Polite Dissent

In addition to the previously mentioned Wormy, Dragon Magazine has hosted various other excellent strips. The one that I looked forward to the most was What’s New, With Phil and Dixie. Written and drawn by Phil Foglio (now of Girl Genius fame), What’s New was a monthly strip hosted by the bowler-wearing Phil and top-heavy Dixie. They explored various topics in Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing and war games, all the while trying to get permission to do a strip on “Sex in D&D.” The comic ran in Dragon for several years, stopped, then started again in another magazine (the Duelist, I think), and then moved back to Dragon before eventually stopping for good.

There are 3 very worthwhile collected volumes of the strip that can be purchased from various merchants including Phil Foglio’s own StudioFoglio and Steve Jackson’s Warehouse 23.

Comic Book Trivia – In the original Dragon Magazine run of What’s New, there was a strip written about super-hero role-playing games. In addition to mentioning the awesome Gazebo Boy (“Whose single power of transformation does little good against the Mighty Termite”), a hero named Deus Ex Machina Man was introduced. Several years later, Phil Foglio did an Angel and the Ape mini-series (1991). In that series, the comic book that Sam Simeon was illustrating was Deus Ex Machina Man.