At least, I think it was a National Lampoon cartoon, but in some time of browsing the complete CD set of the magazine I haven’t found it. I can’t think where else I might have seen it originally. Might have been Heavy Metal but I doubt it. Around 1980-85ish.
It was a horizontal layout, about one-third page high, and had maybe eight panels. Black and white, strong pen and ink work, one of the NatLamp regulars. It was about the absurdities of playing D&D type games.
One panel showed a skeleton in t-shirt and baseball cap sitting at a game board; the dialogue punchline was “Okay, your turn.” Another showed two or three stereotypical game players identifying themselves; of course the little weasel was a “warrior” and the nebbish was the “mage” and the hulking goon was “I’m a hobbit.” Final panel showed a huge shadow over two little kids in the crosswalk as the shadow-caster bellows something like “Begone from my path, halflings!” with the final notation “Return to reality can be difficult.”
I’ve searched for this on and off for a couple of years. Anyone remember it or able to put a finger on it?
I found the issue in the Internet Archive and pulled a much cleaner image of the cartoon. Still funny and now I can sort of explain why I intone “I’m a hobbit” in my deepest tones when someone makes an absurd claim or choice.
No, it faded out in the eighties and then collapsed in the nineties. There were a few changes of ownership. Companies ended up buying it because they wanted the rights to the name and the backlog of material rather than because they were interested in publishing a magazine. The final owners ended up publishing one issue a year (which was just reprints of old material) just so they could retain the rights to the name. They finally got that requirement changed and the last issue was printed in 1998.
The company still owns the name “National Lampoon” but now they make their money by licensing the name to movie studios and making merchandising deals.