PVP: THE SERIES DVD

Adapting a comic strip to animation can be tricky. If done well, it can become a classic work, as happened with the Peanuts specials; if done poorly, it becomes a simple rehash of the original strip, with a little movement added. The webstrip PvP www.pvponline.com falls somewhere in the middle, as the collected webisodes PvP: The Series, Season One DVD demonstrates.

Like the original strip, PvP: The Series is about the comic goings-on in and about the offices of the gaming magazine PvP. Brent Sienna (Bob Bray) is the snarky, cynical main character. Cole Richards (Ari Ross) is the boss who's both friendly and professional. Jade Fontaine (Jessica Gee) is the hot redhead who's usually the voice of reason. Francis Ottoman (Casey Mongillo) is the smart-ass teenager at the office. And since most comic strips have a non-human sidekick, there's Skull the Troll (Dino Andrade), a large blue creature who's like a hyperactive child. I can't say what anyone but Cole does at the magazine, as the episodes have almost nothing to do with gaming or writing, and more with wacky situations: Brent dreading his "surprise" birthday party, Cole working hard to prove he's not a racist (and making it worse), everyone battling for an actual office, and a three-part Christmas episode that borrows heavily from other Christmas specials.

I enjoy the PvP comic, but PvP: The Series left me wanting a little more. This may be due to brevity -- I suspect this collection, made in 2007, will be everything and not just "Season One" -- but a lot of the gaming commentary and interpersonal relationships between characters is missing or barely present here. The animation is also a bit rough (from fairly static movement to Cole's wandering unibrow), and the voices are decent but nothing extraordinary (though Andrade's child-like take on Skull grew on me, as I felt it matched the character's young exuberance). There are some funny bits here, but most of them will be familiar to readers of the online comic. And the DVD extras are basic: a making-of feature and Andrade's laying down his vocal tracks.

PvP: The Series, Season One DVD isn't bad, but it isn't all that good either. If you're a fan of the webcomic it can be interesting to see the characters moving and speaking -- but it's far from a replacement for the more involved and engaging strips.

Overall grade: C+

Reviewed by James Lynch