Donjon - the comic book

[Jürgen Mayer]

On a trip to my local comic store right before leaving for GenCon, I noticed that there is a comic by the French cartoonist Lewis Trondheim called "Donjon."

The French and German versions of the comic book are both titled "Donjon." It was also only recently released in an English edition by NBM - but they renamed it to a simple "Dungeon."

Here's a link to a sample issue of the French edition:
http://www.marsimport.com/display_comic?ID=901
Here's the site of the English version:
http://www.nbmpub.com/comingup/comjuly.html

I bought a copy and it's actually very funny. It's a fantasy parody about the henchmen of a dungeon keeper. I don't know if there could be any problem concerning the name of the Donjon RPG, but I thought you should know...

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Very cool - I'll have to check this out. At the same time - argh.

When Zak and I first came up with the idea, we chose the name "Donjon Krawl" because it looked cool. I dropped the "Krawl" later because it made people thing that the game was some sort of parody.

Hmm. Anyone in the house that knows if this is a problem? I'm doubting it, as it's kind of hard to trademark one word, but I dunno.

[James V. West]

Well, I doubt it'll be a problem. But if it is, you can just change your game to "Dunjun", right?

[Valamir]

Donjon is a legitimate architectural term.  It is the French version of what the English called a Keep.  Originally the Donjon / Keep was the largest most defendable tower in the castle.  Its where the main hall was where the lord lived with his companions.  When castles got bigger and the accomodations for the lord became more lavish, the largest most defendable tower was still called the Donjon.  Because it was big and defended it was used to house prisoners.  Thus, the word Donjon became associated with the place prisoners were kept...leading at last to the english corruption of the term for the usually subterranean Dungeon.

Calling your game Donjon, is no different than calling it Castle, or Tower.  There couldn't possibly be any copyright issues.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

I went out a found a translated copy of "Donjon" or "Dungeon," as it's called in English, today.

It's - well, really bizarre. Ducks and dragon-men and the Dungeon Master. It was kind of funny, though, and strangely, the art is very similar to Colin Theriot's, an artist I'm using that rocks the boat.

[Jürgen Mayer]

Heh. I think the comic is worth it's cost for the magical sword alone. Funny stuff.

[James V. West]

I've read Lewis Trondheim's NIMROD books (fantagraphics?). The space strips are funny as hell. I might order this comic.

But that's WAY off-topic, ain't it?