PVP #5
Originally posted on Comixtreme.com.
Quick Rating: Great
The PVP gang is brought to the brink of doom when they encounter Max Powers, the world’s most passive-aggressive villain!
Writer/Artist: Scott Kurtz
Cover Art: Scott Kurtz
Publisher: Image Comics
REVIEW: Cole Richards, publisher of PVP Magazine, is distraught when his old college nemesis Max Power comes for a visit. Max was always the sort of guy who was so smarmy and annoying that you wanted to kill him, but so charming that you couldn’t raise a finger without looking like a jerk yourself - and Max hasn’t changed. After first ridiculing and belittling Cole’s dreams of running his own video game magazine, Max moves into the building and starts a competing magazine of his own. That’s the last straw for our heroes, and a battle for the ages ensues! (“Battle for the ages” is defined by the amount of flaming dog poop, bees and superglue employed.)
This is the perfect issue to illustrate why people who love the PVP comic strip should be reading the comic book as well. While the Max Powers story did appear online, it was in a different form - Kurtz has added new strips, redrawn some that were on his website and put the whole thing together under a spiffy cover. For the collector, this is the only way to get PVP in a permanent edition.
For those who don’t read the online strip and want to know what all the fuss is about, this is a good issue to come in. PVP isn’t a continuity-heavy title, new readers can pick up the roles and dynamics of the characters fairly easily, plus the introduction of who has become one of the major nemesis of the online series makes this a good point to jump on.
Kurtz often makes self-deprecating jokes about his own art style, but in fact, PVP couldn't be drawn any other way -- the clean, simple style is perfect for a comic like this. It can't be too sharp or realistic (as a pin-up by Richard Domingez displays in this issue), or it loses some of what makes it so great. I only wish it were in color.
Plus, PVP is just flat-out funny. It works on many levels - as a parody of video games, movies and comic books, as a self-referential “geek’ comic book like Dork Tower, and as an “office” comedy. Occasionally, with the interaction between Brent Sienna and Jade Fontaine, there’s even a dash of a love story, although not so much in this issue.
In addition to the hysterical Max Powers story, we also have a few bonus strips, including the online comics poking fun at The Matrix (Skull’s Matrix Joke crippled me with laughter - not at the deliberately awful joke, but at his earnest delivery and Brent’s disdain for it), and Liberty Meadows fans will be happy to know that there are a few strips with guest-art by Frank Cho in this issue as well (in Brent’s dream sequence).
This is a funny, funny comic book, and if you aren’t reading it, you’ve got to try it out.
RATING: 4.5/5