Fantasy Family

White Dwarf jumpers!

Hope he's their dad.

Scan from White Dwarf #72, December 1985

100 LEVELS!

A fine, fine day at the mart yesterday. I scored stacks of cheap comics AND met up with London Loves Comics readers Tam, John and John's missus, Nell.

Huzzah!

An exhaustive and unnecessary survey of my purchases will follow. For now, enjoy this ad from the days when any old herbert could sell their dungeon designs through the pages of a Marvel comic...

Levels within levels within levels.

Christopher Nolan eat your heart out.

Scan from Iron Man #230 May 1988 (25p purchase at yesterday's mart)

LLC Recommends: Dungeon Quest Book One

The first volume of Joe Daly's Dungeon Quest is a surreal treat of a comic. Following the narrative style of a classic roleplaying adventure, but with American stoners instead of fantasy archetypes as the protagonists, this is a story which anyone who has ever dabbled with D&D and/or recreational drugs will love. It's also a beautifully drawn book full of absurd looking characters and rich, involving landscapes.

The star of Dungeon Quest is bored teenager, Millennium Boy, a curious chap with a light bulb shaped head and a passion for magic. With nothing on TV, he just ups and leaves his house on a D&D style quest. As with all roleplaying adventures, his first job is to assemble a party. He starts with his pal, Steve, a lazy dropout who finds it hard to get off the couch. Later they hook up with a sensitive jock, the fantastically named Lash Penis, and the silent but deadly (ahem) archer, Nerdgirl. As they move further away from the centre of their suburban town, the

boundaries between the world that we know and the world of the fantastic begin to blur into one. Where once everything was parked cars and paved streets, suddenly molemen and pirate graveyards jostle for space with the hobos and liquor stores of our reality.

It's this hazy crossing of the lines between the real and the imagined that makes the book so good. Suffused with sick, deadpan humour, graphic fantasy violence and more than a little pothead style mysticism, this is a comic that isn't easy to pigeonhole. It's fantasy, but it's also a classic slacker yarn which wears its underground influences (Crumb, Burns, Clowes) as proudly as it does its nerdier D&D/Tolkien ones. It shares certain similarities with C.F.'s brilliant comic, Powr Mastrs, but is more grounded than the trippy, alien world of New China that C.F. creates.

There's plenty of cool visuals and weird fun to be had here, but Daly's characters are the real entertainment. Vacuous potheads, hobo shamen and skeletal pirates - all of them (bar Nerdgirl who doesn't say anything) have distinct, funny voices. Daly really gets slacker speak and he revels in the joy that wasters take in discussing the banal. But of course this isn't Clerks, there are monsters to be killed, cool treasure to find and kick-ass weapons and armour to kit up with. So just as you're getting comfortable with the mundane BOOM! Daly smashes you in the face with the extraordinary. It's masterful stuff.

As an artist he rocks. Funny looking folk with fat heads and imposing bodies. Heavy skys. Thick black lines. A BEAUTIFUL fantasy-style map. It's comical, but it's got heavy body and real soul.These are good meaty pictures. Oh yes.

Book One ends just as the party are about to move into the foreboding gloom of Firebug Forest, intent on delivering the "Penis Sheath of Disturbance" to the mysterious forest hermit, Bromede! It's a cliffhanger and a half. Bring on Book Two!

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Stuck for something to read? Click the LLC Recommends tag below for more of my favourites!

Oh God

I haven't played Dungeons & Dragons for many, many years, yet I have a nagging need to buy THIS NEW RELEASE. Wizards of the Coast tap into some of the nostalgic urge that has me hovering over the buy button on Amazon...



Yeah, very slick presentation D&D pedalers.

The game will always remain the same, eh?

Well maybe, but not your kind of same. Isn't that right MR WHEATLEY?

RIP Gary Gygax

The man who invented D&D has missed his last saving throw. See HERE

I was utterly obsessed with D&D from the age of 10 until 13 and spent far too many of my formative years treading on D4 and wittering to bored adults about encumbrance AC, HP, STR, CHA and DEX.

My character Thork the Dwarf was a legend in my own mind, while as a Dungeon master my mammoth campaign known only as "The Big Adventure" became a cause celebre amongst the 11 year olds in my road.

Even now the urge to play the game seizes me from time to time.

I have Gary Gygax to thank/blame for all of that.

RIP

When role-playing ruled the World

A nice little selection of role-playing ads from the shortlived but much missed 2000AD spinoff Diceman


T&T? What a ripoff. I'm only surprised we never got Catacombs & Corpses or Sewers & Shit.

In the 80's people were willing to travel 2 miles from junction 11 on the M1 just to buy d20s and lead orcs.

Aside from making games sound like D&D (see the aforementioned T&T) another surefire way to grab the youth of Britain's pocket money was to stick Arnie's face on your product. I sent off for a trial of this PBM (That's Play By Mail to you son) purely because it had Conan on the front. I didn't understand the rules when they arrived and never played it.

Gary fucking Gygax teaming up with the associate producer (Flint Dille, no less) of Transformers! Woah, this one had to be a monster hit right? Mwahahahahaha. Sagard? Sawho more like.

Shorts

Busy, busy, busy!

Yes True Believers, the stress of having a premature baby in a special care unit is taking it's toll at the moment.

So GARGGGH!

Anyway, a few bits and bobs for you

Firstly a link to an interview with Zack Snyder in which he talks about Watchmen some more. Nice to see Dave Gibbons getting involved and I'm looking forward to the Nixon prosthetic. Interview HERE
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I made a flying visit to Forbidden Planet on Friday to pick up some comics.

As is my way when hitting FP, I flitted ever so briefly into the role playing section where I was stopped in my tracks by possibly the lamest looking D&D expansion EVER!


Perleasssse! How may adolescent boys (I assume they still make up the vast majority of D&D's player base) are going to want to role play Shakespeare plays? Uggh.

If "The taming of the shrew" was in fact called "The taming of the orc" I could see a case for this nonsense. As it is though its a ridiculous idea.

I guarantee this monstrosity will sit and gather dust on FP's shelves for years.

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As you can imagine, I'm somewhat behind on my comics reading at the moment. I did manage to peel issue #2 of Matt Fraction's excellent new comic The Order of my teetering "to read stack"though. Fun stuff. Most notable for being the first and probably last Marvel comic to include a Julie Burchill quote. Now there's someone you never thought you'd see in spandex.

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Speaking of the tight shiny stuff, I'm heartened to see that "Sodam Yat" has overtaken "Guys in spandex" as the number #1 search term by which people find their way to L L C.

The arrival of Green Lantern Corps #15 (or The Sinestro Corps War #5 as it will come to be known) has led to an upsurge of people hitting this site in their quest for more knowledge on the man who would be Ultimate Green Lantern.

Sadly I've given you all the info I have on your favourite Daxamite at the moment, but I do recommend this website to anyone who fancies trawling for more.

Are you frightened

Bless my mum, she dug out some of my old schoolwork and brought it over to show me. She liked all the cute poems and pictures of cats, cars and dragons, but as far as I'm concerned there is only one piece of work worth preserving.

Ladies and gentlemen from the mind of a 10 year old who had just read the rulebook to D&D basic for the first time, comes a short but fantastic tale of dungeoneering complete with footnotes (please note, if you have trouble reading the scans you can click on them to ramp up the fantasy).

1. No need for a question mark here. I know you are frightened and I'm just reminding you of the fact.

2. Note the use of the term "magic user" instead of "wizard". This is D&Dese. Any roleplayer who wants to be taken seriously (a contradiction in terms I know) MUST call wizards magic users.

3. Halflings are shit. At the age of 10 I was firmly of the opinion that girls were shit too. Hence the "Woman halfling". Also, note that I don't even give this character a proper D&D name.

4. I was confident that my teacher Mrs Jones had not seen Hawk the Slayer and thus felt comfortable putting him in my story.

5. Of course.

6. "You are weak woman halfling!"

7. Its my story and I'm biased, but this is fucking amazing!

8. "You are weak and confused woman halfling!"

9. No shit Sherlock.

10. I don't know about you, but I am so scared I just shit my pants.

11. Interesting notes on the physiognomy of Hell Devils.

12. "Shut the fuck up you weak, confused, stupid woman halfling!"


13. Exploding Hell Devils = AWESOME

14. I should have ended the story with Hawk punching Elgin unconscious again.

That's not an Obriun carnivore...

Way back in Prog 286 of 2000Ad, Tharg published a series of reader pics...



This was Tharg's favourite...



I have a very clear memory of seeing this at the time and thinking it was familiar. And in Prog 296 the truth came out...


Further proof that back in the 80's everyone (be they be plagiarist or tell-tale) played Dungeons and Dragons.

Whatever happened to Earthlet A. James?