What's New #1 [1991] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

What's New #1 [1991]

This is the first of three (ignore that "No. 1 of 2" on the cover) collections of Phil Foglio's humourous gaming related comics from the pages of hobbyist magazines featuring a cartoon version of himself along with his companion Dixie Null. The first two issues were published by Palliard Press. I think, but haven't verified, that a second edition of this book was published by Studio Foglio. There are definitely two editions of the second book, and then the third and final book was only published by Studio Foglio.

The book opens with a new 8-page story, "Roll Models or How They Met", providing an unneeded but highly entertaining origin story for our hosts, and definitely the highlight of the book. We then jump back a decade to the May 1981 edition of DRAGON MAGAZINE, where Foglio launched an unassuming single page black and white strip with a series of quick jokes about gaming, intended as a one-shot. This continued in every issue of the magazine for three years, with an upgrade to colour starting on the eighth strip and expanding to two-pages (sometimes longer) with the tenth. This book has the first two years of strips. The next year and another new story are in #2, while the third book has the strips from a revival in another magazine, THE DUELIST.

This is some great stuff. I'm only casually familiar with gaming and the associated culture and I loved it. I'm sure a few of the more subtle bits went right over my head. Or maybe not, since Foglio's note at the end on the origin of the strip mentions he created them without ever playing a FRPG.

Apart from the new intro, done by a far more seasoned Foglio, my favourite bit was the gamer gift guide ostensibly designed for non-gamers and the strip about how gaming prepares you for real life. "They're letting anybody into the Thieves' Guild these days!"

The only real complaint is that the margins on the book are a little tight for the binding, thanks to the magazine dimensions they were drawn for. The edges of the strips disappear into the spine. This is less of a problem in the Studio Foglio editions of the other two books I have, so I've always been on the lookout for the reprint of this book, if it exists. Or maybe just hoping for a collection of all three books and any subsequent stories (the third book mentions a return to DRAGON MAGAZINE, but if that happened and if those were ever collected I do not know).

(looking around some more, doesn't look like a second edition of the first book was ever done, and there was a second DRAGON run that went on for quite a while, never reprinted but most of the strips from every run appeared as a webcomic, no longer on the official site but archived here)