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Dork Tower is dorkness to the Nth degree. Created by John Kovalic, Dork Tower is a comic strip (produced in online, comic book, and graphic novel forms) depicting the lives of various gamers, goths, and a muskrat named Carson in the (imaginary) town of Mudbay, Wisconsin. Sparked from a conversation during the 1996 Gen Con, Dork Tower first appeared in Shadis magazine in January of 1997 and covers a wide variety of topics from every kind of gaming imaginable to movies, comics, and pop culture.

The series is made for hardcore fanboys, the in-jokes running rampant throughout and always ringing of painful truth. Everyone who is a gamer or has gamer friends knows someone like these characters, which makes them so amusing.

The strip is a five-time Origins Award winner, taking the prizes for: 2001 - Best Short Fiction 2002 - Best Professional Gaming Periodical and Best Game Illustration 2003 - Best Professional Gaming Periodical and Best Graphic Short Fiction

Going back to Kovalic's high school days shows the early roots of the strip way back in 1978 when he drew a strip called Wild Life that featured Carson the gaming muskrat. In 1988, Wild Life became his first professional strip. Carson survived to become one of the core characters of the Dork Tower world. Some of the other main characters include:

Matt. Serving as the main focus for the series, Matt is a thirty-something gamer whose hobbies seem to send most women screaming although he struggles to have some semblance of a dating life. He usually runs most of the gaming campaigns for fellow gamers Igor, Carson and Ken, often to disastrous yet comical results

Kayleigh. Up until recent events in the strip, Kayleigh was Matt's girlfriend. This dating bothered his friends to no end as she held most of his hobbies in great disdain.

Gilly. The original Perky Goth, if there ever was one, much to the dismay of her vampire LARP(Live Action Role Playing)-ing brother Walden. Matt has been enamored of her for some time, but the two have never gotten together, and it seems even more unlikely now that she is currently living in London while attending school.

Igor. Matt's best friend but an impulsive, dangerous gamer known for killing off Gandalf in Matt’s epic Lord of the Rings (LOTR) game. If there is a hot new gaming supplement at the game store, Igor simply must, must, must have it.

Ken. Ken seems to have a real-life, honest-to-goodness girlfriend in the series - an oddity to be sure. He and his girlfriend are both into wargaming and he is one of Matt’s core gaming group.

Bill. Owner of the local game store, Pegasaurus Games, where he lives a life of barely scraping by (despite the independent gaming store odds) thanks to the patronage of many of the characters in the strip. He and the store are based on real life people, much like many of the characters in this strip.