Dragonring Issue #1 Comicbook by Guang Yap From Aircel Comics As D&D Campaign Fodder

Its been a long time since I've dug out my copies of  The Dragon Ring from my long boxes in a very long time. In my last blog post I tripped down memory lane with Carl my boss from my old underground mail order Eighties comic book & rpg hobby shop operation who was busted for drugs. Now let's get into Aircel comics and Nineteen Eighty Six.


Eighty six was a hard year in many ways. It was the middle of the black and white comics boom & it was a solid year for B movies. Aliens was redefining science fiction films & there were a ton of B films like the Wraith, Big Trouble In Little China, The Golden Child, Poltergeist II The Other Side, Flight of the Navigator, Little Shop of Horrors, Blue Velvet, Star Trek The Voyage Home, etc. But let's grab Big Trouble In Little China & The Golden Child for a moment. Dragonring draws deeply from Hong Kong action cinema against a  background of Oriental mysticism and modern sensibilities. You could always tell an Aircel book because of the black background & weird action covers. Big Trouble In Little China is a comedic  homage to Hong Kong action flicks, the martial arts craze of the Eighties, a Chinese cinematic mysticism, & audiences at the time didn't get it. So is Aircel Comics's the Dragonring which is a homage to Raiders of the Lost Ark, Buckaroo Bonzai, Thirties & Forties musicals, Chinese cinematic mysticism, and adventure series of the past along with a huge dose of pulp magazines especially HP Lovecraft.

The Golden Child a film with similar Chinese mysticism themes (Chinese American actors Victor Wong, James Hong, and Peter Kwong appear in both films) and pulled from the same well as Aircel's The Dragonring. The plot is an interesting little b/w effort that I loved as a kid.


Kohl Drake is an adventurer living on a leaking tub of a ship along with his buddy Captain Miles Corkin ( ship captain straight out of the pulps whose seen 'things man wasn't meant to') & plucky adopted side kick son Yue. He's hired by Raymond Wharfin (Buckroo Banzai name drop) to take him to an island that he's inherited from his distant uncle. Of course all of his other relatives have been killed & he's completely unaware of it. Our heroes are attacked by Ju Ju zombies with Oriental style daggers and Kohl dispatches them with a set of nunchakus. Upon the island we're greeted by a Carstairs the lawyer for the estate & a tribe of Amazon warrior women who look like the line up for a D&D party of hirelings. They come with the island estate and much more as we soon learn.


Kohl that night goes walking out on the island unable to sleep & meets an older alternative version of himself who gives him the dragonring ( a D&D style relic of mysterious powers). The old man has been shot full of arrows passes away. Seems as though the island was originally the head quarters for a Lovecraftian cult & the head priest and some of the remains are still in the dungeons of the island. The island is rife with Lovecraftian hordling demons as Yue and his buddy Alex discover when they head down to the local swimming hole with the local kids. Kohl later on kills the tentacled horror that almost drowns both boys but it takes out a local kid with easy. Kohl follows the beast to its lair and comes across the old black cleric whose been summoning the beasts. He kills him just as the priest can recognize the dragon ring as he falls to his death. Carstairs the lawyer has been corrupted by the cult the whole time and holding the Amazon warriors at gun point but flees the island once Kohl kills off the evil priest. There's also a subplot about the Amazon leader Kohl & his girlfriend back home none of which comes into play until three or four issues later.
So what does this have to do with D&D? Well besides the monsters & pulpy elements? Essentially the Dragonring is a Hong Kong cinematic hex crawl. Other issues had the party coming across lost tribes, lich kings, and other pulpy elements. But I've got to address the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room when its comes to Aircel Comics. 

"Barry Blair (1954 – January 3, 2010)^[1] was a Canadian comics publisher, artist and writer, known for launching Aircel Comics (publisher of titles such as Samurai, Elflord, Dragonforce, and Men in Black) in the 1980s. From early on, Blair's art style was influenced by the comics he had seen living in East Asia, at a time when manga and other Asian comics were largely unknown in North America. His art was typically characterized by childlike figures, and included nudity and partial nudity. This continued into the erotica which became his main focus later in his career, and these attributes were a common criticism of his work"
Yeah rereading The Dragonring today, I can see why this criticism was leveled but I was into the comics for the pulp elements. I borrowed from the series to create an island hoping campaign with the Isle of Dread at its center. Everything lined up perfectly with the Isle including the Lovecraftian style Hong Kong cinematic monsters. Peter, Steve, & even Peter's wife Eve would later love this mini campaign



The Dragonring series was a book of its time and a part of the B/W period of comics in the Eighties which was one of the most innovative and creative times in comic books since the Thirties & Forties. We're not likely to ever see this type of explosion in creativity in comics again but the Dragonring is a product of its time and while good remains an interesting series to revisit from time to time. It also makes great fodder for a pulpy D&D style campaign.

Commentary On The Nineteen Eighty Four D&D & Comicbook Sweet Spot

For me Nineteen Eighty Four was a seminal year in many ways especially table top gaming because it was one which marked a turning point in many ways. There were two flavors of Dungeons & Dragons to choose from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons & Dungeons & Dragons Set 1: Basic Rules or Mentzer Basic as its known. Here are the facts according to Wiki;"In 1983, the Basic Set was revised again, this time by Frank Mentzer, and redubbed Dungeons & Dragons Set 1: Basic Rules. The set included a sixty-four page Players Manual,^[12] a forty-eight page Dungeon Masters Rulebook,^[12] six dice,^[2] and in sets in which the dice were not painted, a crayon.^[6] The 1983 revision was packaged in a distinctive red box, and featured cover art by Larry Elmore.^[2] Between 1983 and 1985, the system was revised and expanded by Mentzer as a series of five boxed sets, including the Basic Rules (red cover), Expert Rules (blue),^[13] Companion Rules (teal, supporting levels fifteen through twenty-five),^[14] Master Rules (black, supporting levels twenty-six through thirty-six),^[15] and Immortal Rules (gold, supporting Immortals, characters who had transcended levels).^[16] Instead of an adventure module, the Basic Set rulebooks included a solo adventure and an introductory scenario to be run by the Dungeon Master"  Essentially there were two flavors of Dungeons and Dragons Advanced & Basic which for our groups, war gaming clubs, etc. meant there was one.


In the movie theaters there was hit after hit with Ghostbusters, Gremlins, Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Star Trek The Search For Spock, Conan, The Last Star Fighter, Repoman, Buckaroo Banzai, Dune, Streets of Fire, Dreamscape, etc. It was a heady time in a lot of ways especially the black & white comic book boom at the time. The original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were created in Dover New Hampshire and I was drooling over a brand new comic book series Warlock five from Aircel comics. At the time I was working in a little hole in the wall underground mail order comic book shop in Torrington getting paid under the table after school. My buddies Steve & Peter also hung out there with me, it was a glorious time. We used to get paid in AD&D & D&D material especially old issues of Dragon and the occasional box set but we got into some of the more off beat titles like Game Lords,Ltd Thieves Guild or the occasional Arduin or Dragon Tree books. There was much more to this year but let's concentrate on Warlock Five for a moment. Warlock five was a title where you had five powerful mystical guardians who were linked and guarded a multidimensional gate. All of the while the guardians are trying to off each other in alliances and betrayals. The Off The Beaten Panel Blog has a really good breakdown of the series and their summery is spot on;"The Warlock 5 are a diverse and interesting group. There's a medieval knight called Doomidor, Argon the Terminator, Tanith the Sorceress, a Mystic dragon that takes human form called Savashtar, and Zania, a punk rocker Witch straight out of Mad Max. Together they get along like an episode of Survivor, taking alliances and strategizing together to manipulate the outcome for the ultimate control of the Grid."


The artwork of Canadian artist Denis Beauvais (who did a number of Dragon magazine covers) & writer Gordon Derry was like setting fire to our young brains. We drew from this series and it was a glorious train wreck of a campaign because we combined it with Lords of Creation which was another rpg out at the time and it worked gloriously.

This was also the same year that produced the wonderful tenth anniversary box set for basic D&D and I actually had the chance to buy one from my boss at the time Carl. "The 10th Anniversary Dungeons & Dragons Collector's Set boxed set, published by TSR in 1984, included the rulebooks from the Basic, Expert, and Companion sets; modules AC2, AC3, B1, B2, and M1 Blizzard Pass; Player Character Record Sheets; and dice. This set was limited to a thousand copies, and was sold by mail and at GenCon 17."

So what happened to Aircel comics? Why isn't it now a household name? Well Aircel was a victim of the B/W implosion of

"Aircel Comics evolved from Aircel Insulation, when the government pulled its contract with the company. Blair, an Aircel employee, convinced the owner to shift the company's focus from insulation to comic book publishing.^[1] Aircel's initial talent line-up included Blair, Cooper, Patrick McEown, and Guang Yap.

Releasing their first books in 1985, Samurai, Dragonring, and Elflord, all of which featured line-art manga-styled illustrations, were the first Aircel publications to receive international attention. (Manga was still new to the North American market at the time.)^[1] In 1986, illustrator Denis Beauvais collaborated with Blair (as writer) to create Warlock 5, highly regarded among international comic collectors at the time, featuring high-realism mixed-media and airbrushing techniques as a unique trademark style. The Maelstrom series was released shortly thereafter. Aircel's future, like the strong Canadian arts and music industry of the 1980s, was very promising.

By 1988, however, the independent comics bubble burst,^[1] affecting Aircel's niche market. Financial problems caused founder Blair to strike a deal with Scott Mitchell Rosenberg (associated with the American publisher Malibu Comics), whereby Malibu would be "lent" Aircel to publish a number of titles, in return for a financial assist. This resulted in Aircel's de facto merger with the Malibu imprint Eternity Comics.^[2] Staff changes at Aircel left their acclaimed original series in uncertainty. New illustrators assumed responsibility for continuing some of the existing series (e.g. Elford vol. 2, Warlock vol. 2). This in turn led to copyright disputes over some of Aircel's titles.^[3] Ultimately, Aircel terminated most of its previous titles and pursued sex-themed comics in a partnership with Malibu."
Many of the elements of the B/W comic implosion reminded me of the D20 collapse. So is there an OSR implosion in our future? Perhaps its already underway. So what happened to Carl & the underground mail order comic book & rpg business? Well Carl was busted for heroin & the business folded. We didn't know anything about the drugs but all of us got questioned by the cops. Needless to say that our parents were not happy. As for the The 10th Anniversary Dungeons & Dragons Collector's Set  I did eventually get one but then it turned to ash in an apartment fire back in the 90's. With that being said I've still got a soft spot for the gonzo D&D meta gaming aspect and it remains my sweet spot for D&D.