Knights of the Dinner Table

If someone were to ask me "what's your favorite comic book," that'd actually be a pretty hard question.  It's not that I wouldn't have one that would come immediately to mind, it's that I don't really know if I'd call it a "comic."  See, while it might have started as more of a traditional "comic book" it has since grown into being a "magazine," with additional articles to accompany the comic strips.

However, seeing as how it just recently celebrated its 200th issue, I figure now's as good a time as any to discuss the one "comic" I've been loyally collecting since the 90s: Knights of the Dinner Table.

Now, I will freely admit that I didn't pick this comic up from the start.  In fact, my first encounter with it was when one of the employees at The Game Parlor in Virginia looked over some stuff I was buying, fumbled over the edge of the counter for a copy of the first trade (collecting issues one through three) and put it on my stack of stuff.

"Buy this," he said, "and if you don't like it, I'll give you double your money back."

Needless to say, I loved it, and I hunted down every issue I could get my hands on.  Sadly, this hunt has only taken me as far back as issue number nine, but I've picked up every issue since then and plan on picking up every issue that follows.

The comic started out as a bit of a surprise to everybody, including its creator Jolly Blackburn.  Initially used as filler on the back page of Shadis magazine's second issue, it steadily grew a fanbase around crudely drawn characters.  Eventually it managed to pick up a regular spot in the magazine for some time, but eventually spun out into its own publication.

Originally starring only four characters (Bob, Brian, Dave, and their hapless gamemaster B.A.), it eventually picked up a fifth character in B.A.'s cousin, Sara, who brought a bit of level-headed thought to a group of die-hard "hack first, never bother asking questions" players.  The cast has steadily grown, and managed to provide even background characters with incredibly amazing depth.

There's "Weird Pete" Ashton, the game shop owner who is fixed in his ways, has a pet chimpanzee named "Squirrely," and struggles month by month to make rent while having enough for food, but could never imagine leaving the hobby he loves so much.  You have Leslie "Crutch" Humphries, an ex-con who learned about the games played by mistake (long story) and has since grown from someone who knew nothing about teamwork to a capable player and gamemaster in his own right.  Those are only two examples out of a regularly occurring cast of dozens, but even if you come in late to the series you aren't lost because their personalities are so well defined that you can immediately look at a single line of dialogue coming from each character and recognize them as someone you already know.

The humor can be a bit geek-centric, but there are some things that are so ridiculous that I've had non-gamer friends laugh at them.  The guys not understanding what a "gazebo" is, believing it to be a terrible monster, and attacking it is one of the classic strips from the early days.  Players regularly asking things like if "those really nice leather boots" they just bought their character protected them at all from the lava they just fell into are common.  Plays off pop culture, obscure culture, and even references so obscure I've barely heard of them are littered throughout each issue.  You have bizarre and brilliant game ideas presented, such as a post-apocalyptic world where rock bands fight for supremacy, gaining power from their groupies and needing to perform shows to get more "power."

The art has improved significantly since its original days, going from crudely drawn sketches with drifting eyes and blurred drawings to crisp computer-aided sketches and drawings.  They're not quite up to the level of, say, George Perez or Alex Ross, but since the crux of the enjoyment comes from the writing and the humor, the art is comforting now, and any sudden changes might be rather jarring.

The articles that now accompany the magazine tend to be focused on tabletop gaming, but also highlight books, movies, and television shows that might be of interest to those of a more "nerdy" persuasion.  Articles have discussed major historical events, discussions of how key battles were in wars, and a breakdown alternative rules for everything from Monopoly to Chutes and Ladders.

People write in with stories from their own game experiences, writers provide ideas for games, whether they're simple one-off short stories or epic adventures.  In short, it's the entire gaming community enclosed within its pages, and you get the sense that people are writing what they write because they love the subject and would do it even if they weren't paid for the articles.

Now, of course, nothing's perfect, and I do have a few small issues with the magazine.  None of them are enough for me to get angry at it, so I hope nobody reading this thinks that these are "major" concerns.

The first part is that the stories through the comic can tend to jump around a lot.  A long, stretched out story line involving people playing an online computer game might suddenly get hijacked over to a story about an upcoming convention and never follow back up again with what was happening before.  A story about players trying out a game based on superheroes will just suddenly end as another story comes up and takes priority.  Disagreements and issues that arise involving games being published, products being sold, and whether a character was foolish to sell the rights to what's becoming a major game were raised and then left by the wayside.

Now, this isn't huge because often the stories will wrap back around to fill in the holes.  The superhero game could easily come back later with a character off-handedly saying "Man, I really thought we had that one bad guy, how was I supposed to know his back-up was Nuklo the Walking Atomic Bomb?"  The online game story might get brought up as an aside later with an update as to what's been happening since then, then followed up again later in a fuller story.

As it is, it does help you realize that when you have a cast this big, you really are just getting glimpses into some of their lives, but to focus solely on one character (or group of characters) can lead you away from something else happening elsewhere with an entirely other group of people.

Now, there is one other thing that bothers me, and that's one of the primary characters: Brian.

Brian is, for lack of a better phrase, a pretty terrible person.  He will gleefully extort, bribe, and threaten his friends and act offended when called on it.  He will convince others to take risks he isn't willing to take, abandon people when things go bad, and outright lie to save his own behind, and again, he'll act offended if called on any of the behavior.

There have only been a few small instances of Brian getting any kind of comeuppance for his behavior, and a recent storyline involved people trying to actually "get him back" only to have it backfire in their faces.

While I am fond of the character (as I am all these characters I've been reading about since the 90s), I feel it's almost a disservice to have so many other characters grow and change and have Brian remain the selfish, egotistical, backstabbing person he frequently comes across as.  This isn't to say he hasn't grown, in fact a few glimpses into his private life have given us a small but insightful look at a person who's frequently lonely, has nowhere to go for holidays, and really only has the few friends he hangs out with on a regular basis to keep him from becoming a complete shut-in.

But still, it'd be nice for him to come to the realization that he simply can't take advantage of his friends the way he has for the past few years without there being real consequences for him.

Knights of the Dinner Table is the one comic that's regularly pulled for me at my local comic book store, and it's the only comic book I make a point to pick up the week it comes out.  If there were any regular spin-offs of the series that focused on other characters, I'm pretty sure my wallet would start to cry because I'm not sure I'd be able to keep myself from buying those series as well if they proved to be as good as the original.

So, congratulations on the 200th issue to everyone at the publication, and I look forward to 200 more to come.  No matter what else I hold on to or let go in my life, reading back through old issues and remembering jokes and stories told will always be extremely special to me.