One of my favorite comic strips on the web is PVP Online, written and drawn by Scott Kurtz. The strip follows the trials, tribulations, and geekness of the staff of a video game magazine. Despite the video game premise the writing in PVP (which stands for Player Vs. Player) is very well rounded and touches on all of popular culture through gaming nerds’ eyes.

The strip is updated every day and has been published to the web since 1998. Amazingly the entire archive of the strip’s history can be viewed for free on Scott’s site. You could spend hours reading through the strip from start to finish. Doing that will also take you through the design and artistic growth of Scott Kurtz. The designs of his characters in the first strip differ from what you see in the most recent strip and it is really interesting to see them change and watch the various design decisions Scott chooses.

The writing in the strip is very clever and very often makes me laugh out loud. Something every aspiring cartoonist needs to learn is the importance of the writing. A well designed character will catch a reader’s eye, but it is the writing that will keep them coming back for more. Scott has a real knack for writing for his characters.

I love this strip and read it everyday. I’ll probably be bringing up not only PVP the comic strip, but Scott himself often. He is at the forefront of a lot in the world of web comics. He has turned the internet based strip into his full time job, he’s gotten his strips published in print with Image comics, and has caused quite a bit of controversy in the print comic strip world by offering his strips to newspapers free of charge. Where Scott McCloud has theorized and philosophized over web comics and their potential Scott Kurtz has gone and acted out and proven the validity of this medium.