Dancing with the Devil

Ok - I'll admit I was rather dubious when the latest PvP storyline seemed to be an arbitrary strike against those who weren't entirely happy with Skull's voice in the upcoming PvP animated shorts. Grinding the point into the ground... well, it seemed to be doing the very thing that Kris Straub spoke out against not long ago.

Kurtz wants to use a high-pitched voice for Skull. That's how he views the character, it's his property and his show, so no problem - that's his call to make. Of course, he shouldn't be angry at fans for giving their honest opinions on the topic - they are entirely able to feel however they want about it, and certainly free to not spend the relatively insane price of purchase if they don't want to. Regardless of which side you are on, it's not worth continuing to beat the topic to death - which is what I was afraid Kurtz was doing in this sequence.

But while the first strip or two seemed along those lines, I was pleased to realize that wasn't entirely the case. Kurtz has taken the topic and run with it, with some very funny results. But more than that, I realized what was actually going on.

See, one of the worries about this just being a grudge-fest on Kurtz's part is that it would be meaningless to the majority of readers. If they didn't watch the animated PvP teaser - or if they did so, but didn't pay any attention to the discussions that sprung up regarding it - some of the strips just would have neither point nor punchline.

But what Kurtz is doing is establishing Skull's voice within the story. Readers generally have to invent within their own minds how each character sounds. Given that this is a character that clearly engenders all manner of different possible voices... Kurtz is putting his view of the character clearly in the story.

This way readers who have read through this arc won't be as startled if they go on to watch the tv series. More than that, it allows Kurtz to flesh out details of the world that normally he can't convey on paper.

So I'm ok with that. I'm hoping the storyline doesn't feel the need to make any more low blows at those who originally imagined Skull's voice different than Kurtz did, because attacking a loyal fanbase over such an irrelevant detail is... well, let's just say that Kurtz has spoken out against other webcomic creators who have acted like that, and here is his chance to prove he is better than them.

In other news, given that I realize that I've had a lot of posts on the same strips of late, I'm making an on-the-spot, Third-Tuesday-Afternoon-of-January Resolution to spend the next few weeks focusing on new comics, or ones that have fallen by the wayside. So if Kurtz does descend into rampant villainry, or if the current Sluggy storyline proves to be as inane as it looks to be, you won't hear about it from me!

Two Funny Guys

Today is the last day of Bikini Suicide Frisbee Days.

It is strange to mourn it's passing, for it isn't the end of a webcomic, merely the end of guest filler in a webcomic. Of course, most guest strips are brief things, not weekly reoccurences - nor of they as supremely well done as BSFD.

Clay Yount, one of the geniuses behind Rob and Elliot, was able to perfectly capture the essence of classic Sluggy Freelance. Doing that in a single guest strip is hard - doing it week after week takes skill.

It helps that it isn't too great a leap from the friendship and wackiness of Rob and Elliot to that of Torg and Riff - but at the same time, he managed to use the similarities without just writing a Rob and Elliot comic with a few names changed.

The previous guest-strip maker on Sluggy Freelance gave us Meanwhile, In the Dimension of Pain... which, let's face it, just didn't work. I have nothing against McDonald, but he just had a different brand of humor, and a different style of art, that just couldn't quite do the job. It is nothing I would hold against him - after all, I don't expect perfection from most guest strips I see - but it meant I skipped every Saturday strip as hastily as I could.

But Bikini Suicide Frisbee Days? They didn't just work, they worked well. And at times, I even found myself as eager - if not more - for them as for some of the currently running Sluggy storylines.

Lately Sluggy has had my interest again, but I'll be honest - I like seeing Torg and Riff around again, but just seeing them wandering around acting like the idiots they were in the good old days just doesn't work. They've been through too much (Torg especially), and while I understand that they themselves want nothing more than to go back to being carefree and silly... it still rings a little false. It doesn't drive me away from the strip, mind you - but it doesn't do much for me, either.

We're waiting for the more momentous events, these days. I know that Pete wants to preserve the humor that the strip was founded on, rather than just run with the more serious storylines it has built up to... but it is already past that stage. Does this mean the comic should abandon humor entirely? No way, certainly not!

But it needs to place the humor within the current setting it has grown into. Bikini Suicide Frisbee Days work because they were outside of continuity, set in the past, set in that atmosphere that really was just about random amusement.

The Bikini Suicide Frisbee days are long past in the main storyline, however - and now they've come to a close for a second time.

It is no small act that Clay Yount has managed to create a series of guest strips of such quality that people are sad to see it go. Rob and Elliot is slowing it's weekly activity as well, due to the coming of Cosmobear.

Which I currently no nothing about, but let's face it - it's likely to be just as good as the rest of their works, and I'm sure I'll be there in two weeks to take in the laughs when it is released.