Mon Jul 7, 2008 — by Andrew Wheeler

Review: 'PvP Vol. 5: PvP Treks On' by Scott Kurtz

The fifth collection of the popular webcomic

PvP Vol. 5: PvP Treks On
By Scott Kurtz
Image, June 2008, $14.99

Image is a comic-book publisher, and sees everything through that lens. So, for them, this is a book “collecting issues 25-31 of the hit comic strip series,” as the cover proclaims. For most of us, though, PvP (http://www.pvponline.com/) is a daily comic strip on the web, so what’s important is that Treks On collects strips from June 12, 2005 through April 9, 2006. (Possibly not all of them, since several seem to be added at the beginning and others are missing at the end – and there were some duplicates in the middle, too – but most of them, at least.)

Image might think that referring to comics – which cost money – instead of to a free webcomic might increase the perceived value of their book, but are there really people – even in the inbred, hothouse environment of the comics shop – who would be a) interested in a daily comic strip about computer gaming and b) unfamiliar with webcomics?

My complaints about Image’s publishing strategy aside, this is a handsome package, with the strips shown at a nice large size, two to a page. We’re running about two years behind the current strip, so Brent isn’t even engaged to Jade yet – though he comes darn close in one storyline here. The other character relationships are close to where they are now: Francis and Marcy are friendly but not quite dating, and Robbie & Jase win the lottery in these strips.

This stretch includes strips by several guest artists – maybe because creator Scott Kurtz wanted to take a vacation, though there’s no explanation in the book – Frank Cho, Chris Giarusso, and Paul Southworth. They all do a decent job, and bring their own most obvious tics and characteristics to those strips.

Treks On also includes some of the better-remembered storylines of PvP history, including the fabled Knuckle of K’Pua Pua and the great sexual harassment training. (It also sees the vehicles available to the characters increase by one DeLorean and one Dodge Charger.) There aren’t any storylines – or even any single strips that I can recall – that refer to Star Trek, but I guess the cover gag was too good to pass up.

This isn’t necessarily the best place to start with PvP, but it’s a solidly constructed daily strip, so diving in anywhere is pretty good. But, since it is available for free on the web, it’s easiest to just start there, read a few strips to see if it appeals, and go on from there. (Either reading your way back into the archives, or springing for the books if you prefer ink-on-paper.)

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