak out of character and I always get called on by the readers. They
know it too, they know the voices of all the characters. I had Skull use some
moderately dirty words one time and it did not go over well because Skull would
never talk like that and they know that, and so that happens a lot. But that’s the
negative side of it. The positive side is that when you come into a situation like
having to introduce your girlfriend to your parents for the first time, I know my
characters now to the point where just knowing their voices, the situations kind of
write themselves. You just drop them into the situation and then think of how they
would react. It’s very helpful to have that.
BG: So your characters have kind of taken on a life of their own. I know that I’ve
seen some of the criticism that you’ve received for going kind of off track with a
character. I know that it’s difficult especially with a readership like you have that is
vocal, that is prone to criticism if you do something they don’t like. Have you ever
felt pressured to do something with the comic, to take it in a direction that you
didn’t want to by your audience, or have you always stood firm on where you’re
going with it?
Scott: On the really important stuff, I’ve never given in to the demands of the
audience on that. There’s a lot of little things that don’t affect the theme or the
heart and spirit of the comic that would be fun if the fans suggested I do it. It’s hard
not to feel influenced, but if you’re going in a certain direction and the audience is
hoping you’ll go in a different direction, I think my response is to be a little sad and
hope they see my vision. I don’t think I’ve ever changed it to fit what their
expectations are. I think ultimately that would lead to failure.
BG: I imagine with a readership as large as yours, you’d have trouble keeping up
with everybody’s ideas. Now, I know that sometimes you’ll include jokes that
come from working with someone like Kris Straub , I’ve seen some of your work
like that. Do you ever feel like you’ve included a joke that maybe you’ve heard from
a reader and later on realized it or is it just an ongoing process?
Scott: Oh, I’ve done that a lot. You can’t help it, you take in so much media all the
time, and you feel the pressure. I’m sure I’ve used jokes from other cartoonists
that I’ve heard, something that I’ve heard before but I don’t remember that I’ve
heard it. As far as readers suggesting an idea and me using it, usually if I do that,
it’s because they ask and I let them know it’s coming down the pike. Like at one
convention there was a guy dressed as the Penguin and he said “I’d love to be in
the strip”, and I said “I’ll put you in the strip as the Penguin” and he was in the strip
the next day. It’s never to the point where a reader gave me an idea and then two
days later I’m like “I stole that from a reader!”. That has not happened yet that I
know of. Who am I kidding, it may have happened and I just don’t realize it.
BG: Now, when you first started this strip, did you intend for it to be a hobby,
something you wanted to do, or did you intend to take it in a business direction if it
got popular?
Scott: I never expected it to last more than the six or seven month they paid me to
do it. There was no grand design, there was no path to success charted out. A lot
of it happened on its own, a lot of it happened because it was the right place at the
right time, and people forget there were a lot of stumblings and failures along the
way too, you know? PVP failed as much as it succeeded along these last ten
years.
BG: Now understandably, with someone who’s been around for ten years, you’ve
probably heard just about every criticism you can get, whether it’s a personal
attack or an attack on your comic strip. Do you still find that any criticism or insult
that comes towards your work or towards your personal life impacts you just as
much as it did eight years ago, or nowadays it is just “I’ve got people who like me
and people who don’t”?
Scott: On an individual basis, none of them really impact me. I think that after
awhile, accumulatively it affects me. I get tired of always having to be questioned
over a period of time for certain things. In fact, there’s a discussion about whether
it’s okay for my art style to change, because I’ve been making some drastic leaps,
and it’s kind of like “Wow, are we still discussing this, are there still forums
dedicated to whether this is ok or not?”. It’s more like a malaise over the fact that
the Internet has not matured enough, but it’s rare that one comment gets under
my skin and gets me flying. It happens, but it’s very rare.
BG: Now we’re going to change the tone of this interview a bit. We’re seeing more
and more of the bigger publications getting into digital distribution and we’re
seeing Marvel come in to the digital distribution. It’s obvious that these guys are
seeing the success of independent comics and they are coming online trying to
do something like this. Do you ever see a point at some junction where it might be
like a cartoon section of the Sunday paper where you and other artists might join a
conglomerate, or is that something you all are avoiding at all costs as far as
staying independent?
Scott: It’s being avoided, but I don’t think it’s being avoided because the idea is
bad. I think it’s being avoided as a byproduct of “We’ll make money by selling
ourselves”. There’s only a certain number of ways to make money online. Most of
them are advertising or selling merchandise. The way you get that done is you
have people come to your website to see your ads and see your merchandise. So
if your strip is appearing on another website they’re enjoying the strip, but you’re
not giving them an opportunity to monetize the free content you’re giving them. PVP
is free to read every day, you don’t have to click on my ads or look at my ads, you
don’t have to buy any merchandise. But enough people do so that it evens out for
the people that don’t. If your strip appears on a different site or is a part of a
conglomerate site where that’s not happening, you’re not monetizing that strip. So
the more people that read it there as opposed to the people that read it on your
site, the less opportunity you have to earn money from your work. I think that’s why
it’s avoided. As far as Marvel and those guys coming to the Internet, that’s
inevitable. All the media is going to come to the Net, but it’s a good thing. It’s time
for those of us that are here already to kind of stop playing around and get real
serious, because the big guys are coming and we’re going to have to be
competing with them soon. We’re not just going to competing with ourselves and
the amateurs; now the pros are coming.
BG: You’ve included your father several times in your strip. He’s a mainstay as far
as comedic influence, obviously he’s got a good wit. The first time you included
him in the strip, was he surprised to see that version of himself online or did he
kind of always expect that you’d end up doing that?
Scott: I’ve always drawn both my parents as I was growing up in different
incarnations. I’ve always made cartoon characters out of the whole family, but it’s
not that my dad was surprised to see himself in the strip. I think my dad was
surprised to find out how popular he was as a character. He REALLY is a popular
character of the strip, and I think he gets shocked at how many people recognize
him from it and recognize me. We came out of the last Star Wars movie and some
fans were waiting for me to sign their ticket stubs. My dad ran up and said “You
want my signature too? I’m in the strip!” That stuff really surprised him, but I don’t
think he was surprised he ended up in the strip as a character. No, he’s very used
to that.
BG: Obviously he is supportive of your art and your strip and everything. Has he
ever tried to fly to your defense in light of some of the criticism you’ve received or
something that was said about you?
Scott: No, I think he’s pretty oblivious to all of that stuff anyway, but he did come to
my defense one time when a family member was innocently making fun of it,
saying “Oh yeah, all you have to do is draw pictures all day”. I think Dad thought I
was being attacked and he was like “You don’t understand, Scotty works really
hard and he has to worry about it, and he has a harder job than you do because
he has to worry about where the money’s going to come from, you just go to work
and come home and he thinks about it all the time!”. It was a good feeling, it was
good to know that my dad got it, but he’s oblivious to any online criticisms. I don’t
think he even knows what a comment is on a blog. My step-mother, she is very
conscious of it. She is angry, calls me almost nightly about that, but my father’s
oblivious to it.
BG: I gotcha. I think it’s probably like in my case when I’ve received criticism for
any of my writing and my father just stands off to the side, and he is pretty much
hands off as far as the criticism goes, but if it’s a personal attack then he takes it a
little more personally. I want to go ahead and wrap up because I don’t want to take
up too much of your time. I think the one question that a lot of your readers want
to know is can we expect to see Scratch Fury running for President in 2012?
Scott: OOH, I could have him run for 2008! That’s a good idea…
BG: Now you have to come up with what platform he would run on.
Scott: Oh, I gotta think about this, that’s a good idea. Talk about taking ideas from
readers… It’s my idea! I had it already!
BG: Well, just give us a blurb on your site if you include it. *laughing* Scott, I want
to thank you, and is there anything you would like to say to starting individuals and
artists, anything you want to get off your chest or give some advice about?
Scott: Buy our book “How to Make Webcomics” in a month when it’s out. You can
find it from Image Comics and all of your finer bookstores and comic book shops.
Everything I can ever say about that topic is in that book.
BG: Awesome. We’ll definitely be looking for that.
If you haven’t seen Scott’s strip at www.pvponline.com, where the hell have you
been for the last ten years? Check it out and tell Scott the Busy Gamers sent you.
Also make sure to check the collaborative book effort from Scott, Dave Kellet
(www.sheldoncomics.com), Brad Guigar (www.evil-comic.com), and Kris Straub
(www.starslip.com). It’s called “How to Make Webcomics” and it’s filled with
cooking recipes.
Grits – End of Line
To say I’m a fan of Scott Kurtz, artist and writer of PvP Online, is an
understatement. I’ve been reading his strip for over seven of the ten years the strip
has been running. It was hard for me to remove the fan-itude out of the serious
interview I wanted to do with him when we caught up with him at Staple! in Austin
but Scott’s an old hand at this sort of thing and it comes through in his answers.
Scott talks about finicky readers, competing against the big boys, and his father in
this interview with Busy Gamer’s own Grits.
Busy Gamer: This is Grits with busygamer.com and I am here with Scott Kurtz of
PVP Online and we’re going to be doing an interview with him. First let me say that
it’s been a real pleasure to meet you and I’m glad you had some time for us;
thank you for that. Let me just ask you, how did you initially become interested in
comics?
Scott: Well, I’ve always been drawing since I was a little kid, but when I was in the
4th grade my mom bought me the first Garfield collection and I kind of became
enamored with the format of a comic strip. It was the first comic strip I read that I
was really excited about and really got into the minutiae, and I really wanted to get
into that myself. Ever since then, I’ve been making up my own comic strip
characters and story ideas.
BG: Where did you come up with the idea for PVP Online?
Scott: It was kind of out of necessity. I was offered the job before I had the strip.
There was a website in 1998 that was looking for content for their site and they
offered to pay me to do a comic strip, but they didn’t want to own it or anything, so it
was ideal because I would never want to sell any of my ideas away. And so they
said “All we want is for it to be about video games.” So I took a comic strip I had
submitted to syndicates, it was called “It’s Elementary”, about elementary school
teachers and I converted it from a school to a magazine about video games. That
was how it got started. It’s much different than that now, but that’s where all the
characters came from.
BG: So it’s just kind of grown from that original idea. Have you ever had to sit
down and revamp what you’re doing to continue to be creative with it?
Scott: You kind of revamp as you go in small increments so they’re not super
noticeable by the audience, but once you get a distance of time and you look at the
first five years versus the second five years, it’s a very different strip. The changes
came gradually, both in artwork and in writing, and as an artist, as a cartoonist,
your interests change, and you also get influenced by other artists you meet and
you want to do stuff like what they’re doing. It’s just a slow influx of new ideas
and new experiments, new formats, and it just grows very naturally over
the years.
BG: Have you ever had an idea for a comic and you sit down to start doing the
dialogue, and all of a sudden a little voice says “Well, Brent would never say
that!”? Have you ever had anything like that happen?
Scott: Yeah, all the time, and sometimes to facilitate the strip, I’ll kind of have the
characters speak out of character and I always get called on by the readers. They
know it too, they know the voices of all the characters. I had Skull use some
moderately dirty words one time and it did not go over well because Skull would
never talk like that and they know that, and so that happens a lot. But that’s the
negative side of it. The positive side is that when you come into a situation like
having to introduce your girlfriend to your parents for the first time, I know my
characters now to the point where just knowing their voices, the situations kind of
write themselves. You just drop them into the situation and then think of how they
would react. It’s very helpful to have that.
BG: So your characters have kind of taken on a life of their own. I know that I’ve
seen some of the criticism that you’ve received for going kind of off track with a
character. I know that it’s difficult especially with a readership like you have that is
vocal, that is prone to criticism if you do something they don’t like. Have you ever
felt pressured to do something with the comic, to take it in a direction that you
didn’t want to by your audience, or have you always stood firm on where you’re
going with it?
Scott: On the really important stuff, I’ve never given in to the demands of the
audience on that. There’s a lot of little things that don’t affect the theme or the
heart and spirit of the comic that would be fun if the fans suggested I do it. It’s hard
not to feel influenced, but if you’re going in a certain direction and the audience is
hoping you’ll go in a different direction, I think my response is to be a little sad and
hope they see my vision. I don’t think I’ve ever changed it to fit what their
expectations are. I think ultimately that would lead to failure.
BG: I imagine with a readership as large as yours, you’d have trouble keeping up
with everybody’s ideas. Now, I know that sometimes you’ll include jokes that
come from working with someone like Kris Straub , I’ve seen some of your work
like that. Do you ever feel like you’ve included a joke that maybe you’ve heard from
a reader and later on realized it or is it just an ongoing process?
Scott: Oh, I’ve done that a lot. You can’t help it, you take in so much media all the
time, and you feel the pressure. I’m sure I’ve used jokes from other cartoonists
that I’ve heard, something that I’ve heard before but I don’t remember that I’ve
heard it. As far as readers suggesting an idea and me using it, usually if I do that,
it’s because they ask and I let them know it’s coming down the pike. Like at one
convention there was a guy dressed as the Penguin and he said “I’d love to be in
the strip”, and I said “I’ll put you in the strip as the Penguin” and he was in the strip
the next day. It’s never to the point where a reader gave me an idea and then two
days later I’m like “I stole that from a reader!”. That has not happened yet that I
know of. Who am I kidding, it may have happened and I just don’t realize it.
BG: Now, when you first started this strip, did you intend for it to be a hobby,
something you wanted to do, or did you intend to take it in a business direction if it
got popular?
Scott: I never expected it to last more than the six or seven month they paid me to
do it. There was no grand design, there was no path to success charted out. A lot
of it happened on its own, a lot of it happened because it was the right place at the
right time, and people forget there were a lot of stumblings and failures along the
way too, you know? PVP failed as much as it succeeded along these last ten
years.
BG: Now understandably, with someone who’s been around for ten years, you’ve
probably heard just about every criticism you can get, whether it’s a personal
attack or an attack on your comic strip. Do you still find that any criticism or insult
that comes towards your work or towards your personal life impacts you just as
much as it did eight years ago, or nowadays it is just “I’ve got people who like me
and people who don’t”?
Scott: On an individual basis, none of them really impact me. I think that after
awhile, accumulatively it affects me. I get tired of always having to be questioned
over a period of time for certain things. In fact, there’s a discussion about whether
it’s okay for my art style to change, because I’ve been making some drastic leaps,
and it’s kind of like “Wow, are we still discussing this, are there still forums
dedicated to whether this is ok or not?”. It’s more like a malaise over the fact that
the Internet has not matured enough, but it’s rare that one comment gets under
my skin and gets me flying. It happens, but it’s very rare.
BG: Now we’re going to change the tone of this interview a bit. We’re seeing more
and more of the bigger publications getting into digital distribution and we’re
seeing Marvel come in to the digital distribution. It’s obvious that these guys are
seeing the success of independent comics and they are coming online trying to
do something like this. Do you ever see a point at some junction where it might be
like a cartoon section of the Sunday paper where you and other artists might join a
conglomerate, or is that something you all are avoiding at all costs as far as
staying independent?
Scott: It’s being avoided, but I don’t think it’s being avoided because the idea is
bad. I think it’s being avoided as a byproduct of “We’ll make money by selling
ourselves”. There’s only a certain number of ways to make money online. Most of
them are advertising or selling merchandise. The way you get that done is you
have people come to your website to see your ads and see your merchandise. So
if your strip is appearing on another website they’re enjoying the strip, but you’re
not giving them an opportunity to monetize the free content you’re giving them. PVP
is free to read every day, you don’t have to click on my ads or look at my ads, you
don’t have to buy any merchandise. But enough people do so that it evens out for
the people that don’t. If your strip appears on a different site or is a part of a
conglomerate site where that’s not happening, you’re not monetizing that strip. So
the more people that read it there as opposed to the people that read it on your
site, the less opportunity you have to earn money from your work. I think that’s why
it’s avoided. As far as Marvel and those guys coming to the Internet, that’s
inevitable. All the media is going to come to the Net, but it’s a good thing. It’s time
for those of us that are here already to kind of stop playing around and get real
serious, because the big guys are coming and we’re going to have to be
competing with them soon. We’re not just going to competing with ourselves and
the amateurs; now the pros are coming.
BG: You’ve included your father several times in your strip. He’s a mainstay as far
as comedic influence, obviously he’s got a good wit. The first time you included
him in the strip, was he surprised to see that version of himself online or did he
kind of always expect that you’d end up doing that?
Scott: I’ve always drawn both my parents as I was growing up in different
incarnations. I’ve always made cartoon characters out of the whole family, but it’s
not that my dad was surprised to see himself in the strip. I think my dad was
surprised to find out how popular he was as a character. He REALLY is a popular
character of the strip, and I think he gets shocked at how many people recognize
him from it and recognize me. We came out of the last Star Wars movie and some
fans were waiting for me to sign their ticket stubs. My dad ran up and said “You
want my signature too? I’m in the strip!” That stuff really surprised him, but I don’t
think he was surprised he ended up in the strip as a character. No, he’s very used
to that.
BG: Obviously he is supportive of your art and your strip and everything. Has he
ever tried to fly to your defense in light of some of the criticism you’ve received or
something that was said about you?
Scott: No, I think he’s pretty oblivious to all of that stuff anyway, but he did come to
my defense one time when a family member was innocently making fun of it,
saying “Oh yeah, all you have to do is draw pictures all day”. I think Dad thought I
was being attacked and he was like “You don’t understand, Scotty works really
hard and he has to worry about it, and he has a harder job than you do because
he has to worry about where the money’s going to come from, you just go to work
and come home and he thinks about it all the time!”. It was a good feeling, it was
good to know that my dad got it, but he’s oblivious to any online criticisms. I don’t
think he even knows what a comment is on a blog. My step-mother, she is very
conscious of it. She is angry, calls me almost nightly about that, but my father’s
oblivious to it.
BG: I gotcha. I think it’s probably like in my case when I’ve received criticism for
any of my writing and my father just stands off to the side, and he is pretty much
hands off as far as the criticism goes, but if it’s a personal attack then he takes it a
little more personally. I want to go ahead and wrap up because I don’t want to take
up too much of your time. I think the one question that a lot of your readers want
to know is can we expect to see Scratch Fury running for President in 2012?
Scott: OOH, I could have him run for 2008! That’s a good idea…
BG: Now you have to come up with what platform he would run on.
Scott: Oh, I gotta think about this, that’s a good idea. Talk about taking ideas from
readers… It’s my idea! I had it already!
BG: Well, just give us a blurb on your site if you include it. *laughing* Scott, I want
to thank you, and is there anything you would like to say to starting individuals and
artists, anything you want to get off your chest or give some advice about?
Scott: Buy our book “How to Make Webcomics” in a month when it’s out. You can
find it from Image Comics and all of your finer bookstores and comic book shops.
Everything I can ever say about that topic is in that book.
BG: Awesome. We’ll definitely be looking for that.
If you haven’t seen Scott’s strip at www.pvponline.com, where the hell have you
been for the last ten years? Check it out and tell Scott the Busy Gamers sent you.
Also make sure to check the collaborative book effort from Scott, Dave Kellet
(www.sheldoncomics.com), Brad Guigar (www.evil-comic.com), and Kris Straub
(www.starslip.com). It’s called “How to Make Webcomics” and it’s filled with
cooking recipes.
Grits – End of Line
SCOTT KURTZ
Busy Gamer gets PVP'd
Busy Gamer gets PVP'd
