Knights of the Dinner Table
In "Shadis" #2 (March/April 1990), Jolly Blackburn began to run a comic that
he had written called "Knights of the Dinner Table", which depicted the humorous interactions of a gaming group. When Blackburn published that first "Knights" strip, he thought that he was just filling a blank page but when he tried to replace it with more professional strips beginning with "Shadis" #6, there was an outcry; because of that outcry "Knights" soon returned. Blackburn also published "Knights of the Dinner Table" as a comic book, the first three issues of which appeared from his company Alderac Entertainment Games over the next year (1994-1995). As a result of diverging interests with his partners, Blackburn left Alderac in 1995, with "Shadis" #21 (December 1995) being his final issue; he kept the rights to "Knights of the Dinner Table". Blackburn formed a new company called KODT Enteractive Facktory, which was to publish the "Knights of the Dinner Table" comic monthly. While he was working on getting that new company together, Blackburn received a call from the editor of TSR's "Dragon" magazine, asking if the "Knights of the Dinner Table" strip was now available; although Blackburn originally planned to continue the strip in "Shadis", he accepted the offer and "Knights of the Dinner Table" thus began appearing beginning in "Dragon" #226 (February, 1996). While working on "Knights of the Dinner Table" #4 (1996), Blackburn concluded that he really did not want to go it alone, and David Kenzer and the staff of Kenzer & Company wanted to get Blackburn to join their company. In November 1996 when David Kenzer and others were visiting Blackburn over the course of a local con, and Blackburn decided that Kenzer had the sort of business sense and integrity that he was looking for in a partner. Starting with issue #5 (February 1997) "Knights of the Dinner Table" was the work of the "KoTD Development Team" which consisted of Jolly Blackburn, David Kenzer, Brian Jelke and Steve Johansson.
Nigel Dennis
Dennis held jobs at the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, a censorship body; "The New Republic", a progressive political journal; and "Time" (magazine). His job at "Time" returned him to Britain in 1950 (or 1949). Easing into novel writing, in 1949 he published his first acknowledged novel, "Boys and Girls Come out to Play" ("A Sea Change" in the USA), which won the Anglo-American novel award for that year (shared with Anthony West). It starts semi-autobiographically, with a depiction of a young man having an epileptic fit, a condition Dennis suffered from all his life. Later in 1955, Dennis published his most notable work, "Cards of Identity", a witty psychological satire that gained cult acclaim. The novel was converted into a play the following year. Members of the Identity Club gather at an English country house to listen to papers discussing interesting case histories of various identity problems. The novel details many of the problems England experienced in the late forties and early fifties. His third novel, "A House in Order" also deals with the question of identity but it is more personal rather than social as it portrays how a prisoner keeps his mind in order during his imprisonment. Dennis's career involved a mixture of non-fiction, novel, criticism, and play-writing. His book reviews appeared in the "Sunday Telegraph" for twenty years, starting (with the newspaper itself) in 1961. He became a contributor to "Encounter" in 1963 and was eventually appointed its co-editor before terminating his relationship with the magazine in 1970.