Gygax Tolkien-bashing

So, just before leaving for Kalamazoo I got a message from my local Barnes & Nobel that an item I'd pre-ordered had come in: RISE OF THE DUNGEON MASTER: GARY GYGAX AND THE CREATION OF D&D by David Kushner (text) and Koren Shadmi (art).  Essentially this is a biography in graphic novel form, with word balloons sometimes representing the biographer's narration or commentary and sometimes the thoughts of the character being shown instead—usually Gygax but for one chapter switching over to Arneson (co-creator, with Gygax, of D&D). Often these bits of text sound like they're answers to a question, which is because many of them were taken from interviews. 

Throughout their book Kushner & Shadmi try to be fair to both Gygax and Arneson, admirably so. There are few pure villains in their account (excepting the Blumes, whom they lambaste), which makes their unabashed Tolkien-bashing stands out all the more.

Here's the page in question:

For those who can't read the tiny print, the top half of this page proclaims Gygax's love of Rbt. E. Howard's Conan stories, the bottom half his disdain for Tolkien's work. 

— You're a fan of the "Conan the Barbarian" books by Robert E. Howard.

— You hope to evoke their swashbuckling action in a war game.

— But you loathe the major fantasy touchstone of the time, J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series.

— It was so dull.

— I mean, there was no action in it.

—  I'd really like to throttle Bilbo and Frodo.

(tosses the book into a box of discards)

This mainly raises my hackles because it misrepresents Gygax's relationship with Tolkien's works.

First, the two greatest influences on original D&D where Howard and Tolkien. Tolkien provided the player character races, a goodly proportion of the monsters (I once worked it out to be about a third), and the whole idea of the player-character party, the plural hero. But the world in which those characters adventure, and the kind of adventures they have in them, owe far more to Howard (and Howardesque authors, particularly the great Fritz Leiber).

What's more, Gygax's criticisms of Tolkien began only after Tolkien Enterprises (the movie people) sent TSR a cease-and-desist over their many obvious borrowings (mithril, balrogs, nazgul, hobbits, half-orcs) from Tolkien's work. After that point Gygax sought to distance his game from Tolkien, to deny (in the face of overwhelming evidence) any but the most superficial influence. But the flat dismissal they present here as his initial response goes beyond anything I've ever seen; I'd like to know their source.

Luckily it's possible to enjoy the graphic novel as a whole despite this passage.

--John R.

current reading: THE BEATLES: AN ILLUSTRATED RECORD by Roy Carr & Tony Tyler