Will Strip For Games

1up has a piece today on the backbone of the gaming zeitgeist: online comics. From PA to 8-Bit Theatre, they have thoughts on all of them. From the article: "The 'real' origin of game-based comics came in May 1998, when Scott Kurtz started Player vs. Player, a strip based around the office hijinks at a video game magazine. Hosted at MPOG.com, like Polymer City Chronicles, early PvP reflects its origins as a lighthearted way to lampoon games in the context of a larger gaming-focused publication. Some of the earliest gaming webcomics were started in a similar fashion; Penny Arcade, for example, was originally conceived and submitted as a strip for Loonygames."

PvP Wasn't the First Comic

[TarrVetus]

The 'real' origin of game-based comics came in May 1998, when Scott Kurtz started Player vs. Player, a strip based around the office hijinks at a video game magazine.

Wrong. Dead wrong. My proof? Howard and Nester (http://hn.iodized.net/main.htm [iodized.net]), a comic which successfully ran in Nintendo Power for several years in the late 1980's and early 1990's.

And while Howard and Nester predates PvP by 10 years, I'm almost positive it wasn't the first of its kind, either.

Arg, type-o in article.

[gmezero]

I've already written to the editors, to fix the errors at the beginning of the article:

In the third paragraph, it is stated that PCC started off in 1995 on MPOG.COM, that is wrong. It started out on the web on GameZero.com in 1995. It only ran on MPOG for a short stint from mid-2000 to mid-2001.

And only the archives for the current storyline date back to 2000. For previous strips dating back to the start you need to visit the pre-2000, older archives on the Game Zero site at:
http://www.gamezero.com/team-0/comics/ [gamezero.com]

Please see wiki for clarification:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer_City_Chronicl es#Basic_Chronology [wikipedia.org]

Sigh...

Re:PvP Wasn't the First Comic

[Soybean47]

It's a misleading excerpt. If you RTFA, they're not claiming that PVP was literally the first gaming comic... note the quotes around "real". They even mention one that came earlier. The claim in the article is that PVP was the first one that mattered, or something along those lines. The "real" beginning of the current crop of gaming webcomics. Or...you know... something like that. I don't really know what they're getting at there, but the statement is clearly not meant to be taken literally.