New York Times-bestselling and award-winning comics creator Fred Van Lente (The Comic Book History of Animation) and acclaimed Wizards of the Coast and comics artist Tom Fowler (Books of Magic) have a new graphic novel available now on Kickstarter thanks to Clover Press: Gamemasters: The Comic Book History of Roleplaying Games. Bill Crabtree is on colors.
The crowdfunding campaign is also perfectly timed with the 50th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons.
Read details here:
The story of the tabletop’s triumph even in our digital age begins in the day of actual sword-wielding warriors, leading right up to the fireball-casting avatars of today. Gamemasters: The Comic Book History of Roleplaying Games takes readers on an incredible journey from the mists of the past to the screen-lit present, showing not just how these games work and why we love them, but what they can tell us about ourselves.
“This project has been a labor of love for Tom and me since 2019, and it’s so exciting to bring it to fruition on the fiftieth anniversary of D&D,” said Van Lente. “It’s been so cool to follow the story of an idea, from the invention of chess and the earliest wargames, up through the birth of TSR in the 1970s, through all the innovations gamers and designers have added to the RPG genre since then, right up to Baldur’s Gate 3, really.”
“The tabletop gaming industry is where I learned to be a professional artist,” said Fowler. “After some years away, it’s been a privilege to reimmerse myself in the strange history of that world!”
Gamemasters: The Comic Book History of Roleplaying Games follows Van Lente’s earlier New York Times-bestselling nonfiction graphic novels The Comic Book History of Comics, which NPR said was “done with wit, energy, a healthy dose of insolence and a dedication to getting it right” and The Comic Book History of Animation, called “a must-read comic that will both entertain and educate” by ComicBook.com; and the American Library Association award-winning Action Philosophers, which the New York Times called “intensely goofy but intellectually rigorous.”
“Fred and Tom are both hardcore gamers, and it shows in this meticulously researched history of the tabletop RPG,” said Clover Press Publisher Hank Kanalz. “Their passion for gaming comes through in their dramatic and often humorous take on how and why these games work, and why we love them so.”
