1D6 Degrees of Separation: The Collected Dork Tower, Vol. 6 Collects Dork Tower issues 19-24 with bonus material Written and Drawn by John Kovalic Dork Storm Press 160 pp. ISBN: 1930964749 Available from Powell's Books.

John Kovalic is a British American cartoonist who earned his stripes by doing magazine illustrations and selling strips where he could during the nineties. His illustrations appeared in high profile magazines along the way, but he did not go the New Yorker route in his gag comics. No, he proudly touts the fact that Peanuts' Charles Schultz sent him a letter early on in his career to say how impressed he was with Kovalic's work. Kovalic reprinted that letter in the first trade paperback collection of his Dork Tower strips, and the influence is obvious. Unlike many comic book writers and illustrators, who take themselves far too seriously (attempts at creating the comic book equivalent of Ulysses spring to mind, but I won't share my laundry list of such posers), Kovalic is a strip writer. He cranks out brilliantly funny four panel gags in a number of magazines each month: Dragon Magazine, Game Trader, and Shadis have all carried Dork Tower strips at one time or another, and his prevalence in nerd and alt-culture magazines borders on syndication. In short, everyone wants a piece of this guy.

Okay, a few words there may have jumped out at you. "Dragon Magazine?" "Nerd and Alt-Culture Magazines?" Yes, Dork Tower, if the name didn't give it away, is about -- gasp -- nerd culture. Wait! Wait! Come back! Non-nerds will like these comics, too! Yes, it's true. The main characters in the Dork Tower strips and full-length comics are indeed nerds. One even runs a roleplaying game store. However, the comics aren't strictly in-jokes for gamers and "hobbyists" as some prefer to call themselves. Seriously. Think about Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons. If you know some of the comic book references that he tosses about, his character is a fan-boy treat, but even if you don't know why he's yammering on about Wally West and the Flash, you still find him an amusing goof, right? That's the deal here. Kovalic has essentially carried out not just caricature, but portraiture. The jokes in Dork Tower are gut busting to somebody who's actually played Magic the Gathering or Dungeons and Dragons, but also danged amusing for folks who find humor in the people who play Magic the Gathering or Dungeons and Dragons. To put this in cinematic terms, both the Alpha Betas and the Tri-Lambs of Revenge of the Nerds fame would find these comics amusing. Unlike most gamer-themed comics (What's New? with Phil and Dixie and Larry Leadhead, to name two "popular" ones), the gags in Dork Tower are less about "Oh no! I rolled only a 17 on this 20-sided die! How foolish! Now the orcs will kill me!", but more about "Holy crap, if my girlfriend finds out that I'm 35 and play Dungeons and Dragons, I'm done for!" Kovalic has struck the happy medium of both appeasing and looking to expand his audience.

The characters in Dork Tower are a veritable Springfield of lunatics, to extend my Simpsons metaphor. The standbys are Matt the illustrator, Igor the hyperactive nerd, Ken the businessman on the outside/loser on the inside, Gilly the perky goth, Carson the anthropomorphic muskrat, and Kayleigh, the girlfriend who tries to be a good sport and play along with all the geeky insanity. If you went to college during the '90s, you know these people. (You may not wish to admit it, but you do. Heck, most are still probably on your Christmas card list.) The short strips tend to focus on a gag related to the latest in pop culture or gaming. For instance, a recent strip made fun of the ridiculous hooplah surrounding the release of Halo 2 for the X-Box. The full length comic books, though, tend to focus on over-arching story lines that have a way of tying issues together. Kovalic does this well, but frankly, it's unnecessary. Ostensibly, Volume 6, 1D6 Degrees of Separation, is about the fallout of Matt and Kayleigh's break up, but everyone who reads it will realize that this is really just part of a larger literary device that allowed Kovalic to just take a break from the loose story line and focus on each character on their own, outside of the Matt and Kayleigh romance angle. Kovalic does a good job of putting everything together into story lines -- better than many comic book writers -- but in the end, for this kind of gag book, you're less interested in the soap opera continuity than you are in the gags on each page. I challenge any of you to share an example of how Charles Schultz really made each year of Peanuts different from the others. They're not, and that's what makes them accessible, easy to read, and in a way comforting. I know that Dork Tower will always be a series of great jokes, with familiar characters, usually in a fairly familiar arrangement. The fact that many comics have resorted to cheap (cheaper?) plot devices -- killing off characters, or making heroes go bad -- just makes Dork Tower all the more appealing.

The collected trade paperbacks of comics themselves are a lot of bang for your buck. Typically, Kovalic puts together a collection of great gag strips from his publications over the course of the year (many from www.dorktower.com), a series of comic books, and then some fun extras (like DVD bonus materials, almost). Volume 6 collects some strips, Dork Tower issues 19-24, and also includes a gamer cookbook and a bar recipe that tied into Igor, the lovable imp who is drawn as if he exists solely on cheese doodles, and written as if he exists solely on Mountain Dew and diet pills. 1D6 Degrees of Separation was just as brilliant as Kovalic's earlier Dork Tower strips, which is something that isn't easily said for most strip writers by the time they get to their sixth volume ( cough cough ...orange cat...cough cough). Like Gary Larson, John Kovalic seems to draw upon a demented well of humor that is consistently fresh and amusing.

For those of you who are still in doubt that a comic about geeks and nerds would be of interest to you, I highly recommend that you go to www.dorktower.com right now and read some of the archived strips. Then go out and get Volumes 1-6, including the one I've been praising here, 1D6 Degrees of Separation, and then go bug your local comics shop to get the new Volume 7: Dork Side of the Goon for you as soon as they have it in. You'll see why Dork Tower is one of the most popular indie comics on the market today.

-- Tyler M. Carey

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