What is the back story on the seeming animosity between pVp Comics and Penney Arcade? They seem to take pot shots at each other every now and then, but I am not 100% clear why.
I take pot shots at my best friend almost daily. It’s more a rivalry than animosity, and they’ve been known to team up against a third party (like Wiley or Non-Sequitor fame). Scott does have an abrasive side, though.
Quoted from someone else’s quote from Scott Kurtz’ blog
They’re just friendly rivals, and take good-natured potshots at one another from time to time. It’s been that way since I started reading both of them.
Scott Kurtz once again weighed in on his relationship with the Penny Arcade folks today.
Jeez…that pVp comic is not funny.
Now, if you want real animosity, check out PvP
and Ctrl+Alt+Del
I really do hope the Penny Arcade guys chime in. This kind of feud can only be resolved in a barbed wire, explosive wrestling ring on PPV.
And here I thought they were arguing over which creator was the biggest gonad. 
(Nice art styles, guys, but what’s with the attitudes?)
To each his own, but wow…you’d have to reach down to something like “Donald Wildmon is a clear-thinking, understanding human being” to find a statement I disagree with more.
Yeah, me, too. I think PvP is the finest web comic around. Kurtz knows what he’s doing.
PvP is #5 in my top five. (The others being Penny Arcade, VG Cats, Questionable Content, and 8-Bit Theater.)
I meant that particular comic in the link presented, but it’s a different one now (and it still doesn’t make sense.) If anyone would care to explain the humor in the comic currently linked to by that pvp link, please do - I don’t get it at all.
As a matter of fact, it changes every day. Sometimes, it builds on the events of the previous day. Sort of like a story. So step back about… oh, 10? days in the archives, and go forward.
What Kurtz said about Ctrl-Alt-Del was completely uncalled for.
I’ve been reading C-A-D, PvP and Penny Arcade for years and there’s no way that C-A-D is a rip-off of PA. The writing style is different, the humour is lot less mean (not that I have anything against PA’s humour - far from it)… it’s a whole different thing.
My own opinion is that over the years C-A-D has become a more *consistently * funny comic than PA.
Over the years Kurtz’s ego has blown out of control. The PA guys are at least honest and revel in their reputation for being sharp-edged and more than a little mean when it suits them - but Kurtz tries to have it both ways. He wants people to think he’s a nice guy, but he also wants to be able to cut people down without provocation. He wants people to respect the time he puts into his comic but then he trivialises other people’s efforts.
Bottom line: he is *not * a nice person. 
Agreed. Aside from his whole passive-agressive public persona, this is what bothers me the most. He’s on this ego crusade to garner respect for webcomics and doing his best to paint syndicated comics as “trying to put him down”, but he flys into a frothy rage because a mainstream article dares to mention another “lesser” webcomic in the same breath as him. He’s already shifted to passive mode by hiding his original article and replacing it with a toned down version - just like he’s done several times before.
I know there are many instances where people say silly things to stir up publicity, but I’m afraid to give him that much credit.
On the one hand, I only know of the existence of PvP because of Kurtz’s various shitstorms and dust-ups. On the other hand, I still don’t read his strip.
–Cliffy
He tends to have a story-line each week. Try going back to Sunday* and reading through.
*Or maybe Monday, I just read it every day, so the scheduling isn’t very important to myself.
ANNNND after posting I took the two seconds to look: Sunday. Apologies for the spam.
Neither one of them gets the grammar prize for the correct use of the first person. But using “myself” the way Kurtz does makes my eyes bleed harder, so I already hate him more.
Huh. Apparently people “didn’t understand” what he was trying to say when he said that Ctrl-Alt-Del is a ripoff of Penny Arcade, and so his new “revision” is about drama in webcomics. I think my irony meter broke. And his post today compares this to editing your website to update it, apparently.
Scott Kurtz (PvP) said Tim Buckley (Ctrl+Alt+Del) copied Penny-Arcade’s formula. Tim Buckley denied. SDMB readers can weigh the evidence: first, second, third (obviously parodying PvP), and fourth comics in the CAD series.
We can parse words to infer that Buckley didn’t know about PA when decided to start his webcomic, but by the fourth strip he certainly had heard of it and even referenced it.
Kurtz is still an ass, but I don’t let that get in the way of my enjoyment of PvP.