Scott Kurtz
Penny Arcade and PvP creators team up for new comic
Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, creators of Penny Arcade, and PvP creator Scott Kurtz have begun collaborating on a webcomic even more off-mainstream than the ones they are working on now. Those comics were just about gamers, but The Trenches, which debuted last week and updates on Tuesdays and Thursdays, is a comic about a game tester. To sweeten the deal for the target audience, the blog will feature true-life adventures sent in by readers who are game testers themselves. It seems like narrowcasting, but the humor in the opening episodes seems to be fairly broad, so maybe it won’t be as tech-y as it first sounds.
- August 16, 2011 @ 09:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
Nominees announced for 2011 Harvey Awards
Harvey Awards
The nominees have been announced for the 2011 Harvey Awards, which recognize outstanding work in comics and sequential art.
Named in honor of the late Harvey Kurtzman, the cartoonist and founding editor of MAD magazine, the awards are selected entirely by creators. Final ballots are due by Aug. 6. Winners will be announced in conjunction with Baltimore Comic-Con, which runs Aug. 20-21. Scott Kurtz will again serve as master of ceremonies.
The nominees are:
Best Letterer
• Scott Brown, Box 13, Http://www.comixology.com and Red 5 Comics
• Darwyn Cooke, Richard Stark’s Parker: The Outfit, IDW
• Dustin Harbin, Casanova, Image Comics
• Troy Peteri, Witchblade, Top Cow
• Robbie Robbins, Locke & Key: Keys To The Kingdom # 1, IDW
• John Workman, Thor, Marvel Comics
Best Colorist
• Veronica Gandini, Mice Templar: Volume 10, Image Comics
• Laura Martin, The Stand, Marvel Comics
• Ed Ryzowski, Gutters, http://www.the-Gutters.com
• Dave Stewart, BPRD, Dark Horse Comics
• Jose Villarubia, Cuba : My Revolution, Vertigo/DC Comics
- July 4, 2011 @ 10:02 AM by JK Parkin
Quote of the Day #2 | Scott Kurtz on Mark Waid vs. Sergio Aragonés
If you’re a member of an industry that let Dave Cockrum die in a VA hospital after helping give us most of the X-Men characters that comprised three blockbuster films and you get pissy about what Mark Waid said, then you deserve to remain on this sinking ship.
When Diamond Comics can’t make money despite being a monopoly, it’s time to start listening to people like Mark Waid.
Half of the people he delivered his speech to were over the age of 50, currently not working on a project in comics, and are most likely without health insurance, retirement or savings accounts.
Mark Waid had the audacity to warn a group of people he cares about, that nobody is putting the internet in a god damn DeLorean and driving it 88mph towards the twin pines mall. And for that he got dressed down by Santa Claus in front of his peers.
That’s how scared people are right now.
And the bottom line of it all is that in about 5 years, a lot of people are going to owe Mark Waid a fucking apology.
–PVP writer/artist and Harvey Awards emcee Scott Kurtz reacts with characteristic, shall we say, candor to Mark Waid’s keynote address on copyright and piracy and white-beardedGroo cartoonist Sergio Aragonés’ heatedly negative reaction thereto.
(via Joe Keatinge)
- August 31, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by Sean T. Collins
Slash Print | Scott Kurtz to speak at Macworld (and more!)
PvP by Neal Adams
Webcomics | According to the Macworld web site, PvP creator Scott Kurtz will speak at the five-day Macintosh symposium.
“In an interview with Chicago Sun-Times and Macworld columnist Andy Ihnatko, Kurtz talks about what digital self-publishing means to creators and publishers, and how devices like the upcoming Apple Tablet could continue to tip the balance in favor of independent artists,” the description of his panel reads.
Also, if you haven’t been checking out PvP lately, Kurtz’s long-running webcomic has a holiday story running, drawn by comics legend Neal Adams. Check out the CBR interview for more information, and after the jump you’ll find a video of Adams drawing PvP.
- December 18, 2009 @ 11:45 AM by JK Parkin
Con War dispatch: of con guests and collateral damage
Con War is hell, and you never know who’s gonna get caught in the crossfire. Wizard owner Gareb Shamus’s evolving effort to rebrand his publishing and online empire and take on Reed Exhibitions’s C2E2 and New York Comic Con by aggressively counter-scheduling his Anaheim and Big Apple events has produced some nasty peripheral exchanges, even as direct confrontations between the two convention promoters have all but ceased.
Take the back-and-forth we noted last week between PvP creator Scott Kurtz and Comics Alliance honcho Laura Hudso . It started when Kurtz publicly blasted a Wizard/Shamus functionary with both barrels after the staffer obliviously sent him an email addressed to “Kurt” — hey, these things happen — soliciting his attendance at Anaheim Comic Con. Hudson took Kurtz to task for tarring all Wizard employees with a brush perhaps better reserved for the company’s decision-makers. This led to a lengthy and ugly comment-thread roundelay between Hudson — who, as the former senior editor of Tim Leong’s defunct Comic Foundry magazine, need bow to no one in the “taking cheap shots at Wizard and its employees as though the two were fungible entities” department — and Kurtz, some of his fans, and former Wizard staff writer Chris Ward. Over the course of the argument’s five pages, posts were deleted; accusations of trollery, spamming, egomania and hypocrisy were thrown about like so much confetti; Hudson’s problems during her tenure with Jenna Jameson-publishing Virgin Comics were hashed out; former Wizard President Fred Pierce was accused of buying off former Wizard critic Frank Miller; and a horrid time was had by all.
- November 12, 2009 @ 09:30 AM by Sean T. Collins
More Con War skirmishes and Con Love treaties
(Yes, I’m enjoying the metaphors. Why do you ask?)
Full-scale warfare between convention promoters isn’t universal, believe it or not — some are giving peace a chance. In addition to the recent arrangement worked out by Heroes Con and Supercon to avoid a date conflict, Emerald City ComiCon‘s Jim Demonakos tells Robot 6 that following an unavoidable conflict with Orlando’s MegaCon the weekend of March 13, 2010, he and MegaCon’s Beth Widera collaborated on choosing dates for 2011 so that future overlap could be avoided. “We ended up on the same dates for 2010 and neither of us could move, but we’ve talked and coordinated and our mutual 2011 dates will not be on each other’s dates at all,” says Demonakos. “Con planning, always an adventure.”
- November 5, 2009 @ 12:00 PM by Sean T. Collins
Slash Print | Following the digital evolution
Zuda
Webcomics | Scott Kurtz, who hosted the Harvey Awards this past weekend, shares his thoughts on what he saw at the Zuda table over the weekend. Kurtz, the creator of the long-running and highly successful PvP webcomic, has been an outspoken critic of Zuda since they launched, but had a different take on DC’s monthly webcomics contest after this weekend.
“If companies like DC can enter the Webcomics world, and find a way to work with creators fairly and bring credibility and positive attention to this medium…that’s good,” Kurtz writes. “If Zuda can light a fire under the asses of talent that normally wouldn’t make progress, that’s awesome. We want that, don’t we? Doesn’t a rising tide lift all ships? I know I’m skeptical. I like being skeptical. But maybe I’ve witnessed so many Platinums in the past that I’m a little gun-shy. Maybe…maybe…Zuda isn’t going to fuck people over.”
Also worth reading on his blog, Kurtz talks about what it was like to host the Harveys.
Webcomics | In anticipation of the release of the ACT-I-VATE Primer from IDW, Graphic NYC has dubbed this ACT-I-VATE week and will run features all week about the webcomics collective and its contributors.
- October 13, 2009 @ 09:24 AM by JK Parkin