Dork Tower #29

November 24, 2004

Quick Rating: Very Good

Matt’s love life hits critical mass, and everything changes!

Writer: John Kovalic
Art: John Kovalic
Snapdragon Back-up: John Kovalic & Liz Rathke
Dr. Blink Back-up: John Kovalic & Christopher Golden
Lethargic Lad Back-up: Greg Hyland
Cover Art: John Kovalic
Publisher: Dork Storm

Everything John Kovalic has been building to over the first 28 issues of this title finally comes together. His bitter girlfriend Kayleigh has seen the artwork from Matt’s comic strip – starring a girl who just happens to look just like Gilly, the real girl of his dreams, who he doesn’t know is flying off to London to go to grad school. Matt finally drinks himself to a point where his muse appears (in the person of a foul-mouthed pixie named Jim) and spurs him to do something he should have done a long time ago. But will it be too late?

It sounds like a soap opera, but it’s more like a sitcom, right down to the race against an airplane to stop the girl of your dreams from flying away. Kovalic surprises with a nice twist to the ending, however, that nicely sets up a new status quo for a title that’s ostensibly about gamers and dorks, but is really about love and friendship when you get right down to it. This book surprises on many levels, including some surprising characterization for Kayleigh (you mean she really does care about Matt? Who knew?).

There aren’t any Dork Tower back-up strips this time, but we do get a few others. There’s a great Snapdragon two-pager about Ken taking some kids to the latest Harry Potter movie – basically an extended joke strip, but with a great punchline. There’s a three-page Dr. Blink story, although the doctor never actually shows up, it’s really about the requisite Batman knock-off denying some much-needed medical attention. Cute, but not great. Finally, there’s Greg Hyland’s Lethargic Lad, in which an arch-villain sets up a nefarious scheme. As far as superhero parodies go, this strip has never really clicked for me – it treads on material too well-worn and parodied better.

This is a real shocker of an issue, to be honest, but a very satisfying one. Kovalic says he’s got the comic plotted out to issue 50 (which, let’s face it, could take 10 years on this publishing schedule), which makes me hope these cool, clever and heartfelt stories will come at us for some time to come.

Rating: 8/10

(As it turned out, this book wasn’t long for the world. After a few more issues, Kovalic went strictly webcomic with this series. I still read the webcomic, but I miss the longer stories.)