LAST EDIT : 2024/01/27
In 1981/82, TSR, to promote D&D, published in comics a strip of cartoon-shaped ads. It depicted the adventures of Saren the cleric, Indel the rogue, Valerius the warrior and Grimslade the mage at Zenopus castle...
I am very grateful to Das Übernerd's post that made me discover these ads.
I am also very interested in the concept of the story being an endless loop as it was suggested in his post's comments
The first page's artist is unknown. When I wrote this post a decade ago I somehow had the information that this page might have been drawn by Keenan Powell, who is credited for her arts in early D&D rule books and extensions. But 10 years later, I can't find out where I got this info. I know I tried to reach her years ago but without success.
Thanks to Steve Sullivan who left comments here few weeks ago and with whom we exchanged by email, I had been contacted by Dagmar Simoneit Knorr who was Senior Art director at TSR advertising dpt. According to her memories, this very first page was given to Ray Cioni Productions to be done. Ray Cioni was mostly working with artist Kurt Mitchell at this time. (They were given the cover page of Dragon Magazine n°43 - nov. 1980 for instance)
Trying to get confirmation and more info from Ray Cioni productions, I found out that Kurt Mitchell sadly passed away in summer 2020 and decided to contact Ray Cioni directly. I got a reply from his wife Sally that announced me that Ray passed away on january 2021. Nevertheless, she kindly got me in touch with an ex-colleague of Ray. But as he only worked at Ray Cioni Productions from 1984, he couldn't be of much help regarding this particular matter.
End of investigation.
The second page was drawn by Jeff Dee and all the other ones by Bill Willingham while Stephen D. Sullivan was in charge of the script. I let you, reader, have a look at both Bill's interview (at the end of this post) and the comments left by Steve to have a great insight on how these artists took over the rest of the story. :)
You can find funny and very inspired frame-by-frame analysis by Christopher B of the 4 first pages at his "A Rust Monster Ate My Sword" blog. Enjoy ! ;)
It appears, as pointed out by grodog on grognardia blog, that the characters Grimslade and Valerius are taken -or at least very inspired- by TSR staff ones used in Lake Geneva campaigns as listed in The Rogues Gallery (TSR 9031, 1980). Grimslade being the character of Harold Johnson, who was manager of production at TSR during this period when Valerius being the creation of Erol Otus, artist and game designer.
Here are the description of our two protagonists as found in the module :
Concerning Saren, who appears on page 2, Stephen D. Sullivan confirmed in comments below that this character is his own creation as the story was missing both a cleric and a woman.
Now, a question remains : Is Indel an exclusive creation for these ads or is he also mentioned in some TSR module ?
Then I somehow managed to get another cartoon ad for D&D, relating adventures of Auric, Tirra and the wizard Khellek in the Dungeon of Roakire. (Also by Bill Willingham)
It s dated 1981.
My first bet, checking the TSR "reply-coupon" (not sure of translation here... :P) which doesn't include the UK address, was it started to be published before summer '81 as well as first 2 ads from the Zenopus series.
I did some digging, and in fact these ads ran from october '81 to april '82 in magazines like Dragon or Epic illustrated...
This is a 4 pages strip :
Thanks to Icarus who left a comment below, it appears our 3 heroes are NPC in the Age of Worms adventure path, a 12 parts D&D campaign monthly published in Dungeon Magazine. (#124-135)
Here is a little montage with their stats for an insight as found in Age of Worms Overload (add-on to the 12 adventures by Paizo) :
The NPC are lvl 5 at the beginning of the campaign but you can check their stats at lvl 10 in Dungeon #128.
And, icing on the cake, it also exists a third set !
This one has a title : Quest through the Savage Country
Dated 1982 (released from june), it is featuring a ranger named Rory Gallan and Shadrak the gnome rogue being recruited to help Khellek, the wizard from Roakire series.
It is obviously the sequel of the precedent story.
It was meant to be 6 pages strip but story ends in midstream as the following pages were never drawn according to Bill Willingham in his interview (cf end of this post) by Dirk Deppey.
Here s how it starts :
Any further infos about these ads or any other I am not aware of would be greatly welcomed !
Some Ressources :
- Bill Willingham in Drawing me Out : Ep. 7 : The TSR Comic Ads (YouTube video), Apr. 2020
- Stephen D. Sullivan's Original Dungeons & Dragons Comics: The Marvel Ads' Origin (YouTube video), Apr. 2023
- Bill Willingham interview by Dirk Deppey - The Comics Journal #278, Oct. 2006 (extracts) :
DEPPEY: Generally, when most people think of your work at
TSR, unless they were there buying the modules at the time, most people
that I know associate you with the ads that appeared in Marvel. In fact,
in that comics interview that you did for David Anthony Kraft, they ran
a random Marvel Dungeons & Dragons ad and, if I remember correctly, it wasn’t even your artwork. You weren’t the first person to draw those, correct?
WILLINGHAM: No. Myself and a fellow named Jeff Dee were the two artists in the art department that were very into comics. We’d even gotten to the point of getting a meeting with Gary Gygax to try and convince him to start a line of comics, TSR-published comics. He gave that idea to the Dragon magazine person, who just hated comics and everything about them and who said he looked into it and it’s not viable. So we were kind of disappointed that we’re both frustrated comic artists working at TSR. And TSR’s ad department, which is completely separate from the art department, did a deal with Marvel Comics to run ads in the comics and they did this little comic-strip ad. They hired some outside person to do the first one, who knew nothing, turned in this wretched first episode or whatever you call it.
DEPPEY: Yeah, it was ugly.
WILLINGHAM: And yeah, Jeff saw that before I did and went storming to the other building, pointing out, panel by panel, everything that was wrong with how they did what they did. And rather than fire him, they said, “Well, that all makes sense. Why don’t you do it from now on?” He did the second one and did a wonderful job and then — I cannot recall why — either he got bored with it or decided not to do it. I took it over with the third one, attempting to draw like Jeff Dee, who’s a terrific artist, whereas at the time I was anything but. And I think the results are pretty obvious for anyone who looks at that stuff now.
DEPPEY: Somebody posted all of the Marvel Comics ads on your message board, and I got a chance to look through it, and you could actually see your style improving from ad to ad.
WILLINGHAM: Oh really? I can’t.
DEPPEY: Really?
WILLINGHAM: All of that stuff just… I can barely look at it, it’s so embarrassing to me.
DEPPEY: The story stopped in midstream; was that because the ad department had done something or was that because you had left TSR?
WILLINGHAM: No, actually, I left TSR before those stories ended, and they kept… Steve Sullivan was writing those things, I was drawing them… and they kept us both on on a freelance basis to continue doing them, but at some point, we’d finished up one little storyline and were just starting another, and someone in some other department or whatever had decided, “You know, maybe running comic-strip ads in a comic book is not the way to go.” Which I agree with, by the way. You want your ad to stand out. It’s like, if you run comic-strip ads in a magazine that isn’t comics, it’ll grab your attention, but why see a commercial that’s just more of what you’re reading anyway?
There were a lot of restrictions. TSR was getting very weary about the bad publicity it’d been getting. Remember when James Dallas Egbert disappeared in the sewers at some point, allegedly playing Dungeons & Dragons, and all that?
DEPPEY: Yeah, and somebody did a very bad after-school movie on it.
WILLINGHAM: Yeah, Mazes and Monsters with Tom Hanks. TSR was getting a lot of bad publicity then, even though it turns out he didn’t disappear in the sewers playing D&D, that he had decided to hitchhike to Texas to see his dad. His parents were divorced. But, you know, that’s not a sexy story. Any case, TSR was very worried about, you know, “We don’t want to get a bad rap.” Some of the religious groups were saying this was promoting magic and demonics, so there was a lot of rules. We have this group going to the dungeons: Don’t ever show them actually killing anything; don’t ever show a cleric doing anything because that will get the religious people upset; don’t show them grabbing gold because we don’t want to promote greed. [Deppey laughs.] Very sort of silly, silly rules. So if you’ll go back and notice, a lot of the comic strips are… you know, they’re wandering through the dungeons, some animal leaps out at them and then that’s the cliffhanger ending. Then the next strip will pick up later, after they slay the jackalwere, or that type of thing. We showed a lot of what happens between all the interesting things happening. But at some point, I think someone in the ad department just decided, “This isn’t going anywhere, we’re gonna try a different tack,” and canceled it mid-story.
WILLINGHAM: No. Myself and a fellow named Jeff Dee were the two artists in the art department that were very into comics. We’d even gotten to the point of getting a meeting with Gary Gygax to try and convince him to start a line of comics, TSR-published comics. He gave that idea to the Dragon magazine person, who just hated comics and everything about them and who said he looked into it and it’s not viable. So we were kind of disappointed that we’re both frustrated comic artists working at TSR. And TSR’s ad department, which is completely separate from the art department, did a deal with Marvel Comics to run ads in the comics and they did this little comic-strip ad. They hired some outside person to do the first one, who knew nothing, turned in this wretched first episode or whatever you call it.
DEPPEY: Yeah, it was ugly.
WILLINGHAM: And yeah, Jeff saw that before I did and went storming to the other building, pointing out, panel by panel, everything that was wrong with how they did what they did. And rather than fire him, they said, “Well, that all makes sense. Why don’t you do it from now on?” He did the second one and did a wonderful job and then — I cannot recall why — either he got bored with it or decided not to do it. I took it over with the third one, attempting to draw like Jeff Dee, who’s a terrific artist, whereas at the time I was anything but. And I think the results are pretty obvious for anyone who looks at that stuff now.
DEPPEY: Somebody posted all of the Marvel Comics ads on your message board, and I got a chance to look through it, and you could actually see your style improving from ad to ad.
WILLINGHAM: Oh really? I can’t.
DEPPEY: Really?
WILLINGHAM: All of that stuff just… I can barely look at it, it’s so embarrassing to me.
DEPPEY: The story stopped in midstream; was that because the ad department had done something or was that because you had left TSR?
WILLINGHAM: No, actually, I left TSR before those stories ended, and they kept… Steve Sullivan was writing those things, I was drawing them… and they kept us both on on a freelance basis to continue doing them, but at some point, we’d finished up one little storyline and were just starting another, and someone in some other department or whatever had decided, “You know, maybe running comic-strip ads in a comic book is not the way to go.” Which I agree with, by the way. You want your ad to stand out. It’s like, if you run comic-strip ads in a magazine that isn’t comics, it’ll grab your attention, but why see a commercial that’s just more of what you’re reading anyway?
There were a lot of restrictions. TSR was getting very weary about the bad publicity it’d been getting. Remember when James Dallas Egbert disappeared in the sewers at some point, allegedly playing Dungeons & Dragons, and all that?
DEPPEY: Yeah, and somebody did a very bad after-school movie on it.
WILLINGHAM: Yeah, Mazes and Monsters with Tom Hanks. TSR was getting a lot of bad publicity then, even though it turns out he didn’t disappear in the sewers playing D&D, that he had decided to hitchhike to Texas to see his dad. His parents were divorced. But, you know, that’s not a sexy story. Any case, TSR was very worried about, you know, “We don’t want to get a bad rap.” Some of the religious groups were saying this was promoting magic and demonics, so there was a lot of rules. We have this group going to the dungeons: Don’t ever show them actually killing anything; don’t ever show a cleric doing anything because that will get the religious people upset; don’t show them grabbing gold because we don’t want to promote greed. [Deppey laughs.] Very sort of silly, silly rules. So if you’ll go back and notice, a lot of the comic strips are… you know, they’re wandering through the dungeons, some animal leaps out at them and then that’s the cliffhanger ending. Then the next strip will pick up later, after they slay the jackalwere, or that type of thing. We showed a lot of what happens between all the interesting things happening. But at some point, I think someone in the ad department just decided, “This isn’t going anywhere, we’re gonna try a different tack,” and canceled it mid-story.
