Knights Of The Dinner Table #195 - A Review

As I noted before in my review of last month's Knights of the Dinner Table, I don't usually write reviews for this book.  And yet, here I am - reviewing it again one month later.  Why?  Did I suddenly have some change of heart regarding this book being inaccessible to non-gamers?  Well, yes and no.

I still think that a large part of the humor of this book - enjoyable as it is to me - would fly over the heads of new readers.  However, in the wake of KODT #195, I think the greater problem is the rich continuity between the characters rather than this book's focus upon a minority within a niche group - comic fans who roleplay.  Truth be told there's very little direct gamer humor in the book now and most of the comedy is born of the conflicting personalities and the interplay between them rather than three idiots thinking a gazebo is some kind of monster. 

More than that, KODT now contains enough drama to match the comedy.  A fine example of this comes in one scene between Sara (the book's main female protagonist) and local game shop owner Pete, during a gamer gathering at the local biker bar.  It's been a running gag since the beginning how many of the men in the local gaming community have a crush on Sara - a fact that mystifies her.  Pete suggests to her that it isn't that she's a woman who games - it's the fact that she's a genuinely nice person and that most of the men she knows aren't used to anyone being nice to them.  


It's a brief moment and it's immediately off-set by the running gag about Pete bad-mouthing his ex when he's drunk but it's still there.  And it's far deeper than one would expect given that Pete is usually portrayed as a miserly skin-flint who would sell his own mother for a deal.  This scene also hit me because I know a few women like Sara who have the same problem with being hit on because of the assumption that "being nice equals "digs me" and not knowing why their being a decent person seems to bring unwanted advances. 

This is also shown in the comedic highlight of the issue, where the rest of the titular Knights are indulging in one of the gathering games - creating characters based on some of the people in attendance.  There's a lot of funny stuff in here, mainly stemming from the unwitting misogyny as our boys wind up turning their friends, ex-girlfriends and current love interests into action heroines worthy of a Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez/Frank Miller film festival.  B.A's reaction to the absurdity of all of this is priceless and the descriptions and ideas are hilarious but a bit of the humor is lost if you don't know all the characters being described, such as Moe and Bridgette. who do not appear in this issue. 


As before, I can't really recommend this comic to neophytes.  I can and do strongly suggest that anyone who thinks they might like this sort of thing check out the collection of freebie strips on Kenzerco's website and then consider in investing in the earlier Bundle of Trouble collections of the earlier issues. 

Knights of the Dinner Table #194 - A Review

Knights of the Dinner Table is a comic I've picked up monthly without fail for over a decade now.  Despite this, it's not a comic I review all that often.  There's more than a few reasons for that.  Chief among them are that it's now more of a magazine than a comic book, with over half its' pages now devoted toward articles on game reviews, gamer war-stories and content for publisher Kenzer and Company's own RPG releases.  I also can't really critique the artwork, most of which is copy-pasted from the original character sketches by writer/artist Jolly Blackburn's original comics nearly 20 years ago.


Another issue is that the humor of the comics in KODT is aimed at a niche market that doesn't include the greater number of comic-book readers.  Unless you're an old-school pen-and-paper gamer, much of the humor will likely be lost on you.  That is not to say that there isn't some comedy based on the character's personalities.  Indeed, KODT has a huge cast and the brunt of the humor now comes from the conflict between warring factions and personalities.  Even with the helpful Stan Lee style footnote boxes at the bottom of some pages, it is hard for a new reader to pick up the newest issue and understand immediately about what is going on and who hates who and why.

Case in point.  As this issue opens, the cast is newly returned from a big gaming convention.  Brian, one of the titular Knights, has been thrown off his game and finds himself unable to focus on anything gaming related after seemingly having been given a  set of cursed dice by gamer goddess Felicia Day.  In truth, the dice were sent to him by Shelia - girlfriend of Bob, one of Brian's gaming group, who has longed nursed a grudge against Brian for several reasons, including nearly getting Bob killed by a semi-feral dice-hording cat.  The rest of the Knights know about Shelia's trick but all of them - even those not sworn to secrecy by Shelia - are reluctant to break the bad news to Brian. 


At the same time, local game shop owner Weird Pete has announced a Liberation Day sale at his store, in honor of his recent victory over Brian in a World War Two board game the two have been running for years. This crosses-0over with Bob's conflict between his oldest friend and girlfriend (Bob works Pete's store) and brings us an update on Crutch. Crutch, a local biker/petty thug who got into gaming while in prison, recently decided to start game-mastering his own crew but has proven unable to get a team together. And then there's the on-going story of Pete's gaming group, The Black Hands, and their attempts to take over the kingdom their characters live in through running a farm that is becoming more and more of a forced labor camp/militia.

And that's just the story lines covered in THIS issue!

Knights of the Dinner Table used to be a fun comic full of simple jokes but it has grown heavy under the weight of its' own expanded universe.  It's a fine thing for those of us who have been reading since the beginning (or, at least, somewhat closer to the beginning) but that same rich universe makes this book largely inaccessible to new readers.  I can't recommend this issue whole-heartedly but I will suggest that comedy fans look into acquiring one of the KODT Bundles of Trouble or Tales From The Vault collections that either collect the smaller strip collections or self-contained story-lines.  You can also check out Kenzer And Company's collection of free web-strips.