SnarfQuest, drawn and written by Larry Elmore, is a fantasy comic strip with sci-fi and modern elements.
Its epic fantasy-adventure context, along with its black-and-white art style, quirky humor, twinge of satire, and anachronistic elements, have earned it comparisons to Jeff Smith's acclaimed Bone series.
[2] The strip was originally serialized from 1985–1989 in the role-playing magazine Dragon, and, due to its popularity, subsequently spawned several collected volumes, tabletop games, and full-color followups by Elmore in 2000 and 2011.
[4] Due to popular demand, Elmore created a special one-shot episode, in color, which appeared in Dragon #200 (December 1993).
[5] A 224-page collection, SnarfQuest: The Graphic Novel, was released in 2000, published by Dynasty Presentations;[6] it reprinted the material from the 1987 edition as well as the remainder of the Dragon Magazine Snarf story arc (minus the 1993 one-shot).
It featured stats, episode guides, character backgrounds and histories, and suggestions and mechanics for role-playing in the world of SnarfQuest.
The book also included comments and analysis by Elmore as well as generalizable advice for adding humor to role-playing games.
[7] An all-new, full color SnarfQuest story appeared as a bimonthly feature in the now-defunct magazine Games Unplugged beginning in 2000.
In 2011, Elmore began republishing the strips from Games Unplugged on the newly updated official SnarfQuest website.
Once he reached the end of the Games Unplugged content, Elmore planned to create new strips for the foreseeable future.
[9] The classic strips from the original Dragon magazine run were also being gradually posted on the site, updated twice weekly.
More clever and opportunistic than brave or heroic, Snarf displays a certain "courage under pressure" and is usually able to talk or bluff his way through danger.
The name "Aveeare" is a shortened version of his identity code: he introduces himself to Snarf as "a VR-X9-4-M2 Galactic Probe, Government Issue Robot."
Suthaze was a clever and powerful wizard; his tower was guarded by a variety of evil humanoids and the dragon Willie (see below).
In his "Willie" personality, the dragon spoke with a pronounced lisp, was afraid of snakes, played in an oversize water bowl, was quite gullible, and was friendly—even good-natured.
~~ Gagglezoomer- a large, unintelligent lizard that will run at high speeds whenever anything touched the sensitive section of its back.
)~~ It was later revealed that the "Gaggaleech" was, in fact, a Darkshade death leech—an extremely venomous type of bloodsucking creature.
Because of its heroic service in one instance, the leech was grudgingly given a diamond ring which turned out to grant its wearer a wish.