Timewaster's Guide Archive
Departments => Webcomics & Free Stuff => Topic started by: Spriggan on June 23, 2004, 09:51:44 AM
-
Some of you may know about the on going truss between PA and Squidi. Well here's and transcript between Kurtz and Squidi about the subject where Kurtz just demolished him. There's some language but the most offencive stuff has been edited.
http://www.enderak.com/squidi/chatlog.html
And if you bother going to read his blog at his site you can see this guy has an unhealth obsession with Gabe. Just about every post is about how much he hates Gabe. He's like some comicbook villian that spends his whole wakeing exsistance thinking of how to get even with some superhero that's "wronged" him. It's sad actualy, the comic can be quite funny sometimes, but there's no reason to do there condisering how loony he is.
-
Wow that guys way more insecure and argumentative than either you or I Spriggan.
That feels so good! ;D
-
I don't think Kurtz destroyed him. In fact, I think Kurtz was being offensive and demeaning, while the other guy tried his best to remain civil. Lost a little bit of respect for Kurtz reading that.
-
the horror, the horror...
-
The other guy acted like an idiot. Kurtz acted pretty much like how he always acts.
Wish they had put some links in to the comics in question.
-
The Kurtz comic is the one where Fransis copyrights a single pixal then threatons other webcomic people. I would say Kurtz was a little unfair to the guy except that I had read Squidis blog before reading that and ya, he (squidi) has mental problems.
-
What exactly was that guy's beef with PA again? Someone on their forums was using an avatar of his?
-
ya someone was useing pixal art that he said looked like his as their avatar so he demanded that the guy stop useing the art. He e-mailed Gabe and told him about the situation and said that he had threatoned and closed down several other pixal comics for copying his style. Also Squidi had placed a message at his site for people reading his comics to spam and attack people at the PA forums. That got Gabe upset beasue as Gabe (and then better explained by kurtz) said you can't realy copy the style of pixal art when you're only useing 12x12 for the characters. Squidi's main contention was that the feet were the same thus they were copied. And even if you could it's not worth figthing over since they're not hurting his comic. The guy felt betrayed by Gabe and has done nothing but talk about how much he hates Gabe. I could post to all the original posts if you want.
-
I think I just will. Here's the orginal PA thing from last December:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php3?date=2003-12-10
And here's Squidi talking about it (again) this month.
http://www.squidi.net/blog/04.06/23.php
Take them for what they are, but squidi does rant about it several times a week so he's realy miffed about it. As for sides, well I guss I'm with Gabe and Kurtz becasue their responese to the situation entertained me and that's all I care about.
-
and because the guys a liar and a jerk.
Telling someone youve closed down several websites before is not "nice" when you demand they take down the artwork. I suspect having read the PA forums that he said something equally "nice" to get banned from there, because well .. its the freakin Penny Arcade forums. They make this place seem like a church. He's obsessing about pixelated sprite feet which may have been copied from him, or ... 8 bit theater or Super NES or jesu forbid 18 million other games. I think the guys nutz. Frickin nuts.
-
yeah, Squidi's a case, but Kurtz was pretty much a **** in that convo. Because Squidi didn't agree with his ASSUMPTIONS right away, Kurtz started treating him like an idiot.
Not that Kurtz has never acted like an idiot before. He's very opinionated, and while less of a ranter than PA, he still spouts off when he doesn't know what the heck he's talking about.
And actually, the funniest line in the whole chat was Kurtz saying "You are so full of yourself and your comic"
Which is pretty much how I'd describe Kurtz most of the time
-
You should hope over to PVP and see what he's talking about now. It's actualy a pretty good rant about patrisim.
the basic gist of it is basicaly he's sick of americans saying they hate amercia, and that this country is only as good as we choose to make it. If you just sit there and complain it will become that horrible country because no one is trying. So do something more then just complaneing to strangers.
-
I liked his dad's rant even better than his.
-
To revive this thread:
Looking at Spriggan's first link to Squidi's blog (http://www.squidi.net/blog/04.06/23.php), he mentions the offending party in the P.A. forums as Tubesteak Samurai, whose webcomic "Spells and Whistles" has been accused by SCOTT KURTZ as "infringing" on HIS art style, too!! (I'll have to dig to find any link for that, but you all must know about that too, right?)
WTF is going on around here??
Squidi, Tubesteak, Kurtz. They're all made for each other. Whatever.
-
yeah, I was reading Spells and Whistles this morning and saw that.
To clarify, Squidi accused Tubesteak Samurai (from here on out, TS) of stealing his intellectual property in a glorious display of stupidity, ignorance and paranoia. TS I believe eventually relented, but not before Squidi accused PA of protecting a thief and so on and so forth, alienating himself from all PA fans. Scott Kurtz then tried to stick it to Squidi, because Kurtz (who, in a metaphor could only be compared to the U.S. in self-righteousness and feeling the need to correct everyone else's behavior) apparently needs to tell everyone online how to live their lives. Finally Kurtz followed up by accusing TS of stealing HIS intellectual property.
All of which goes to make me think that Kurtz really needs to find something better to do with his time.
TS does have a character that looks a bit like Kurtz's "Jade" -- something I *never* would have noticed if Kurtz hadn't decided to threaten TS with a lawsuit, so apparently his property is in serious danger </sarcasm> -- but I'm trying to figure out when red hair in a pony tail got to be so distinguishing. Kurtz also said that TS has a character with the same "body shape" as Skull. Which uh... I just can't grasp it. "Round" is a distinguishing body shape? Can we just go through every comic on the planet with a fat character and accuse them of plagiarism now? It's ridiculous.
-
Well I think the main reason Kurtz is upset, as I read it at Frank Cho's forum, is that TS keeps on taunting Kurtz and has admitted that he's copying things to piss him off. Kurtz had a rant about this a bit ago that was only up for a few hours and it talked about how TS had first threatoned to sue him (Kurtz) for steaking his (TS) characters.
-
hrm... that's not how TS Presents it at all. And since Cho and Kurtz kind of have egos... well...
Basically I think Kurtz should stick with what he knows. That is, his comic. He keeps trying to tell the world how to act and gets in their face and can be a real jerk about it. It doesn't work for him. He should just shut up and draw.
-
Admit it SE, you're just jelious of the becasue they have bigger ego's then you.
-
Hey. if there's anything around here bigger than my ego, it needs to be taken down quickly before it crushes us all.
-
So the moral is....
Don use webcomic images as Avatars?
oops... www.ctrlaltdel-online.com (Source for mine)
-
Well another fun blurb on PvP today:
Many of you have heard of the hit comic strip Megatokyo, but how many of you know that the strip was originally created by a team. Rodney Caston, aka largo, was the original writer of Megatokyo before Fred Gallagher, aka Piro, took the strip over full time.
Rodney is local to the Dallas Fort Worth area. He's a good friend. Wek keep in touch but don't see each other as often as we should. Such is the way of adult life, I guess. That's something I need to correct.
Anyway, I just got news that Rodney and his wife, Ruby, are expecting their first child. So everbody lift a virtual mug and join me in toast! Congrats guys, we're all extremely happy for you.
Luckily, this is one of Rodney's creations that Fred can't steal out from under him.
Oh yeah...I went there.
Makes you wonder if Scott knows something the rest of us don't?
-
actually, doesn't make me wonder that. I think Kurtz is a putz. A funny putz. But a putz.
-
Heh, well I like it when he takes shots at others. Anyway he's allready deleated the post, unsupriseingly, so I'm glad I copied it.
-
Humm...Was just reading Piro's responce to Kurtz's post, and finaly we get the story on how Largo left MT. I can see where Kurtz gets his ideas, since he's Rodney's friend. Apperntly there was a big creative difference between Piro and Largo, well I'll just let Piro explain it:
Eventually, as the story grew more solid and the randomness started to fall away, I found that I was doing the comic more and more on my own. Not all of Rod's ideas fit in to the world i was starting to build. He came up with the concept of "Great Teacher Largo," and i wrote it into the story. Rodney wanted there to be zombie hordes going around and killing lots of people. I refused to do this. Rod was so frustrated with the restraints the 'story' was putting on him that he felt we needed to tie it all up, have a few characters get run over by busses, and get to some kinda place where we could do more randomness. I didn't want to do this either. It's not hard to see how our creative partnership sort of fell apart. Our ideas ceased to 'click'. Eventually i was doing the comic entirely on my own and Rod and I didn't talk that much.
As you might imagine, since there was no real partnership anymore and I was doing the entire thing on my own, I want to move on and officially do things solo.
Though Piro did buy out Rodney's part in MT
I didn't cut Rodney free, i didn't steal anything from him or trick him out of anything, i tried to do it right. I approached him with an offer that I would either buy out his interest or agree that Megatokyo would end and I would move on to something else. What I would not do is continue with things the way they were.
Sure, Rodney was not happy about this
Though the think I'm most upset about is no one ever telling me Rodney has his own site now >:(
http://www.rcaston.com/ and writes for another comic http://www.uberclocked.com/
-
Scott Kurtz is so much like SE. But a SE who doesn't bother to think of others before talking. Not trying to be offensive or anything to SE there, just noting.
Hell, i've read MT continuously for the last 2 years, since way before largo left. Yeah, its different since Piro went solo, but I quite like it how it is now. Gaming comics are a dime a dozen, after all. And it's just very arrogant of Kurtz to sit in his ivory tower and preach about other peoples business. Something he is good at.
-
I've got nothing against Piro, I think he's a Brilliant artist, I'm just intrested in this since I cannot stand MT now and it use to be my favorite comic. Was the Kurtz statment out of line? Ya, but that still dosen't mean it's not intresting.
-
I find Kurtz's comment uninteresting. It is unfortunate that he talks smack like this and means it has to become an issue. Couldn't the same thing be accomplished by asking Piro why it's changed since Largo left? I think so. Why Kurtz has to be such a jerk is beyond me. You've titled this thread "Ah Kurtz this is what makes you so fun" but I completely disagree. This sort of behavior is exactly why I occassionally consider never reading PVP again.
-
I think you're overeacting to this SE. I'm sure that it was ment more as a Joke then to be a flat out charge that Piro is a theif.
As for the thread title, I do think its fun, that's why I have a thread named this. Kurtz is one of the few intresting Webcomic people out there, he livens up the comunity. Besides the PA guys I don't think there's anyone else who realy says anything worth talking about in their blurbs. Its fine if you don't agree, though if it makes you feel better you can just imagine it being a very sarcastic remark actualy meaning the exact opposite.
-
except that I know he doesn't mean the exact opposite. It's hard for me to believe that I'm over reacting to a man who has sued an artist because a character had the same basic "shape" as one of his characters (I didn't think a fat big guy was that original. What's the basis for suit there?) and then copies that same artists character in every way, and completely misinterpret and ignore any indication that he's done something wrong. He's a jerk, plain and simple, and it's hard for me to want o encourage that sort of thing. It makes me think much worse of him.
-
Well he sued the guy becsaue that artist said repetied times that he was copying Kurtz's characters. I'd sue if I was Kurtz.
But I don't want to argue the point since we both disagree and argueing isn't going to change that.
-
then don't argue, but I don't know that there's any record of him saying that. And there's not any excuse at ALL for copying back.
-
I'm going to go with Sprig on this one. Kurtz is like Michel Jackson or Bill Orilley. I like to see what kind of loony trouble they get themselves into. That makes him fun, in my estimation.
Plus, he's got a nice apology up now, including this:
This message was for all you 12-year-old-anime-cat-girls out there who want to scratch and hiss at me because I offended your God. Take a deep breath, eat some Pocky and put in the latest Ranma DVD into the player. Everything is going to be okay. Cool?
-
see, i still don't find that funny.
-
Meh I think it's Hi-Larious
Kurtz is like that loudmouth friend who says inapropriate things, But is fun to be around so you keep him.
Course, bieng that I am part of a Gamming group called "Ale and Whores" based on one of Kurtz's strips.... I might be a bit biased
-
Yea! More Kurtz fun!
reprinted in it's entierty since you never know if/when he might remove it.
Man, it was a huge mistake for me to join that Daily Grind Cartooning Challenge (http://www.crowncommission.com/dailygrind/).
First of all, I felt a lot of resentment from some of the cartoonists about joining in the first place. There were a couple of shots fired across my bow in the forums and the individual strips of some of the contestants about me and my work.
Second of all... the rules of the contest, which to me were simple and clear to understand, are being changed or "clarified" in the middle of the contest. People who should be disqualified (in my opinion) are being given second chances, or making excuses.
This may seem a little harsh. It's just a friendly competition, so what's the big deal? Why are you being such a hard ass, Kurtz?
Well, let me try to explain myself here.
If I had to pick one single moment that was the turning point for PvP moving from being a hobby into something real, it was the day I decided to start posting M-F, and never miss a day, no matter WHAT!
My wife gets upset when people dismiss the year I spent working a day job, then coming home and working all night on the comic. It was grueling, it put a strain on everything (including our marriage) but ultimately it paid off. I got lucky and got links from some high-traffic sites and my work attracted people to come back. So now here are all these guys committing to the same workload and now it's my turn to give back. Beacause I've been blessed and now I have a high traffic site. So I can link to them and give THEM a lot of attention as they make the committment to this challenge.
The spirit behind this challenge is sound, noble and ulitmately could pay off for these cartoonists. My involvement has already gotten them traffic (from my site), even more traffic (from being slashdotted), and some of the cartoonists have been approached by one of my advertising clients. That really excited me because I prefer the idea of hard work paying off. I certainly prefer it to the fantasy that everyone is so special and art is so subjective that there's a way EVERYONE can succeed and money will be delievered to them by micropayments on a unicorn or whatever.
Life is a juggling act and you have to juggle your time. I'm stressing right now about my schedule. I'm stressing over letting go of habits to make way for new habits and opportunities.
Isn't the webcomics community already full of enough back-patting and self-masterbatory gestures? Everyone is very busy kissing their own asses instead of just rolling up their sleeves, getting critical and kicking ass. You can justify the lack of interest in your own work by writing essays on why the popular strips are really crap (http://delineatedlife.blogspot.com/2005/03/its-about-webcomics-pvp-vs-penny.html), or you can use that time to examine where your OWN work could be improved upon.
And that's why I liked the idea of the Grind. And why I get upset when I see some of the participants whining that same "woe is me" horsecrap that I already see too much of from the webcomics community. IRON MAN challenge. Seperate the pros from the amateurs. Hard assed. No excuses (which, ironically, is one of the actual rules).
The thing is that there was a time, when I was bitter about the popular strips. I was bitter about why PvP wasn't "making it." I was stressing about whether all this work I was putting in would ever pay off. I remember that vividly. But it wasn't until I said "screw it" that things paid off.
And I was lucky. I had a wife and a good friend (I'm talking about you, Jackson), who had a "no excuses" attitude with me. They NEVER let up and they never let me make excuses.
So that's why I'm being a hard ass. I'm trying to return the favor. But I don't think I'm very good at it. I think I'm just alientating everone.
Man, it was a huge mistake for me to join that Daily Grind Cartooning Challenge.
I think he's got some good points, I know its a different medium but EUOL can tell you if he just stood around cretiqueing popular books and never takeing his own writeing seriously he wouldn't be any where. Yet webcomic people seam to lilke to do such things, I think there also could be some jeliously in the community too, artists tend to get bitter when their work isn't as popular as they think it should be. But part of both PvP's and PA's popularity is they just did the work no matter what.
-
Heh, he does make that point well. A lot of guys in the comic community sit around and ego-wank themselves a lot, and snipe bitterly at the big comics. Just shut up and get to work people! :P
Also, I demand you pay royalties on my IP's.
-
Also, I demand you pay royalties on my IP's.
Psh, I don't see your name on them. I'm the Microsoft of this forum and I just plow over EU loosers. Money means nothing, only domination!
-
for once, I agree with Kurtz. It's supposed to be hard. You either posted your comic or you didn't. Technical problems are part of life. Sickness in the family is part of life. You still have to deliver. You didn't post, you get disqualified. That makes sense to me.
-
I actually went to the forums in question and looked up what was going on there.
I'm sorry, but in this case, Scott is being a prick. The people in question did not miss a post. They violated a different rule--one that said they could have a single one-panel-comic for every nine regular comics they had. Some interpreted this to mean that every nine days, they could post one single-panel-comic. Others interpreted it to mean that if you divided the total posts they'd done since the contest started by nine, they were allowed that many single panel comics. (So, if they went eighteen days, they could post two in a row.)
So, someone did this (posted two in a row) and others cried foul. They took it to the judges, who decided that the original wording was vague. They reworded the rule to mean nine multi-panel-comics in-between any sinlge-planel posts.
The judges made their decision, and Kurtz (and others) think they made the wrong one. However, I read Kurtz's posts...and he was being a serious jerk. If you have a disagreement with someone, you should explain yourself, not swear at them and rant and rave. (But, we all know how Kurtz is in this area....)
The funny thing is, this doesn't really have ANYTHING to do with the rest of Scott's post, which makes real and honest sense.
(There also was another rule clarification made that allows artists to post their comic to the forum if their website crashes for some reason.)
-
Kurtz posted on his forum that he was being a jerk but also said he was sick of the other authors patting each other on the back when one makes a mistake. Also they broke another rule which was "No Excuses" and the judges let them get away with it, that would make me mad. I think he feels slighted becasue he's giveing them a chance at getting popular via his involvement and some aren't takeing it serious enough. But I'm not an aplogist for Kurtz, I do think he over reacted, I red some of the other forum's posts too that's why I didn't comment about that but instead commented on the part of the post that isn't direcetly related to the contest.
-
I'll also admit that I think Scott has some good points. I like the guy (as much as you can like someone you've only known through reading his blog posts)--when he's not being TOO mean to people.
Yes, people need tough love some times. To be honest, I wish that other professional webcomic artists had Scott's dedication. Sluggy goes into filler strips at least once a week, and 8-Bit is known to skip a few days every now and then. These are the sorts of things that just wouldn't fly in many businesses.
Scott is a paradigm among the community, whether that community's members want to admit it or not. The problem is, I wish that he were a better role model for them in words, as well as in professional determination. It's a little like wishing that professional basketball players had respectable private lives. It's not fair to expect that of them any more than any other person, but we do it any way.
How much more effective would Scott's tough words be if he could be kind, even-headed, and helpful at the same time? I just don't think this particular battle was one that should have elicited the response from him that it did.