PvP, also known as Player vs Player, was an American video game webcomic, written and drawn by Scott Kurtz. It was launched on May 4, 1998. The webcomic followed the events at a fictional video game magazine company, featuring many running gags and references with a focus on nerd culture. Dylan Meconis was added as a co-writer in 2013.
By 2005, PvP was receiving around 100,000 unique visitors per day, and the webcomic has seen various print releases. On February 1, 2007, it became the subject of its own animated series.
In 2020, the strip was rebooted, jumping forward in time 15 years, though it later reverted to the original time period.
On February 2, 2022, Kurtz announced on his blog that he was temporarily dialing back his daily work on PvP to concentrate on an upcoming book series based on Table |Titans.
There have been no new comics since September 16, 2022, when Kurtz locked all comics predating 2021 to Patreon subscribers only. On October 24, 2024, Kurtz removed the Patreon login requirements for reading the PvP and Table Titans archives. As of July 2026, pvponline was officially shut down, with the archives no longer being available As of September 2026, the pvponline.com domain is serving an AI-generated cybersquatter site and malicious drive-by downloads.
Themes The comic chronicles the adventures of a fictional video game magazine company (later to become a video game publisher) and its employees. It features many running gags that are actually references to running gags from other media (television programs, films, games, cartoons, etc.). A popular but often controversial figure in the field of online comics, Kurtz is usually willing to share his opinions about comics and gaming culture in his blog, which is hosted on the same website as his comic strips.
Originally, PvP focused on video gaming and the larger "nerd culture" including comics and RPGs. 1UP.com described it as one of the first game-based comics, but not the original, saying, "neither Scott Kurtz's PvP nor Jerry Holkins and Michael Krahulik's Penny Arcade were the first gaming-themed webcomic on the Internet." Over the years, the humor has broadened to include technology jokes, relationship humor, in-jokes about and mocking of the generation gaps between the different characters, with gaming increasingly taking a back seat. Kurtz occasionally comes under fire for his satire. Sometimes Kurtz will speak of his father's open disdain for the strip.
In 2013, Kurtz created a spin-off comic Table Titans. It features the characters Andrew, Alan, and Valerie (who have appeared in PvP comics), and chronicles their adventures while playing Dungeons & Dragons. Kurtz wanted to write fantasy comic that "captured the spirit and joy of tabletop roleplaying." Kurtz collaborated with Wizards of the Coast as a marketing partnership to run Table Titans, and Steve Hamaker was brought on to color some of the comics. Season 4 of Table Titans was drawn by Brian Hurtt, and Tavis Maiden also worked on a project in the Table Titans universe.
Characters
Cole Richards
The boss. Friends with Brent since high school, Cole started PVP magazine as the business manager with Brent responsible for the creative and graphical content. A committed family man, he has a rather loose grasp of new technology and is often nostalgic for 1980s pop culture. Cole is (relatively speaking) the straight man of the group and the one most likely to insist on actually making the magazine, though is not above joining the others' schemes. He is also insecure about his position in the magazine, he has expressed fear of becoming unnecessary.
Cole had a longstanding "rivalry" with Max Powers who ran Powerplay Games (formerly Powerplay Magazine); in reality Max has never done anything to Cole, but Cole was extremely jealous of Max's success. Cole for a brief time was forced to merge the two companies when he could no longer afford to run the magazine on his own. However, when Cole came into a large sum of money from the World Wildlife Fund to house the giant panda that lives in the PvP offices (which attacks Brent throughout the series), he bought out Max's side of the partnership. Cole spent much of the series run married to Donna, though mentions having problems with his marriage in 2008. This ended some time later with a divorce which he refers to in 2011, although it is not covered by the strip.
Brent Sienna
Creative director of the magazine, Brent's name was originally inspired by the Crayola crayon color "Burnt Sienna." His full name is Brently Irving Sienna. Brent is a pompous, sarcastic, cynical intellectual snob, with a fanatical devotion to Apple Computer products. He drives a Mini Cooper as a "statement" and drinks Starbucks coffee, which he admits he drinks because it makes him cool. Brent tried unsuccessfully to give up coffee in a story arc during early 2005.
A running gag in the strip is that whenever the words "Panda," "Panda Attack," or "Giant Panda" or any variation thereof are spoken, Brent is immediately mauled by the Giant Panda that lives in the walls of the PvP offices. Brent got revenge in the August 6, 2005 strip when he mauled the panda in a parallel universe.
Brent virtually always wore sunglasses in the strip—going so far as to pick up a loaner set of sunglasses while his were "in the shop"—although later strips show Brent's eyes over the tops of his sunglasses. Brent claims he wore the shades because any woman that looks in his eyes falls in love with him. Constantly wearing sunglasses made Brent's eyes extremely sensitive to sunlight – after removing his sunglasses at his wedding, he was (temporarily) blinded. Eventually Brent stopped wearing his sunglasses altogether, after years of wearing them began to negatively affect his eyesight. Instead he exchanged his shades for regular prescription glasses. However, after realizing that he was losing his cool factor, Jade has allowed him to occasionally wear his sunglasses again.
Brent is an avid consumer of Apple computers and products. He refuses to use PCs and considers Microsoft to be evil, even forbidding the use of PCs in his house. He is a founding member of an Apple fanatics group called The Honorable Order of Macintosh Operators (or H.O.M.O. – the name is a running gag in the strip).
Although Brent is not a gamer, unlike the rest of the staff, he does occasionally play World of Warcraft with H.O.M.O. (as well as with Jade), and played City of Heroes with Cole, Francis, and Skull as part of the City of Heroes special edition comic packed with the game, as well as its counterpart, City of Villains in a later strip seen on the site, but neither game has been referenced beyond those strips. Before he discovered Apple, Brent was a closet Amiga fanatic.
Brent married his longtime girlfriend and co-worker Jade in a lavish ceremony marking the strip's ten-year anniversary. The two began dating after Jade found out that Francis was pretending to be a woman named "Sasha" while chatting online with Brent. Jade found out about it and decided to take over as "Sasha" to let Brent down easy, but eventually fell in love with him. Brent proposed at San Diego Comic-Con after a convoluted scheme whereby some stormtroopers "kidnapped" Jade and had her dress up as Princess Leia. Brent "rescued" her, dressed as Han Solo.
Jade Sienna
A columnist, and Brent's wife. She plays MMORPG-style games such as EverQuest and World of Warcraft, and also chats online with friends she's made in the series.
Along with Cole, Jade often plays the straight-man of the group and is often the voice of reason compared to the rest of the cast. However, she was not always the good and moral figure that she appears to be. In high school, she and her friend Sam were caught stealing the answers to their chemistry final. Jade also took her stepfather's car without permission, and was subsequently charged with robbery by her stepfather in order to teach her a lesson. Brent and Francis were delighted to learn this, since they tend to be the ones whose antics cause Jade to roll her eyes in contempt. Jade attempted to return to her old deviant ways after this revelation, but realized she didn't enjoy it as much as she once did.
Although considered a feminist, Jade's desire to be treated as an equal often comes into conflict with her natural maternal caregiver personality. She temporarily left PvP after Francis grabbed her breast, opening her own pro-woman gaming magazine called "Valkyrie". Later Valkyrie merged to PvP because Jade missed her PvP-family and had problems with her workers.
Jade is often criticized for being "unrealistic", although Kurtz states that she is somewhat modeled after his wife. In her first posting to the PvP blog, Angela Kurtz stated, "90% of the time, when you’re reading Jade, you’re reading about Scott’s feminine side, not about me."
Although Jade and Brent dated since nearly the start of the series, they broke up for nearly a year, due to a combination of Jade's obsession with Dark age of Camelot, and her catching Brent dancing with the wife of another Dark age of Camelot player in Las Vegas. Although they both continued to work at PVP, they were often seen bickering and attempting to one-up each other. Jade ended up falling in love soon after with another gamer she met on another MMORPG, named Xavier. She flew out to Las Vegas to meet Xavier in person, but began to feel reluctance and guilt returning to the place where she and Brent broke up. It was then revealed that Xavier had been Brent all along, and the two rekindled their relationship, eventually marrying in 2008. In 2014, she gave birth to her and Brent's daughter, Katherine Miranda Fontaine Sienna.
Francis Ottoman
The youngest member of the staff. Technical support for the office (and also known to write the occasional review), Francis is immature, easily excitable and always eager to be on the cutting edge of fads and technology. He loves his PC and routinely argues with Brent over Macs. He rarely shows interest in anything besides computers or video games, though it has been stated that he owns a prominent collection of pony figurines.
Francis is a skilled programmer, he has on different occasions made both a robot girlfriend and a robot of himself. The girlfriend-bot eventually malfunctions when he tells it that he grabbed Jade's boob, and eventually tries to destroy her. Using the leftover parts, he makes a robot of himself, nicknamed the Francis-bot. He uses this to wait in line for tickets for Star Wars Episode 3, which comes out three years from the beginning of the story. However, when Francis returns to get his tickets, he discovers that the robot has been waiting outside of an antique mall for a year. The robot kidnaps Francis and chains him to the mall while taking his position as the real person back at PvP. The others discover him after the robot dies from a saliva overdose after kissing Marcy. Both of these times, Francis has thought the thing it was doing was more impressive building and coding, which allowed both robots to have some semblance of artificial intelligence.
Francis' appearance in the comic has gone through more changes than the other characters. His first artwork was choppy and caused reader confusion due to readers mistaking a spot for his mouth and his mouth for a "jagged chin" or part of his hair, so his design was drastically changed later. For a long time he sported a T-shirt depicting a human skull, and messed-up moussed hair (the mousse was originally, and may still be, Skull's phlegm).