Pros: Great artwork; hilarious storylines and punchlines; wonderful wit and style
Cons: None!
Rating: 5 out of 5
First published 3/5/2001
Dork Tower is a fantastic little comic for roleplayers. It pokes fun at pretty much every aspect of gaming and gamers with a ripping sharp wit. It’s absolutely hysterical. It’s so damn funny, in fact, that I just couldn’t help reading bits of it out loud to my fiancee while he was trying to work. I think he’s forgiven me since I decided to get a subscription.
The artwork is simple, good, and amusing, with a great eye for detail. I’m no judge of art, but I think this comic looks good. The cover is color; the inside is black and white.
I’ll take issue #11 as a sample issue, “World of Dorkness.” It starts off fast by making fun of the dating troubles of gamers and White Wolf’s “World of Darkness,” all at the same time. It goes on to lampoon gamers and coffee, gamers in social situations, gamers buying games (no, really, this last one is a lot funnier than it sounds), on-line flame wars between gamers, gamers trying to buy games in normal book stores, and lots, lots more. All of that in just 44 pages, some of which are ads and stuff. If that isn’t enough, there’s a “World of Dorkness” board game in the middle of the issue. It’s made with the same great humor as the comic itself, and just reading the rules is a real laugh. In addition there’s a page of “Murphy’s Rules” at the end, in which Kovalic lampoons some rules sillines from one game or another. In this issue, he has a hilarious go at D&D third edition.
Kovalic has a great knack for jabbing straight to the heart of the matter, and a lot of his humor is dead on. I don’t think there’s a roleplayer out there who could fail to find something in here to relate to or at least be amused by.
Straight to business: is it worth the cover price? Hell yeah! Now that I’ve had a taste of it, I can’t imagine not seeing more. (I’m greedy that way.) It took me all of one hour from opening my first copy to looking into getting a subscription.
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