We are delighted to be joined by Fred Van Lente and Tom Fowler. Fred is a  New York Times-bestselling and award-winning comics creator. Tom is an award-winning artist, illustrator and writer. Fred has worked on numerous comics and graphic novels, including The Comic Book History of Comics, Archer & Armstrong, The Amazing Spider-Man, Marvel Zombies and Howtoons: (Re)Ignition. Tom has worked on numerous comics, including Books of Magic, Refrigerator Full of Heads, Rick and Morty, Mysterius and Venom. We got to chat with Fred and Tom about their new graphic novel, which is now live on Kickstarter, Gamemasters: The Comic Book History of Roleplaying Games.
Hi Fred and Tom, it is so wonderful to have you both with us.
Could you please introduce yourselves to our readers?
F: Hi there, my name is Fred Van Lente, you may know me from such comics as The Comic Book History of Comics, Marvel Zombies, The Amazing Spider-Man, and Archer & Armstrong. But you may not know I am almost as big an RPG nut as I am a comics nut. My first published writing, in fact, was a GURPS article for Steve Jackson Games’ Pyramid magazine, and my first published book was the Call of Cthulhu supplement The New Orleans Guidebook. I’m very happy to be merging my two favorite worlds together.
T: Hi. I’m Tom Fowler. Over the last twenty five years I’ve worked for just about every respectable outfit in comics, as well as most of the less respectable ones. I’ve drawn Hulk, Venom, Quantum and Woody, Mysterius, Books of Magic, Mad Magazine, and Refrigerator Full of Heads. I also wrote (and sometimes drew) Rick and Morty.
Fred, can you tell us about the origins of Gamemasters: The Comic Book History of Roleplaying Games?
F: Easy, Tom one day said to me, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we did a Comic Book History of Roleplaying Games?” and, unfortunately for him, I am extremely suggestible. Cut to five years later, and I am answering this interview.
Tom, what was it about the Gamemasters graphic novel that made you want to be a part of it?
T: Mostly, that it was my idea.
Getting a chance to really investigate the dark corners of something that’s been such a big part of my early and later life was huge and endlessly fascinating for me. Reading the scripts as they came in, I found myself learning far more than I’d imagined I would at the outset and that’s always a big draw for me.
Plus, you know, it was my idea.
Fred, was it difficult to research?
F: Yes and no. If all you care about is Dungeons & Dragons, there’s quite a volume of material out there from historians like Jon Peterson and Michael Witwer. We wanted to go way beyond the Gary Gygax of it all, and look at RPGs throughout history and in other media like video games. There the historical resources are a bit more limited. I’d really recommend the four-volume Designers & Dragons by Shannon Appelcline, that’s an exhaustive history of the industry and a ton of fun.
This is something like my thirteenth non-fiction OGN and I can tell you the research is half the fun of it, pulling in all these disparate elements together to tell a unified story, it’s not a difficulty at all, it’s a real joy.
Tom, what reference materials did you use for the graphic novel?
T: Fred’s script template is, for my money, the best in the business, and is always full of links and specific references to what he’s trying to convey. It makes the search for more relevant drawing references significantly easier. Also, for things like specific game book covers, there seems to be a thriving market for people clearing their basements out onto eBay and Craigslist. So you can find a lot of fairly obscure references that way. The biggest challenge, though, was tracking down photo references for many of the actual people who developed these games. RPGs have never been the flashiest corner of publishing and so images of their designers can be a bit tricky to get your hands on. But we managed.
Can you tell us about your first experience of playing a roleplaying game?
F: My parents got me the Dungeons & Dragons Basic set with the classic Erol Otus box art when I must have been nine or ten. The first adventure in there, Keep on the Borderlands, had stats for all the men-at-arms and ruler and such in the keep, and, being the simpleton I was at ten, I assumed that meant you were supposed to kill them for the XP, and so my group slaughtered the lot of these potential allies in every session. And so my career as a Murder Hobo began.
T: My first experience was through my older brother around the time we moved to Ottawa when I was ten. We played D&D the night of the move in a family friend’s den with a couple of other kids. I was hooked immediately, but I confess I spent most of my time just pouring over the illustrations in the monster manuals. After that my friends and I played a lot of D&D as well as spy games like James Bond and Top Secret. Later I got obsessed with the TMNT RPG and just started filling up notebooks with weird animal mercenaries. I went on to work illustrating various RPG manuals for the better part of my twenties.
Fred, what made Tom and Bill the right artists for Gamemasters?
F: It was Tom’s idea, and he knows where I live. Seriously though, Tom is a big gamer too and loves the material—just look at his cover, he’s clearly born to do this! Tom really wanted Bill to color the book. I had never worked with him before, and he and Tom are just a perfect match, he’s crushing it.
Tom, is there a particular section of Gamemasters that you enjoyed creating the art for the most?
T: My first love in RPGs will always be D&D, but I really enjoyed drawing sections depicting the games Traveller and Paranoia. Lots of fun, weird sci-fi stuff. I’m desperate to play them now.
Do you have a favourite roleplaying game?
F: That’s a great question. I’ve played a lot of them. As a kid I quickly dumped D&D for TSR’s espionage RPG, Top Secret. I was a D&D camp counselor the summer after my freshman year of college and ironically there I was exposed to GURPS, which I played for years and years. When I became a comics pro I stopped RPGs for about a decade, because storytelling for free just felt like work. Then I started a group with a bunch of like-minded Gen-Xers here in NYC, we play a variety of games. Call of Cthulhu we’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of, but I also like the new 2d20 system from Modiphius. We enjoyed John Carter of Mars and Dishonored, and should start Fallout once our current Call of Cthulhu Dark Ages campaign wraps up.
T: Since I started playing again, about 12-13 years ago, it’s been mainly D&D. More as a result of that being the game that friends were already playing than anything else. I have a lot of fun testing the limits of the system for my sense of character building. I’ve played yetis, blind telepathic elephants, aliens, and, once, a very small donkey. My most recent character is an affably hungry Gnoll named Skrrrrrrlok Gnollmes: World’s Greatest Meat Detective.
More recently, my buddy Stuart Wellington got me into a sci-fi RPG called Mothership. We were able to play a couple of sessions over Roll20 during lockdown before we all got too busy, but it was a fun time.
Fred, how did Clover Press get involved with Gamemasters?
F: I am amused by the modern idea that the writer is the driving force behind all things in comics, but guys, it’s just not true! After a couple false starts, Tom suggested Clover and they’ve been great to work with so far. Hank Kalanz was one of my first editors in pro comics—back on Prime, anyone remember Prime? My issue came out between the GURPS article and the Call of Cthulhu book, actually.
Tom, was it a challenge to create the art for Gamemasters?
T: Aside from reference, especially in the early chapters, it’s mostly just been trying to find the time to commit to working on it. Comics are, at the best of times, a very labour-intensive job. So if you’re trying to draw a book, even if it is a passion project, on top of your more regular book, it gets hard to keep anything in the tank. I don’t like hacking out work and when I was able to sit down to draw Gamemasters pages, I wanted to be able to approach them with the energy and attention they required. As a result, we’ve been working at this for a while.
As you are crowdfunding Gamemasters: The Comic Book History of Roleplaying Games and dealing directly with consumers, does that make Gamemasters: The Comic Book History of Roleplaying Games more special for you?
F: I just think that because RPGs are such a big part of Kickstarter, a book about RPGs made Gamemasters a natural fit.
T: I’ve never really felt that detached from the fans of my work. There don’t seem to be as many barriers separating artists and readers in comics as there are in other creative fields so I’ve always felt that I’ve been communicating fairly directly to the people who are interested in reading my work. As a result I don’t know that I’ve approached this project radically differently than any other. But maybe ask again after the campaign’s done and I’ll have a different answer?
Any message for the ComicBuzz readers?
T: Please buy our book. We like it a lot.
F: Always tell the truth. It’s easier to remember.
We would like to say thank you to Fred and Tom for chatting with us, and we would like to wish them the best of luck with Gamemasters: The Comic Book History of Roleplaying Games.
Feel free to check out Gamemasters: The Comic Book History of Roleplaying Games on Kickstarter.
