Webcomic / Dork Tower

Your dorks, clockwise from the redhead: Kayleigh, Ken, Matt, Gilly, Igor, and Carson.

"Hey, Marcia! Come and see the satanist!"

— Bookstore clerk, after Matt asks if they have RPG books

Dork Tower is the name of a comic series by famed game creator, illustrator, and writer John Kovalic. Set in the fictional town of Mud Bay, Wisconsin, it focuses on the gaming adventures and personal lives of the four main characters, a group of geeks whose hobbies and interests include tabletop roleplaying games, video games, miniature games, collectible card games, science fiction and fantasy, comic books, computers, anime and manga — in short, anything and everything dorks (and Geeks, and nerds, and Otaku) would enjoy.

The four main characters are:

• Matt McLimore, the group's gamemaster. His RPG campaigns are frequently derailed by the players, but he persists in trying to deliver a rich and rewarding experience every time they play. He works as a graphic designer, but also draws his own comic book, "That Grrl," in his spare time.
• Ken Mills, a miniatures collector, historical wargamer, and medieval recreationist. He is a stickler for accuracy to the point of obsession. He works as a programmer at a technology company, Mon-E-Pit.com
• Igor Olman, an extremely enthusiastic fan of everything gaming-related, who obsessively commits himself to all of his hobbies and interests. The most rash and impulsive member of the group, by far.
• Carson C. Muskrat, a muskrat. He is arguably the most "normal" character of the group, though he does act impulsively when gaming. He supports himself through various demeaning service-sector jobs.

Supporting characters who frequently appear in Dork Tower include:

• Bill Blyden, the owner and manager of Pegasaurus Games, the gang's regular game store. He struggles daily with both the efforts to keep the store running and the numerous annoyances of ungrateful customers. He is married to his wife Stacy, and his sole employee is Leslie.
• Gilly Woods, a perpetually perky goth girl. Confounding goth stereotypes, she likes cute and cheerful things, to the disgust of her brother Walden. Matt has a deep crush on her, but she has been hesitant to reciprocate due to his relationship with Kayleigh. She moved to London to attend graduate school, but later returned.
• Walden Woods is Gilly's older brother and the leader of the Mud Bay goth gamers. He runs their recurring LARP sessions, and suffers the indignity of getting kicked out of everywhere they want to play.
• Kayleigh Hardcastle is Matt's on-again, off-again girlfriend. They went steady in college, but broke up due to clashes in personalities and interests. Kayleigh is a journalist for a local newspaper.
• Sujata Murthy is Kayleigh's roommate. After dating Ken, she got into gaming — to his dismay, as she tends to be better at it than he is...
• Estella "Stell" Alvarez is Gilly's roommate, who joins Matt's gaming group after connecting through an app. She is the most sensible and level-headed at role-playing, but incredible neurotic and insecure in real life. Works as a librarian.
• Chad is an aggressive, stupid dudebro who exists for Kovalic to dump on right-wingers and Internet trolls.
• Steve (originally "John") is Kovalic's self-insert.

Dork Tower began as a four-panel comic in print format, published in various gaming-oriented periodicals such as Dragon Magazine and Pyramid. In 2000, it became a four-panel webcomic published approximately three times a week. Later, a monthly comic book was published by Dork Storm Press, and featured a mix of single-page strips, multi-page stories, and ongoing character development story arcs. The comic book had been on hiatus as of issue #36 due to personal affairs, but resumed publication in 2011 in annual mini-series releases. A series of TPB collections reprint the web and print strips. The strip has won several Origin Awards, and the comic has sold over 500,000 copies worldwide.

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The various Dork Tower comics contain examples of:

• Actionized Adaptation: Discussed here.
• All Anime Is Naughty Tentacles: At least the kind Igor and Carson watch.
• Angrish: Demonstrated by Matt here.
• Ambiguous Syntax: Igor's gift of Muskrat Pie to Carson is understandably not well-received.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: Anxiety appears as a one-eyed two-horned hairy troll.
• Anxiety Dreams
• Author Avatar / Creator Cameo: Both tropes were done at the same time with a dash of Early-Installment Weirdness. John Kovalic first included himself in this strip as a character identified as "John" in the blog tags. The character later appears in this strip with the blog tag "Steve", but with the same wife and daughter from the earlier strips. Subsequent appearances have him tagged as both "John" and "Steve" until September 10, 2019, whereupon the "Steve" tag was used exclusively.
• Bait-and-Switch: When Gilly returns, she suddenly announces she's marrying someone in three days. The next few strips involve wedding preparations, in which she laments that the groom isn't getting more involved without actually saying who he is. Even in the strip where we get the words "Do you take this man to be your husband?" we see her holding someone's hand, but he's off panel. In the next strip, The Reveal is she's the one saying it; when she said she was marrying someone, she meant officiating at her brother's wedding to Phineas.
• Beyond the Impossible:
  • Igor is such a fanboy that he was somehow able to watch Spider-Man five times — when it was only released six hours ago.
  • Later, the players managed to summon up an Elder God... while playing Bunnies & Burrows.
• Big "NO!": Audible five miles away.
• Biting-the-Hand Humor: Done occasionally with lighthearted fun, such as the strip for the 40th Anniversary issue of Dragon magazine depicting its rise from humble beginnings into a world-crushing megacorp...
• Black and Nerdy: Ken.
• Black Sheep: Parodied; Walden's parents are fine that he's gay, but are distressed by his LARP gaming hobby.
• Bland-Name Product: Countless examples abound, almost always as references to Real Life games and gadgets.
  • The gang's favorite game is "Warhamster".
  • Also "Dungeons & Dragoons".
    • One Dragon strip had a string of D&D settings including "Goryhawk", "Dork Sun", "Painscape", and "Ol' Hadim".
  • Matt's first RPG was "Travailler".
  • "Pegasaurus Games" is a spoof of the real-life Pegasus Games store.
  • Walden's goths usually play "Vampire: The Groveling"
    • Later supplanted by ''Vampire: The Sparkling"
  • One comic combined this with Embarrassing Hobby, as the Greyhawk sorcerer Mordenkainen secretly assembles a tome of ponies.
• Boy Meets Girl: Subverted by Matt and Gilly. They're achingly perfect for each other — both gamers, both comic book fans, both cosplayers, both from the same town in Wisconsin. Too bad Matt keeps salvaging his relationship with his gamer-hating girlfriend and Gilly doesn't know he exists.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Done occasionally to various degrees for laughs, such as here.
  • This strip both breaks the fourth wall and then leans on it.
  • This strip breaks the fourth wall and throws in a Take That! at Cathy as well.
• Calvinball: Igor's "house rules" for baseball, Candyland, license plate bingo...
  "Okay, now the lollipops represent anti-personnel mines..."
• Cannot Tell Fiction from Reality: Igor has reached a point where his memory can no longer distinguish between events that happened in real life and those that happened in games.
• Car Ride Games: Igor's House Rules for 'Licence Plate Bingo' are so complex that by the time he has finished explaining them, the road trip (across multiple states) is over.
• Catchphrase:
  Igor: "IT MUST BE MINE! HUZZAH!"
• Cats Are Mean: A recurring theme in the comic is the wanton damage and indifferent cruelty inflicted by Matt's cats. All those intricate miniatures and expensive art supplies are just too tempting...
• Celeb Crush: Several over the years, most notably Matt with Sarah Michelle Geller and Carson with Megan Morrone.
  • Megan's response was that she's flattered by the crush, notes that she's already married, and refuses to comment whether the baby she's carrying is actually Carson's...
• Celebrity Lie: Inverted in this comic strip with Stan Lee.
• Character Overlap: Carson the Muskrat originally appeared in Wild Life, a Funny Animal college newspaper comic drawn by Kovalic. Some characters from Wild Life occasionally make cameos in Dork Tower.
  • Bill Blyden and Pegasaurus Games also count, as Kovalic also briefly drew "Shop Keep", a parallel/spinoff strip focused on Bill.
• The Charmer: Lee Huang is a bisexual woman who brazenly flirts with anyone she wants, and can't go thirty seconds without tossing out a cheesy pickup line. Demonstrated here.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Kayleigh, to the point where she becomes enraged simply by thinking that Matt might prefer Gilly over her. Comes to a head in this strip (and the next few that follow).
• Coming-Out Story: Gilly doesn't have a coming-out story, she has a Coming-Out Carnival With Explosions and Awesome.
• Compassionate Critic: Kayleigh is often this to Matt; she harshly insults his hobbies and interests (except for Buffy) out of an ongoing effort to "improve" him.
  Kayleigh: "Why can't he just be more like other guys?"
  Sujata: "Sitting at a bar with a six-pack of Bud waiting for 'America's Wackiest High-Speed Chases' to come on?"
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: In-Universe, this often happens to Matt's sessions; even when they try to change games/genres/systems for variety, the gang inevitably falls back to their usual medieval fantasy standby.
• Crossover: One story arc featured a crossover with PvP, where the two casts attended a convention and entered a gaming competition. Matt ran a game with the PvP players, while Cole ran a game with the Dork Tower group. The winning team was an all-girl squad with Gilly, Jade, and Marcy.
  • Subverted with Dork Tower vs. Lethargic Lad:
    Igor: "You know, it's funny, but for all the years we've lived in Mud Bay, we've never met up with LETHARGIC LAD."

    (beat)
    Matt: "That's because he's a comic book character, you blithering idiot."
    Igor: "Oh. Yeah. Right. Of course."
  • Another strip at a con had Matt running a game for the Knights of the Dinner Table.
  • A guest week by David Willis had Dumbing of Age's Joyce visiting Gilly and Stel at the library, with jokes about the differing art style, DoA's use of Comic-Book Time, and Stell insisting that when you acknowledge the fourth wall, the cartoonists win.
• Cut and Paste Comic: Done occasionally, almost always with a self-deprecating joke about how Kovalic is being lazy.
• Cut Apart: A frequent source of comedy. One story begins with Gilly and Matt preparing for a blind date. We then see them at a table talking, and seeing how they share lots of common interests and hobbies. The final panel shows that they are actually sitting at two different tables, each talking to someone else who think their hobbies are weird.
  • Inverted in another story, where Matt starts off talking to Ken about how Gilly is his ideal girl, while Walden is talking to a stranger about finding a Nice Guy for Gilly. After a page and a half, it's revealed that Matt and Walden ended up talking to each other, not realizing that they're both referring to the same Perky Goth... or how Matt would be perfect for her.
• Dead Artists Are Better: In one strip describing comic book convention tips, an artist has just drawn a sketch for a fan, who remarks "Wow, if you die on the way home, this'll be worth LOTS!" — With a mention that it's an actual convention quote.
• Deep-Immersion Gaming
• Discriminate and Switch: Happens to Gilly when she visits London, here.
• Don't You Like It?: To show how much he likes her, Ken gives Sujata a 1,000-point Korn Demon of Kaos High Priest of Pain Blood Champion miniature figure. Needless to say, she didn't take it well.
  "Perhaps she didn't realize you painted the brains, skulls and mutilated victim details yourself...?"
  • Then there was the time Igor gave Carson a muskrat pie for Christmas...
• Dungeonmaster's Girlfriend: Subverted with Kayleigh, who joined a session run by Igor to try to understand Matt's hobby. After some initial confusion, she became a rule-mastering power gamer, stomped all over the game's enemies, and reduced Igor to curling in wimpered submission.
  "Turbonium dragon? More like Turbonium BEE-YACH!"
  • Referenced earlier when violating this resulted in a man's wife kicking him out of the house.
• Encouraged Regifting: In one Christmas strip, Igor tells Matt that he "gives the gift of gaming". While he starts off making the valid point that there are games for everyone to enjoy, from small children to non-geeky adults, he eventually admits that the best part is if they don't want the games, which is why he's giving elderly relatives violent RPGs.
• Even Nerds Have Standards: After complaining to a girl that gamers are perceived as weirdos, Matt backs away in disgust when she admits she's a furry.
  • Matt was beaten up by the Geeks in high school because he didn't know anything about video games past Frogger.
• Explaining the Soap: Played with when Carson asks Igor about Babylon 5 and gets an eight-panel wall of text about the conspiracies, universal issues, and civil wars and ancient chessmasters. When Carson comments that it's a lot for a single season, Igor corrects him — it all happened in the previous episode.
• The Faceless: Bill's employee, Leslie, is always shown with her face half-hidden behind the store counter.
• Fake High: Matt's stoner brother thinks he is high after mistaking Matt's basing flock (artificial grass) for pot and smoking it.
• Fanservice: Not in the strip itself (thank goodness!), but a regular subject of Take Thats.
  Matt: "We've forgotten what made gaming GREAT in the old days!"
  Carson: "Incredibly badly-drawn women in gratuitous cheesecake chainmail bikini shots?"
  • Well, there was the Dork Tower Swimsuit Special, with a Gilly pinup by Phil Foglio...
• Fearless Fool: With motivational poster!
• Friends Are Chosen, Family Aren't: Estella has fallen out with her family, who can't handle the fact that she's gay, but is pleasantly surprised when Gilly takes the fact in her stride. (She presumably doesn't know that Gilly's own brother is gay.) This leads to Gilly taking her home as a guest and adopted family member for Christmas — and her conclusion that "This is a time to be with with family! ... As long as we get to choose our family!"
• Funny Animal: Carson.
• Fun with Acronyms: Played with when Igor starts Gamers For Personal Hygiene — acronym explained here.
• Gayngst: When Gilly comes out as bi, she feels kind of guilty that she doesn't have any, especially in comparision to Stell, who has so much that an older lesbian who overhead their discussion thinks she's the one who just came out.
• Goth: Gilly's brother Walden.
• Headdesk: This is a recurring gag, where a sufficiently annoying situation will prompt any of the main characters to headdesk against the nearest table, wall, or fire hydrant. Demonstrated here.
• Home Sweet Home: Invoked by the corrupting influence of Sims.
• Human Sacrifice: Shown here with the "Love Is..." couple, of all things.
• Hustling the Mark: After hearing that Igor has never played poker, Ken eagerly invites him to join his poker game. At first, Igor frustrates the other players with his naive questions and obvious tells, but by the end of the evening he makes off with all of the winnings. The final strip shows Igor talking to Carson on a cell phone about how he fooled everyone... while being pursued by a very angry Ken.
• Hypocritical Humor: Occurs fairly often, either as a Take That! against the characters' behaviors, or when they are Leaning on the Fourth Wall about Kovalic's writing or art.
  • Kovalic's Author Avatar takes a shot at himself in this strip.
• If It Bleeds, It Leads: This strip has a news report that’s literally “Hate violence anger hate anger violence violence violence…”
• I Have No Son!: Invoked here, word-for-word.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: Despite Keyleigh's often abusive behavior, this is the main reason why Matt continues to date her.
• I'll Take Two Beers Too: Happens several times, usually after Matt has suffered yet another indignity with his gaming group or his personal life. One trip to a Ren Fair had him depressing a nearby bard into the same funk.
  "Good idea, three meads for me too".
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Ken...didn't take the warped retelling of Gifts of the Magi at all well.
  "If anyone needs me, I'll be seeking the Spirit of Christmas Spirits. 98 proof."
• Incompatible Orientation: Stel was heartbroken when Gilly joked about being gay then said she wasn't, long before she knew Stel was. It later turns out that Stell is Gilly's Closet Key, but she thinks Stel's found someone else, so hasn't told her. They get it sorted eventually.
• Internal Homage: The 1,000th strip is a repeat of the fourth strip, only instead of the bookstore assistant thinking roleplayers are Satanists, she's absurdly enthusiastic about RPGs and all aspects of geek culture. Matt thinks he preferred it the first way. (The 2,000th strip also brings back the character, but doesn't redo the idea, although she still yells "HEY, MARCIA!")
• Intoxication Ensues: Happens to Ken after he tries one of Igor's sugar-overloaded "Igor bars". He passes out four seconds later...
  • And the aforementioned minstrel's drinking just before a gig reaches its logical conclusion.
• Ironic Echo Cut: Used far, far too often to list here.
• I Take Offence to That Last One: See Slap-Slap-Kiss below.
• I've Got an X, and I'm Not Afraid to Use It!: Ken has a bar of soap and he's not afraid to use it! (At a con! The fiend!)
• I Want My Jet Pack: Referenced in this strip.
• I Was Beaten by a Girl: Ken's girlfriend Sujata regularly trounces him in whatever games they play.
  Sujata: "Hey, dog-chow! It's Halo time, and I believe your butt is MINE! Woof! Woof!"
• Jerkass: Chad, the selfish right-wing anti-vax obnoxious sexist Butt-Monkey. Any time he shows up, it's to be a nuisance for someone else. Example here.
• Killer Game Master: Discussed in one strip between Igor and Carson.
• Lame Pun Reaction:
  • A furry girl tries to convince Matt to be more tolerant of furries. She seems to be succeeding, but then...
    Furry: Accept the cartoon fox fan! Include the cute cat girl! Embrace the strange sheep boy!
    (Beat)
    Furry: All we are saying is, give fleece a chance!
    Matt: TAXI!
  • Just look at Ken's expression.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Igor, showcased best here.
  Matt: Igor, do you remember Sir Billingsley? (Yes) You sealed his fate when he attacked an Orc garrison single-handedly, in his underwear!
  Igor: There wasn't time to put any armor on.
• Lethal Chef: One story featured an "Iron Chef Ramen Noodle" cook-off between Igor and Carson. Igor carefully crafts a concoction with tom-yum paste, rice wine, and fish sauce, while Carson's entry consisted of generic turkey dogs. Igor's dish is unbelievably aromatic, while Carson's prompted the question "This used to be organic?" from the judges. Carson wins anyway, despite Igor's entry being "like tasting clouds", because his entry reminds the judges of college dorm food — "The best years of our lives!"
  • Igor also counts for his "Igor bars" (see Intoxication Ensues), as shown here, though that was probably on purpose.
• Local Hangout: Pegasarus Games, the local Tabletop Games store.
• The Loonie: Igor, hands down.
• Lovable Nerd: Matt.
• Love at First Sight: Ken and Sujata.
• Lovecraft Lite: Used occasionally for gags, such as pop-culture mashups "Spongebob Thulhupants", "Pokéthulhu", and "Horton Hears Cthulhu". One slightly NSFW strip spoofing Evony even had Happy Thulhu saying "I threw up on your sanity a little."
  • Not to mention "Cthulhu Alphabet For Kids", "Lovecraft Is...", and "Cthul Who".
  Igor: "Told ya! Everything is better with Cthulhu!"
  • Everyone goes Squee when Cthulhu appears.
• Love-Obstructing Parents: Sujata's parents are opposed to her relationship to Ken, as they'd prefer for her to marry a fellow Indian.
• Love Triangle: Matt, Gilly, and Kayleigh. Then Estella gets involved...
• Manchild: Arguably, all of the main characters could be counted as such.
• The Masochism Tango: Matt and Kayleigh, very much.
• Mirror Universe: A story arc once sent Carson into a mirror universe in which roleplaying games had never been invented and George Lucas had gone into porn rather than directing Star Wars. In that alternate reality, Matt was a pretentious male model, Igor a sports celebrity and Ken a gangsta rapper.
• Missed Him by That Much: Happens frequently between characters with a romantic past or unfulfilled love. Matt and Gilly are the most frequent pair, but it happens with the others as well.
• Mistaken for Terrorist: Occurs in one strip with a "radical" "extremist" "black panther" named Huey. He's a white guy wearing a black panther furry costume.
• Mondegreen Gag: Carson thinks the lyrics of his favourite U2 song are "I still haven't found Walter's cookie jar".
• Munchkin: Igor, and how! It doesn't matter what game they're playing, he will exploit the rules to their min/max potential and drive Matt crazy as a result. He'll even do this for non-game systems...
• My Little Phony: Invoked in this strip with the 2020 US Presidential Election, of all things.
• The New Rock & Roll: Many early strips involved one group or another protesting the games the main characters played. In one notable strip, when a group comes in to protest the (then) new Pokémon TCG, Bill reveals his store has gotten so many protests that he's had to start scheduling them, and that he can't fit in the new protest for about four months.
• Non-Human Sidekick: Carson the muskrat.
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: The author even screen-capped a news article about the Iraq War... that was running ads for travel to the war-torn country.
• "Not Wearing Pants" Dream: Occurs to Matt before a big game session here.
• Nutritional Nightmare: Igor Bars, which have been known to put those who consume them into sugar comas. There is an actual recipe for the bars, and it lists insulin as an optional ingredient (see here).
• Oddly Specific Greeting Card: Valentine's cards for friends unwilling to make a move on a friend whose sexuality they're uncertain of and don't want to risk their friendship are in aisle E at Hallmart.
• Off the Rails: Happens far too many times to count, usually due to the gang's overzealous gaming strategies.
  • They once had a game based on The Lord of the Rings. The campaign opened with Merry killing and gutting Gandalf, Pippin beating Frodo to death... they were planning to institute a military draft in the Shire when Matt went catatonic.
    Igor: "I kill Gandalf."
  • In the second attempt, Carson is assigned to play Gandalf... but with his abilities limited to talking to birds and casting fireworks. Igor and Ken ended up using him as a Bulletproof Human Shield and battering ram.
  • Another session ended with the players having taken over the kingdom, forged an empire, and conquered all of the known lands... when their goal was to just rescue the princess.
  • One strip had Matt crying to a friend about how his characters had not only derailed his adventure by killing everyone, they had also summoned Elder Gods to destroy the game universe. They had been playing Bunnies & Burrows — a game where all the characters are normal, mundane rabbits. Here.
  • In a Dragon annual in which the regular cartoonists wrote each others' strips with Crossover Punchlines, Kovalic wrote a Nodwick strip in which the eponymous henchman killed a dragon single-handedly, then also killed Yeagar and Artax, then tried to seduce Piffany ... with the last panel revealing that he was being played by Igor.
• Official Couple: Ken and Sujata were engaged as of The Tao of Igor.
• Once Original, Now Common: Referenced In-Universe when a pair of children are talking about how The Lord of the Rings was ripping off various sources.
• Otaku: Ken is a cosplay otaku at Renaissance Faires, while Matt, Igor and Bill have shown military otaku tendencies with medieval weapons.
• Pantsless Males, Fully-Dressed Females: Invoked in this comic.
• Paralysis by Analysis: Guest cartoonist Charlie Bates has Carson demonstrate the tabletop games version of the trope here.
• Parody: The comic regularly features covers (and sometimes entire issues) that parody some aspect of geek or pop culture, often with some relationship to the story inside. Subjects have included Understanding Comics, Rice Krispies cereal, A Brief History of Time, Harvey Comics, Pink Floyd...
• Perky Goth: Gilly the Perky Goth is the Trope Namer.
• Perpetual Poverty: Matt and his friends are always short on funds for their hobbies and toys (not to mention the rent), yet they somehow manage to stay in the same apartment and drive a car for years.
• Persona Non Grata: Happens too often for Walden and his LARP goths; something inevitably gets them banned from their latest gathering spot.
  Walden: "Great Clans of Mud Bay, I have called this gathering in the Poochy's Last Stand pet cemetery for one reason!"
  Goth: "Because Beef-A-Roo won't let us gather there anymore?"
  Walden: "APART FROM THAT!"
• Perverse Sexual Lust: Igor's in love with three women — Apollo Smile, Lara Croft, and Daphne from Scooby-Doo.
• Print Long-Runners: First appeared in January 1997, and still going.
• Profiling: A non-police variation in an arc that starts out with Ken trying to order a cheeseburger.
  Fast Food Clerk: (pointing at Ken) SCARY BLACK PERSON!
  Ken: EEEP! WHERE? ... wait a minute ...
• Pun-Based Title: Dork Tower is, of course, a play on the Stephen King novel series The Dark Tower
• Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies: The group decides to follow a Demon Lord to Hell, despite many, many warnings from Matt.
• Rules Lawyer: In one of the Dragon strips, Ken is described as this by Matt and Igor, who are watching him have a freak out over the instructions on a microwaveable dinner because they are not as strictly defined as those in, say, a roleplaying game sourcebook would be.
• Running Gag: Several, but special mention has to go to the "Bookstore Girl", which spans over 20 years at the time of this writing. First appearance (2001), second appearance (2011), and third appearance (2022).
• Self-Deprecation: Kovalic sometimes couples this with Breaking the Fourth Wall to poke fun at himself.
  Ken: "Let's admit it, Kovalic's about as organized as a wet mound of marmots."
• Serious Business: Going to a movie with Bill and Ken can be very difficult, as they take historical accuracy very seriously.
  "Oh gawd! They just called the glaive-guisarme a bill-guisarme! I'm writing to Roger Ebert!"
  • One strip had Ken freaking out whenever his character acquired or lost any gear, as he insisted on having his miniatures figure match it exactly.
    Matt: "...and so that rarest of artifacts, 'Bigby's Grasping Rodent of Eternal Wealth' is yours..."
    Ken: "AIEEEEEEEEE! ...shut up and pass me some superglue, an X-Acto knife, and a 25mm marmot..."
• Shout-Out:
  • To the "Four Men of Yorkshire" sketch here.
  • Gilly's letter to Igor asks him to "say 'Hi' to the funny-looking kid with the big nose."
  • Morpheus makes an appearance to tell Igor his dreams are freaking him out.
  • Homages to Charles Schultz and Bill Watterson show up from time to time.
  • The infamous RPG anecdote of "Eric and the Dread Gazebo" gets a tip here.
• Slap-Slap-Kiss: Happens periodically between Matt and Kayleigh.
  Matt: "You think my friends are annoying!"
  Kayleigh: "You think my friends are pretentious!"
  Matt: "You hate my hobbies!"
  Kayleigh: "You think I'm a snob!"
  Matt: "You ARE a snob!"
  Kayleigh: "It's better than being a looser dweeb with no initiative, no fashion sense, no job, no prospects and a 'Buffy'-hater to boot!"
  Matt: "THAT was a LOW blow! ... I love 'Buffy'."

  (beat) **KISS**
• Small Name, Big Ego: Igor, whenever he boasts of using his gaming skills to overcome a problem or obstacle.
• Social Media Is Bad: This is a recurring theme in later strips, especially after 2016. Here is one example of many.
• Social Semi-Circle: Sometimes occurs, typically with games involving miniatures. Intentionally invoked in issue #17 of the comic as a parody/Shout-Out to Knights of the Dinner Table; the odd arrangement is justified because the table on the reader's side is unpleasantly sticky from a spilled soda.
• Space Elves: Parodied with the Warhamster 40K equivalent of the Eldar, who are called the Notelves, with Bill helpfully explaining they "are definitely elves".
• Stiff Upper Lip: Lampshaded in this comic, where it's posited that tea is some sort of super serum that allows Londoners to "keep calm and carry on.".
• Stop Being Stereotypical: Several strips call on gamers to improve their public behavior, especially regarding personal hygiene.
  Ken: "I've got a bar of SOAP here, and I'm not afraid to USE IT!"
  • Also being an overeager fanboy.
• Straight Gay: None of the gay or bisexual characters in Dork Tower demonstrate any stereotypical camp traits.
• Strawman Political:
  • Occasionally used in a Take That! against self-proclaimed Moral Guardians and other bureaucrats, as demonstrated here.
  • A related gag is for Bill to deal with clueless Moral Guardians protesting role-playing games... while Matt's mad because they're protesting Pokemon, not RPGs.
    "We're still relevant, dammit!"
  • Chad, a Conspiracy Theorist and Straw Misogynist, introduced during the COVID-19 Pandemic as a representative of people who refused to wear a mask in stores.
• Suck Out the Poison: Averted; when Igor thinks he's poisoned, none of his friends volunteer to do this.
• Super-Stoic Shopkeeper: Bill tries to be like this,with varying degrees of success.
• Take That, Audience!: Always done good-naturedly, but Kovalic has an insider's knowledge of his geeky audience's foibles.
• Take That, Critics!: Invoked for a gag when George Lucas pummels Ken for criticizing the changes to the original Star Wars trilogy.
  George Lucas: "Well, pardon the FREAK out of me for providing you with so many years of GREAT MEMORIES and ENTERTAINMENT!" *Bam!*Crash*Pow!* "I mean, of course that's all RUINED for you now because GREEDO freaking shoots first!" *Biff*Paf*Oof!*
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Igor's in-game solution to every problem.
• Thicker Than Water: Igor recommends ignoring it and allowing yourself to unfollow and unfriend relatives.
• Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: Apparently this is one of what love is.
• This Loser Is You: While Kovalic's characters are rarely complete losers, the likes of the semi-competent munchkin Igor, neurotic geek Matt, and ill-fated small furry animal Carson may be subjects for rather wry audience identification.
• Token Nonhuman: Carson the muskrat, naturally.
• Too Dumb to Live: Many of Matt's gaming sessions end with all the (game) characters dying due to this trope. One adventure ended with their characters chasing a Demon Lord to Hell and getting instantly destroyed... which they insisted must be an illusion.
  Matt: Fireball Spell? What do you think that's going to do in Hell?
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth/Your Brain Won't Be Much of a Meal: In this strip, Igor engages a mind flayer with purple nurples and "the dreaded doom wedgie". Since this effectively proved his character didn't have a brain to flay, he actually won.
• Twofer Token Minority: Estella is a triple-minority, being black, Hispanic, and gay. Or as she calls it, "the total package".
• Unicorn: One appears in this comic teamed up with a penumbral hulk, a kobold, a paladin, and a kuo-toa...
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: No-one seems in the least bothered that Carson is an intelligent bipedal muskrat. This was played with in a strip (later adapted as an animated short)-

  Narrator: "And now...the secret origins of Carson the Muskrat!"

  Carson: "Father was a muskrat...mother was a muskrat." (shrugs)

  • Given how most people react to Carson (see Your Costume Needs Work, below), they probably just figure he's a guy in a (horribly bad) costume.
• Useless Spleen: "Has anyone seen my spleen?" is a common phrase in the aftermath of combat.
• Video Game Perversity Potential: Demonstrated here.
• Wall of Blather: Usually occurs when one of the characters (typically Igor or Ken) goes on an extra-passionate rant about a particular fan topic.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Invoked in epic fashion by Igor against New Line Cinema here.
• When the Planets Align: Invoked in this Lovecraft Lite comic.
• Why Couldn't You Be Different?: Kayleigh occasionally angsts about being overshadowed by her siblings and their numerous accomplishments, while she's reduced to being a journalist for a local newspaper.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Gilly the Perky Goth.
• Will They or Won't They?: Matt and Gilly.
• Winged Soul Flies Off at Death: Red Bull gives you wings!
• World of Pun: The comic is overflowing with puns, either as punchlines to individual strips, punchlines to gags, or just part of the drive-by snark while other things are happening. Just a few examples out of dozens here, here, here, here, and here.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: After playing a Call of Cthulhu campaign, Matt's players were unable to adjust to the setting of Pendragon and their characters kept behaving as though they were about to face Lovecraftian horrors.
• Your Costume Needs Work: Carson gets this from a bunch of costumed furries at a convention.
  "Worst muskrat costume EVER!"
  "HEY!"

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