A DECADE OF PVP IV: IMAGE AND THE FUTURE

[MattBrady]

by Zack Smith

Click here for Part One, here for Part Two and here for Part Three.

Our look back at PvP’s decade-long history finally concludes with a special extra-length chat with creator Scott Kurtz, as he discusses what it’s been like working at Image, branching out into other projects, and getting to work with one his idols…while also taking a look into the strip’s future.

Newsarama: Scott, when you started publishing PvP reprints through Image, you redrew some of the earlier strips. Why did you decide to go that route?

Scott Kurtz: Again, it was just that I didn’t know what to do with PvP at Image! At that time, I was drawing my strips in a different format, and Frank (Cho) had encouraged me to switch over to the wider format that’s in newspapers, the same as Liberty Meadows. And so, by doing that, I kind of invalidated the ability to put any old material in the book.

I had to come up with all this new material, so I think I redrew some of the older strips and storylines, and tried to come up with new storylines. It was tough. It was tougher than doing the Dork Storm books. It just never occurred to me to just start reprinting strips! But it was all because Frank encouraged me to change the formatting of the strip, and make it more like Liberty Meadows, so we’d have a unified look over there at Image. (sighs) Yep.

NRAMA: How has the move to Image changed things for you?

SK: Image…Image was like a dream come true, because (my brother and I) grew up when Image took off, and it was huge. My brother was just…he was an Image Zombie, you know? I was a few years older than him, and I’d been in love with the Marvel stuff, and he loved the Image stuff the way I loved the Marvel stuff. I would read X-Men and Doctor Strange, and he would read Spawn and Savage Dragon and Youngblood.

And he would say, “One day you’re going to be at Image, one day you’re going to be at Image.” I would always say, “No, Brian, because I do different kinds cartoons, I don’t do superhero comics.” And he would say, “Oh no, you’ll be at Image, your stuff is so good that they’re going to publish you anyway.” He would always maintain that.

So, to get there in the roundabout way that I did…I mean, at first, I was terrified of it. I didn’t want to call anyone; if anyone at Image called me, I was sure it was because they were going to cancel my contract. I never made any suggestions. I never called to say that I didn’t like a certain thing; it’s not the fault of the designers over there, but they would put a cover together and put the logo in a color I didn’t like, and I wouldn’t say anything because I was afraid they would can me!

But when I got to Image, the first thing they did was call me to say they had gotten me the cover of Previews! It was the first Image issue, and they were going to put PvP on the cover of Previews that month. And Frank had agreed to do a couple covers for the first few issues to really drive sales. And I asked Frank, “Have you ever had the cover of Previews?” and he said, “No, no, that’s huge.”

A lot of people really got mad that I got that. I remember I was at a con that year, and people were asking, “How did you get the cover?” I was terrified, thinking, “Oh no, this is going to be a huge failure, nobody’s going to buy the book, everyone hates me because I got the cover of Previews because I got the cover…”

And then I figured it out. Everyone at Image is fantastic – Stephenson, Larsen, Jim Valentino – they really believe in PvP. You know, they made their money, and they give it a big push. Even Mark Silvestri and his wife Bridget, they really love PvP, I talk to them all the time.

I’ll sit down and talk to Larsen and say, “Hey, why doesn’t Image ask for a piece of the movie rights or something?” And he’ll say, “Why? We don’t need any of that. We’re not here for that. We’re here to help people do their own thing.”

I’ll get angry when someone leaves Image, like when Bendis left to go to (Icon) and once Flight left Image, and I’ll say to Larsen, “Man, I’m so angry! I’m gonna slam them on the message boards!” And he’ll say, “No, don’t do that! It’s okay that they left!” And I’ll say, “But if they wanted to come back, you wouldn’t take them back, right?” And Larsen will say, “Oh, I would take them back, absolutely, in a heartbeat.” They believe in (the creator’s freedom) more than I do, and I’m an indy creator – I should believe in it more!

I was a big fan of all black-and-white comics, back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Bone and (Scott) McCloud and Cerebus and the Creator’s Bill of Rights, but Image is really the living embodiment of that still being around. Eric and Mark and Todd and Jim Valentino and Jim Lee – I know he’s at DC now – all those guys broke free and started their own company and do their thing and let us little guys come in and benefit from that. The tradeoff is that we (hopefully) help to build the company’s presence and market share, and in exchange we get to benefit from the trail they’ve blazed.

And they care. They really love the medium, and really love the creators, and they don’t take any editorial power over out stuff, but the great thing is, they have suggestions as well. When we put the first PvP trades out, I was just going to call them the “PvP Archives,” Volume One through whatever…and Larsen was like, “Don’t do that! ‘Archives’ is boring! Come up with clever names!” I was like, “No, no, no, it’s going to be ‘Archives,’ because it’s a web comic, people will know that it’s an archive.”

He said, “Well, okay, but ‘Archives’ is boring as shit, but do what you want…” and I thought about it, and I decided he had a point, and I started giving them clever names. But it wasn’t a big deal, he wasn’t forcing it, he would have put “Archives” on if I wanted to, we wouldn’t have come to blows. It was just a good suggestion. And then (laughs) that son of a bitch started making Savage Dragon Archives! Put that in the article!

NRAMA: Done! Now, in the last few years, you’ve branched out into some other mediums. You’ve done the PvP cartoon, longform comics such as Truth, Justin and the American Way and of course, the How to Make Webcomics book. What’s it been like getting out there and trying new things in addition to PvP?

SK: It…it is incredible. I thought I was living the dream before. But with PvP, now that it’s 10 years later, I’m done worrying that it’s going to fail. I’m going to take some chances.

2007 was a year of really grand experiments. I moved out of the house and got some office space, and we brought our storage in-house, so we ship everything ourselves. We did the animated series on the web…it was a matter of doing some things that don’t really pay off, like the podcast, there’s no real revenue from that, but it’s a way to grow exponentially creatively.

The more people that you meet, the more ideas get passed around, and, you know, you get excited about it. I love con season. As much work as it is, that’s when we get to hang out with our officemates. We’ll get to talking – “Is that the book you’re working on? What format is it? Oh my God, that’s amazing!” – you just get charged up.

And there’s so many things you can do, you don’t have to pigeonhole yourself. You can do your comic strip, and then you can see this amazing artist from Italy, and call up your friend you used to do comics with and say, “Let’s do something with Guiseppe (Ferrario),” and talk about it in your podcast, how you’re making it…you’re selling yourself, not just the one thing that you do, so you can diversify and branch out It’s good for business, and good for creativity, and hopefully it’s good for the medium. Hopefully all that creativity grows and inspires more people to go and get out there and do their own thing.

That’s what we’re trying to do with the How to Make Webcomics book. We were talking about how it’s kind of dismal because there’s no space in the newspaper for new strips. And we don’t necessarily mean ours –

NRAMA: Well, you have had those incidents, where you were offering the strip up to newspapers unedited.

SK: Well, listen, that was short-sighted on my part. There is so much work that goes into dealing with papers. Every paper wanted something different, and I didn’t have the clout of a syndicate so I could go, “No, this is what you’re going to get.”

I was dead wrong about offering it free to newspapers. I mean, dead wrong. I could not have been more wrong. That was amazingly shocking to me. Newspapers would rather you charge for it. Because if you offer it for free, it’s worthless – why would it be any good if they’re not charging for it? I would have fans who worked at newspapers, and they would say, “I offered the strip to our comics page, and as soon as they heard it was free, they didn’t want it.” I really botched that whole thing.

But thank God that I did, because I got into maybe four or five papers total over the course of the year, and they were murder. You have to stand up to the editors, some of them won’t run the strip at all, some wouldn’t run the URL because they were afraid that while the strips I sent them were family friendly, kids would follow the URL back to the site and see less family-friendly strips and the paper would get letters.

There’s nothing wrong with doing family-friendly strips for newspapers – it’s a great medium if you can get it! But it’s impossible to get it now, because nobody retires, nobody wants to leave. No one says, “If I die or retire, take my strip out of the paper.” They all opt to leave it in, possibly to generate money. There’s no room for anyone new.

And the thing is, the strips in the paper are old for my generation! My generation’s the guys who are in their mid-to-late 30s right now, and we’re starting to realize we’re not the youngest generation, there’s probably two generations below us, the guys in their 20s and the guys in their late teens who are starting to make webcomics. And the guys who are in their teens haven’t ever read newspaper comics. Maybe the guys in their 20s grew up with Garfield and Peanuts, but the guys in their teens? No way. They were inspired by webcomics.

So it’s kind of scary, because there’s no funny pages to inspire kids any more. It’s just us. So we were talking about it, and I said, “Look, we should right a book, so the kids right now will know what to do. All the books in bookstores right now are about syndicating, and they’re never going to do that!”

So that’s how the How to Make Webcomics book came about. I’d wanted to do it on my own for a while, but I felt if I did it on my own, people would think it was too pretentious – “Hey, here’s Kurtz, he thinks he knows everything!” But we started doing a podcast called “Webcomics Weekly,” just talking about the process and there was a huge response. There was no drama, no one cared about politics, everyone just fell in love with the idea of making comic strips and doing webcomics. So after that podcast took off, we just had to do this book.

NRAMA: Well, you talk about how you don’t want to come off as egotistical, but PvP has become pretty iconic as one of the most successful webcomics, and as an example of a creator-owned property taking off. How does it feel to have that kind of status?

SK: Um…it feels awesome! I don’t know. Look, I wish I could enjoy it. One of my best friends is Mike Krahulik over at Penny Arcade, and we call each other up all the time to reassure each other, because we are both anxiety-ridden worriers who are just waiting for the whole thing to end. You know – “This is it! The whole thing’s going to end tomorrow!” We’re constantly worried and constantly down on ourselves…it’s frightening, dude.

I’m going to turn 37 in about a month, and that’s close to 40. And I’ve been doing PvP for 10 years. I did not think it was going to be 10 years. And now I’m looking ahead. Let’s saying it makes it another 10 years, which, honestly, I think is impossible…but let’s say it did. I’ll be pushing 50. Who’s going to give a shit what I’ll have to say at 50? Will I even know what pop culture is at 50? Will anyone even care?

And that’s another reason why I’m working on things other than PvP, because I’m worried that I have a very limited amount of time before I lose touch. It’ll get to the point where I’ll be losing people in my age group…that’s already happening. But there’s no retirement plan, you know? There’s no heath care.

And it’s scary. I mean…our industry has to have its own system to take care of people who get old and can’t work any more. And the reason I think of this so much is because the same thoughts are occurring to a lot of people in their 30s and 40s who are looking ahead and going, “Oh ____! That is not too far away for me!”

The really scary thing is…Mike (Wieringo) died this past year…

NRAMA: Yeah, I saw you at his memorial service. You gave a nice testimonial about how supportive he’d been of your work as you were starting out.

SK: Yeah, we…I wish I got to spend a little bit more time with him in person. We talked a lot on the phone, which might sound silly, but that’s how it works in comics. Everyone lives in different states, and you only get to see each other once a year or twice a year at conventions. Your best friends are kind of men on the phone. I mean, I’m really close to Robert Kirkman, and we have long, long conversations – I consider Robert a brother! But I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen him in person.

Mike and I talked a lot, and Mike was…really the first guy in comics proper that I was in awe of, that really loved PvP. And I would call him up because I wanted to hear what was going on with him, what was going on at Marvel, and who was coming in…and I never found out, because he would go, “Oh, who cares? I’m working on this now, and then it’ll be something else, and what I really want to know is about what you’re working on.” And I would tell him, and he would get really excited about it, and keep asking questions, and two hours would pass, and I never would find out what was going on at Marvel.

But anyway – yeah, we’re all getting older. I appreciate that you say PvP is this big icon in webcomics, and I hope you’re right, because I want to keep doing it. I don’t want to stop. I know I’m not going to want to stop in 10 years. My plan is to be like (Alex) Toth and die at my drawing table, which I guess is going to be my computer table…but the best way to die while you’re drawing is to always be drawing, so I hope I get to keep doing it. But I wish I could tell you I didn’t spend most of my time being afraid that it’s going to go away.

NRAMA: It’s funny that you mention these things, because I can kind of see them creeping into the strip lately. Cole’s having marriage problems, Brent’s finally going to get married…it really seems like the characters are moving forward a bit. There’s always been this very human camaraderie between them, but now it seems like it’s coming more to the forefront.

SK: Well, it’s a big deal. I mean, whether or not you agree whether PvP is worth its weight in…salt, it’s been around for 10 years, I’ve been writing and drawing it for 10 years. And it feels like something that significant should be marked. And so, 2008 is the 10th year, and I want it to be a big year for the strip.

I want things to happen, and maybe even change a bit, and set up the next 10 years. A lot has stayed the same, and a lot has changed, but I want to change the dynamic a little. Some of the characters might grow up a little bit, we’ll have some new characters come in, maybe some of the new guard, the younger guard, and hopefully set this strip up to run at least another 10 years. Wouldn’t that be great?

But yeah, the strip will always reflect what’s in my heart at the time that I’m making it, and right now, looking back at writing these characters for a decade, that’s a big chunk of time. So I feel that it’s important to have the characters grow up a little bit, evolve and stuff.

And I’m having a blast with it! It doesn’t feel like a long time. It feels like it took me 10 years to break out and discover my real art style. And that is because of what I got to do – because I met people like Mike and Giuseppe, and because I got to hang out with Robert Kirkman and watch Ryan Ottley draw and Cory Walker draw and sketch with them… that’s what Image brought me. That’s what the fans have given me. Every time I get to do another year, I get to meet more and more people, and during conventions, I get to see everybody, and they support me and encourage me to do more things. And it’s impossible not to feed off of that, and to grow.

Yeah. It feels good. It feels right.

NRAMA: Any final thoughts or things you’d like to discuss?

SK: Well, the PvP Awesomeology, the big hardcover, is way past due. We had a problem finding the right printer, and I got behind on stuff, but hopefully it’s going to come out in a couple of months now.

In May, we’re doing this 10th anniversary color special, and I’ve been getting all these amazing commitments for pinups from it…and I just got this piece from Jim Davis for it.

NRAMA: That brings us back to the beginning – Garfield was what originally inspired you.

SK: Yeah! It’s this picture of Garfield and Scratch together, and it’s like, “Wow! Full circle!” I remember, I wrote Jim Davis a fan letter when I was in the fifth grade that said, “I know I can be a cartoonist, I just can’t come up with my own characters. If you could come up with some characters for me, I could write the jokes, but I’d need you to come up with them.”

And he never wrote me back, but I saw in an interview that someone had asked him the same question, and he responded with, “Oh, coming up with the characters is the fun part. I wouldn’t want to rob you of that.” And that’s what really inspired me to try and create my own characters.

And now he’s got one of his characters meeting my characters, he knows my stuff exists…he read my work and hopefully he realized Scratch is kind of a parody of Garfield and didn’t mind it. (laughs)

So pick that up in May. And thanks again, to everyone.

[ssava]

Thanks again Zack for these interviews.
Really informative stuff and always fun to hear Scott open up about things.

[Lisiecki]

Used to be a huge PVP fan.
Oddly enough, i stoped reading right around the time that there was a comic about how the comic was going to lose readers because there were not enough pop culture jokes.

[Derrick Fish]

I've been a fan of PVP for years now, and it was a major inspiration in getting me to take my own stuff and finally put it online and take that chance, and it really changed my life.

Scott has busted his hump and it's great to see it paying off for him on so many levels.

[Val]

I got to contribute in a small way to Scott's celebration with colors on a yet to be revealed cover, which I believe is cover for the Image series.
I can't wait for it to be shown.

I'm particularly proud of this piece, because I wanted to give Scott some love for being a stand-up guy and for all his great work on PVP.
PVP has always been a fun read, and I hope it keeps chugging along for years to come!