2002-09-09
Original: 2002-09-09 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1 (single panel):
A young man in a yellow shirt with glasses leans aggressively toward another young man in a green shirt, fingers splayed and wiggling, casting a spell at him.
Man in yellow shirt (shouting): MAGIC MISSILE!
Sound/motion text near his wiggling fingers: *wiggle wiggle*
The man in the green shirt stands calmly, holding a sandwich, taking a bite and looking unimpressed.
Caption (below panel): As it turns out, playing "Dungeons and Dragons" doesn't drive adolescents to murder, but not for lack of trying.
Votey:
Close-up of the same yellow-shirt man's face, now looking exhausted and defeated, with a heavy drooping mouth and tired eyes.
Man (speech bubble): EXCUSE ME, SIR, MAY I SEE YOUR THAC0
A young man in a yellow shirt with glasses leans aggressively toward another young man in a green shirt, fingers splayed and wiggling, casting a spell at him.
Man in yellow shirt (shouting): MAGIC MISSILE!
Sound/motion text near his wiggling fingers: *wiggle wiggle*
The man in the green shirt stands calmly, holding a sandwich, taking a bite and looking unimpressed.
Caption (below panel): As it turns out, playing "Dungeons and Dragons" doesn't drive adolescents to murder, but not for lack of trying.
Votey:
Close-up of the same yellow-shirt man's face, now looking exhausted and defeated, with a heavy drooping mouth and tired eyes.
Man (speech bubble): EXCUSE ME, SIR, MAY I SEE YOUR THAC0
Alt text
Single-panel comic. A young man in a yellow shirt and glasses leans forward aggressively, fingers splayed and wiggling, casting a spell at a calm young man in a green shirt who is holding and biting a sandwich, unfazed. The yellow-shirt man shouts "MAGIC MISSILE!" and small text reads "*wiggle wiggle*" near his hands. Caption below: "As it turns out, playing 'Dungeons and Dragons' doesn't drive adolescents to murder, but not for lack of trying." The joke: a kid trying to "attack" someone with a tabletop RPG spell that has no real-world effect. Votey (aftercomic): a close-up of the same yellow-shirt man's face, now looking exhausted and defeated, asking "EXCUSE ME, SIR, MAY I SEE YOUR THAC0" — a reference to the old D&D combat statistic, the spell-caster now reduced to asking his target for a game stat.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.