Book Report: RPG World Volume One by Ian Jones-Quartey (2004)

I am pretty sure I bought this book as part of a bag of books at the Webster Groves Book Fair. It doesn’t matter, really, but I know you really dote upon my books’ lineage, gentle reader, and I try to recreate it as accurately as I can for you.

The book collects a number of strips from an online comic, RPG World, and presents them, get this, in a hardback book. A graphic novel, if you will, from an online comic. How about that? Of course, I don’t really follow online comics much; I mean, I see the Cox and Forkum and Day by Day like any good conservative blog reader who, you know, reads blogs that have the strips or cartoons printed on them, but I don’t see the sites out. Heck, I don’t even follow Calico Monkey, even though it’s flashed by an acquaintance into whose debt I remain for setting me up with my current sweet gig.

But put it in a book? I am all on it!

The story follows the action of the characters in a video game for the PlayStation as they go about their quest and side quests and deal with the mechanics of the game. It’s an amusing conceit and is full of jokes available to those familiar with the genre. I liked the book and liked that it took me only a couple of hours to read it. Unfortunately, just because I read it doesn’t mean I’ll follow the online version of the comic. Because I’m a luddite enough that I have certain things I don’t tend to do, and follow comics online is one of them. But if I find another book of RPG World somewhere in the wild, I’ll pick it up.

Books mentioned in this review:


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