PVP, CAD, and the Webcomicker
This post isn't really about PVP's new animated series. It's about Gil's take on things.
First off, since this post is going to be largely disagreeable in tone, I should note that I have a lot of respect for the Webcomicker, and so, this isn't like a general attack on him or anything. But whenever the subject of Control Alt Delete comes up, I find myself shaking my head in disagreement with the bulk of what he has to say.
Gil says, "Scott Kurtz is a hypocritical man and he's ripping Tim Buckley off." Now, I'm going to leave aside the hypocritical part for now, because figuring whether or not that's on target involves going back to see what Kurtz said about the CAD stuff when it was happening, and seeing if what he is doing is at odds with his attitudes back then. Even so, sometimes people change their mind, and so, it might not be full-fledged hypocricy. But, whatever, that's not what I'm worried about.
Kurtz making an animated version of his comic doesn't qualify as ripping off Buckley any more than Jon Rosenberg making a comic with a talking animal counts as ripping off Jim Davis. Simply put, "ripping off" isn't the right way to describe it.
Next Gil goes for a classic ad hominem.
"Now[...]we've got Scott Kurtz announcing that he's coming out with an animated series. Produced by the same production house [as CAD's], no less (Blind Ferret Entertainment). And sporting an eerily similar subscription pricing model. Kurtz makes it abundantly clear that it was Blind Ferret which approached him, and practically hounded him into making the series, but still... Do you think he wasn't suffering at least some animation-envy watching Tim Buckley's characters slickly walking around and interacting while he was playing with finger puppets?" (emphasis mine)
I'm not sure what point Gil is driving at in this particular paragraph, but the attribution of envy seems unwarranted and unrelated. If Gil's main point is that Kurtz is a hypocrit, then he should be showing how what Kurtz has said contradicts with what he has done. If his main point is that this isn't a milestone because CAD already did it, then the envy element is totally unrelated. If his main point is speculating about Kurtz's envy, then I want to know why we should care.
I'm also going to point out his "finger puppet" jab, since I think Gil is overharsh on blamimation, which is very good bang for one's buck.
But here's the thing that really rubs me wrong about Gil's take on all this. He is so damn quick to cry out that CAD is ignored by the webcomic intelligentsia. Well, two point there. First, Gil, you're part of the webcomics intelligentsia. And the elite webcomic criticism crowd is small enough that you make up a substantial portion of it. Second, CAD isn't ignored because of some conspiracy of Buckley-hating. It's ignored because its not that good. Frankly, its quite bad. And not only is it bad, but it has surprisingly little overlap with the rest of webcomicdom. It's not discrimination, its justifiable apathy.
CAD's animation deal wasn't a milestone. The reason it wasn't is that it hasn't had serious consequences for the webcomics community as a whole. We don't look back at it and pinpoint it as the source of some shift in webcomicdom. And I don't really think Kurtz's move to an animation series was motivated all that much by CAD having blazed that trail already. And until someone sells me on why it is that I should be caring about CAD's animation series, I'm not sold on it being a milestone. If Kurtz does this, and then, say, several other comics follow suit utilising or refining the model, clearly inspired by PVP's success, it will be a milestone. I don't know if CAD's animation series has been profitable. I don't know if more people are signing up over time, or if they are losing subscribers. There are two reasons I don't know these things. The first is that I don't care, so I'm not actively looking into it, the second is that, in the webcomics community, no one else cares either, so I'm not stumbling across it.
At any rate, I've ranted a bit for now. I've got some thoughts about this PVP thing proper, but that's a separate post, which I will write later. My main point here is that Gil seems to think we should be feeling sorry for Tim Buckley because he's not getting his due, and I'm not convinced he's being treated unfairly.
five comments:
I don’t ignore him because I don’t like him, I ignore him because I don’t like his work. Well, technically, I don’t ignore him, because obviously I talk about him, but you get my point.
I think your point about the impact is well taken, and there is a sense in which it is a milestone. Still though, I’m not sure the extent to which the rhetorical aspects of your counterpoint needed to play out as they did.
So, I’m on board with “worth mentioning”, but maybe not so much with the tone of your mention, despite your awareness that the tone was amplified as a reaction to the overly positive tone others seemed to have.
Lewis Powell (Email) (URL) - 29 11 06 - 08:37
I have to agree with both sides here. I think PvP moving into this field will have much more of a direct impact on people’s awareness, and his success or failure likely to determine whether or not others follow suit.
However, I am confident it wouldn’t be happen if Ctrl-Alt-Del hadn’t paved the ground first. Both because that gave Blind Ferret the backup to pitch the idea to others – and because I think Kurtz’s blamimations, though intended at first to be an attack at Ctrl-Alt-Del, left him with the urge to do more with that field.
As for Gil’s post itself, I think it was good to get some of the focus turned back towards CAD – even a lot of the debate regarding Kurtz’s hypocrisy focused on him, not on what this meant for Buckley. Was Gil’s post a bit over-the-top? Maybe – but at worst, I think, that only helped generate more discussion. Which is a good thing.
Mr Myth (Email) (URL) - 29 11 06 - 08:48
I find it interesting how this debate seems to drawn along the lines of what particular fandom the debater belongs to.
The William G (URL) - 29 11 06 - 21:16
Well, to be fair, The, I don’t read PVP, its on my list of strips to read, but as it stands, I have read more and am a more regular reader of CAD. Though, I wouldn’t at this stage consider myself a fan of either.
Lewis Powell (Email) (URL) - 29 11 06 - 23:36
This is a pretty good rebuttal. I kind of went out of my way to be over the top in my post because everybody else was being so whole-heartedly “wow this is awesome” and congratulating Kurtz (aside from those who questioned the voice talent, which I’m really neither here nor there on) and I felt we needed some counter point.
Still, CAD The Animation was a milestone. It was the first time a webcomicker had gone out and gotten a professional animation studio with professional voice talent and really made a professional looking animated series. Maybe the impact wasn’t felt across the webcomic community because, as you say, CAD is not really a big part of the webcomic community, it tends to stand alone. But it was a milestone nonetheless, if only for the fact that it inspired Blind Ferret to pursue Scott Kurtz and make an animated version of PvP. Do you think they would have done that if they hadn’t already cut their teeth with CAD? It’s hard to say, but they did work with CAD first and I feel that’s significant.
We can’t just ignore Tim Buckley because we don’t like him. He has a huge following, and things he does DO make a difference in the world of webcomics.
GileadPellaeon (Email) (URL) - 28 11 06 - 22:52
No trackbacks: