Title: PVP: At Large Volume(s): 4+ Auther(s): Scott Kurtz Format: Unflipped; Left-to-Right Publisher: Image Comics MSRP: $9.95 Genre(s): Comedy Rated: Teen (13+)

I am not a long-term PVP fan like Kevin is. I’ve never seen the printed comic books, or the limited series by Dork Storm Press. I am a recent convert thanks to his reviews of the book collections. The only thing I do is read the daily comic online as much as I can and jump into the archives once in a while. Therefore, I decided to read PVP’s first book collection to see if I have a different opinion from Kevin’s. Here is a summary of this web-comic for those who skipped Kevin’s review: PVP is about the lives of the PVP magazine staff. No, PVP magazine doesn’t really exist. Imagine if it did, though: you’d have Cole, the boss who has nostalgic feelings about Pac Man and tries his best to maintain order in the office; Jade, the girl email addict and columnist; Brent, Jade’s romantic interest, is the sarcastic perverted Macintosh-lover; Skull, a blue troll who, along with a good heart, wears a “gaming fez” on his head and loves to play Pokemon; and Francis and Marcy, the only teenagers on the staff, which means that they spend less time working and more time playing video games, at least for this volume. Francis has more motivation because he needs to defeat Marcy fair and square in order to kiss her, but at the present he can’t. Max Powers, PVP's next-door-neighbor is the obnoxious rival of Cole and Brent; though he may not seem mean, he can be unbearable at times.

As this is a comic strip and a funny comic strip, it should be no surprise that the PVP staff often clash with each other, on whether Nerf battles should be allowed (Nerf- you fire small footballs from a gun), if Brent should be allowed to read comics when he dreams of Jade with bigger breasts, or if the second Matrix sucked or rocked. There are only several reasons to read PVP: At Large instead of scanning through the archives online: we get a short introduction by Michael Jantze, a history of PVP’s origins and an early drawing of the staff. You see Marcy and Max’s origins redrawn. Oh, and the strips aren’t dated or even in chronological order, so we don’t know where to find them anyway unless we search the archives thoroughly. The good things and bad things balance out with this collection. Overall, the redrawn strips do suck when you compare them to the originals, but on their own they’re okay. Kind of like the first dubbed Sailor Moon episode. Other things are changed as well: Marcy likes Pokemon instead of Sailor Moon; her character design is different, and so forth. On one hand I understand why Kurtz made these little changes, but on the other hand I still feel like shouting, “Dude, you’re insulting Sailor Moon fans by changing Marcy’s preferences!”

This is kind of how a real life debate between Kevin and me might be like (just for the record, Kevin's on the right).

However, it’s still worth reading, if just for the pure humor. Even when you get into the more controversial storylines, like Francis trying to see Jade with her top off, it is funny. None of the humor offended me, but maybe that’s because I’m not one of the groups Kurtz attacks. Even so, to quote Kevin’s review, “You will laugh at the jokes before you get offended by them.” Some of the jokes aren’t funny unless you’ve read an earlier strip. Others require you to have at least some knowledge of things like the Matrix. But if you know all the info and you read all the strips, then you are SO going to laugh. As for the art, I’m not sure is Scott hand-draws this or if he uses a computer. The facial expressions, like simply raising an eyebrow, could easily be done on Photoshop or Windows Paint. The character designs are original, except for two women drawn to embellish Brent’s perverted side. PVP doesn’t suffer the same fate as Garfield, in which each character has three expressions in total. Using a combination of eyebrows, eyes, and mouths, Scott Kurtz can create different, sometimes unique expressions, expressions. He still needs to work on Brent, but given that Brent wears sunglasses, he must be harder than the rest of the cast. One of Francis’s expressions stands out in my mind, and just thinking about it makes me laugh.

Preparation is meh. I’ve noticed that while most companies tend to treat foreign comics with great care (CMX being the exception rather than the rule), Image Comics does a pretty below average job for an American comic. First of all, there aren’t enough comic strips! Whenever I check out a Calvin and Hobbes collection, it takes me a while to memorize each strip. After only three reads, I memorized all the strips in this book. The cover claims that this collects the first six issues of the PVP run. Well, they must’ve been pretty short issues! Even the recent Fox Trot collections have more comics than this. Secondly, there are no extras, save the aforementioned introduction and Scott Kurtz’s PVP history. We don’t get any early comics of what PVP looked like in the beginning, except for that one sketch. Nor do we get any commentaries or even strips with color! I mean, come on. Image, you aren’t just targeting new people to read PVP; you have to provide some comeuppance to the fans, even to the new ones. These are the people who will go to the website and check out the archives for free rather than read your collection. Or, even worse for you, they may pick up another comic strip collection, like Real Life, and buy that because not only does it have a good story, but it also has loads of extras, including introductions, commentaries, and Greg Dean’s early comics.

There are those who are probably saying that I’m acting spoiled. I admit that, but honestly, while this is a fairly good introduction to PVP for newbies, fans have to decide for themselves on whether or not it is worth reading. I love PVP, but Image Comics has a lot of ground to cover in satisfying everyone. Preparation is a C while the comic is an A, so that averages out to a B-. PVP doesn’t deserve that grade, but thanks to Image, that’s what it gets. Scott, here are your options: Get another company to print your strip or change the format for you second collection. I’m asking you as both a PVP fan and a reviewer.

- -Review By Jaya Lakshmi - -