Ah right. I read this so I guess what I thought was sheer speculation was actually just information from this. Thanks!The comic books were a story in Slaying the Dragon. TSR West (under Flint Dille, as I recall) was working on multiple different media properties, none of which worked out. DC was uninterested in doing Buck Rogers, so TSR tried doing it themselves. They came up with the concept of a "comic book module" as a combined story plus game content in comic book form, to be distributed in comic shops and anywhere a comic could be. They tried to justify this as not being the same thing as a comic book and thus not in conflict with their licensing agreement with DC, but DC was unhappy and that experiment wound up crashing their relationship.
The forgotten story of D&D creator TSR’s failed attempt to break into comics and become the next Marvel or DC
The Dungeons & Dragons maker tried to take on the creator of Batman - and lost.www.dicebreaker.com
I'm thinking particularly of the infamous Sorcerer's Scroll in Dragon 16, reprinted in I think it's the 2nd Best of anthologies. It's just a nasty piece of work that can best be summarized by "these peasants do not understand my genius."
It’s worse than that. DC had a deal with TSR to publish D&D comics. TSR tried to get around that deal by publishing their own comic and adding scenario information at the end based on the story. DC was not amused.
For anyone scratching their heads: Caltech's mascot is a beaver (nature's engineer).
Yes, it's a heck of a read. His blanket condemnations of APAs are pretty rich, after the nice letters he wrote into A&E in prior years. I also like how he dumps on "weapon expertise" systems, while publishing rules for weapon proficiencies that same year in the PH, and Weapon Specialization rules in Unearthed Arcana later.
Shades of the gubernatorial candidate in William S. Burroughs' "When Did I Stop Wanting to be President": "Anything I do for you, I'll depreciate".
There were actually pretty successful. Which makes the story even more of a tragedy. A couple years ago I was rereading mine and made a FB comment about how I really liked at the back of them, they had D&D stats for characters. Jeff Grubb and James Lowder said that almost didn't happen. They had to convince them to include those.
