What's New with Phil and Dixie

'What's New? with Phil and Dixie' was a gaming comic by Phil Foglio that ran originally in TSR's role-playing-centered Dragon Magazine, and then in the official Magic the Gathering magazine. It's now republished on the web.

What's New? with Phil and Dixie provides examples of:
"Agent: Do you have any trouble working with elves, trolls, fairies, minotaurs, wizards, merfolk, werewolves, vampires, zombies or artists?
 * Appliance Defenestration: Played straight in page 1 and page 2 of the comic in Dragon magazine #63 (July 1982), in which computers are hurled through open windows by owners frustrated with fantasy RPG programs.
 * Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: On casting models for Magic: The Gathering cards:

Model: Ew...real artists?"

""...capable of killing five men simultaneously.""
 * Author Avatar: Phil
 * Bear Hug: In panels #5-6 of this comic from Dragon magazine #58 (February 1982).
 * Bedouin Rescue Service: Parodied in this strip. "Hi! You folks lost?"
 * Bow Ties Are Cool: Dixie often wore an oversized bow tie in the early strips.
 * The Cameo: A credited one by Tramp's Wormy, and uncredited walk-ons by many others (e.g. Skywise).
 * Cash Cow Franchise: "A story it will be easy to fit expansion sets onto" and some others.
 * Chainmail Bikini: Discussed here.
 * Covert Pervert: Elves, as revealed in these two strips.
 * Death by Origin Story: Parodied when a nascent superhero is subjected to so many different methods of acquiring superpowers simultaneously that he is reduced to ashes.
 * Description Porn: The comic in Dragon magazine (June 1983) played this for laughs. Demonstrating a spy's ability to be intimately familiar with all sorts of weapons, it shows a spy coolly rattling off the name and statistics for a Mauser 1906, an AR-15 assault rifle, and... a rubber duck.

""...of course, there are elements of game play that'll be changed onscreen to make the characters more sympathetic"."
 * Deus Ex Machina: Invoked in a discussion of why overpowered superheroes are unsatisfying, where a superhero named Deus Ex Machina Man is saved from a gun-toting criminal by a falling safe.
 * Disneyfication: Inevitably will be applied to Magic: The Gathering: The Movie.

"Phil: You're changing alignment? But why?
 * Everything's Better with Penguins: "It's a Penguin Generator! Wow! I've wanted one of these for YEARS!!"
 * Evil Costume Switch: Dixie undergoing a literal lampshaded costume switch, complete with the large breasts. Phil also gets a costume switch when he turns evil, but with less lampshade hanging.
 * Evil Is Sexy: In-universe example -- Dixie's reasons for her Face Heel Turn.
 * Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The mini-game Escape from C'thulu. "You just open the box, read aloud the enclosed incantation... ...and then, escape."
 * Face Heel Turn: Toward the end of What's New?, Dixie turned into a Card-Carrying Villain because she figured evil has better fashion sense.

Dixie: Are you kidding? The perks are fantastic! Better hair -- bigger bust -- bitchin' outfits -- plus I get my own minions!"

"Phil: Do with it? Why -- I know exactly what we can do with it! Heh! Heh! Heh!"
 * Fan Service: Dixie provides this in spades.
 * Fourth Wall Mail Slot: Done as a gag, with the pair answering fake letters from gamers. Also an in-character fake letter that Phil sent in as a joke.
 * Gulliver Tie Down:
 * Phil wakes up to find his lead miniatures have tied him to the bed and are demanding a raise.
 * A gamer appears tied down in his own prize-winning diorama at a game convention.
 * Hand Rubbing: In Dragon magazine #53 (September 1981), Phil shows us how it's done in panel #4.

"Phil: Though for some reason they're not well liked."
 * Heel Face Revolving Door: In the last few strips, after Phil turns evil, she becomes "uber-good" when she realizes she can still dress sexy while being heroic... but mostly so she could continue kicking Phil's ass.
 * Hocus Tropus: This strip includes versions of Disappearing Box, Pull a Rabbit Out of My Hat, and Saw a Woman In Half.
 * Hurricane of Puns: An explanation of the 'Jester' prestige-class includes a demonstration on how to turn a Hurricane of Puns into an effective -- if somewhat indiscriminate -- weapon.
 * I Can See My House From Here: Said by Dixie in a strip about flight.
 * I Got a Rock: Word for word.
 * Impossibly Low Neckline: Dixie's outfit after she's become Lawful Good combines this with an Absolute Cleavage. As she remarks, being übergood still gives you the fashion perks of evil.
 * Janitor Impersonation Infiltration: This strip from Dragon magazine #63 has a guy dressed as a cleaning woman sneaking into a computer lab.
 * Matchlight Danger Revelation: The comic in Dragon #50 used this. Phil and Dixie were exploring the TSR dungeon in the dark and realized there was someone else with them. Phil lit a match, revealing that the other creature was actually a demon. Then the demon blew out the match...
 * Mirror Morality Machine: Responsible for Phil's Face Heel Turn.
 * Morally-Ambiguous Ducktorate: In an issue about spy games, one of the spy gadgets identified by a recruit as a trainee test is a rubber duckie. Apparently not a normal one, as he points out that it's capable of killing several people simultaneously (and has a plastic squeaker device in its mouth, too).
 * Most Definitely Not a Villain: The alien spy in this page.
 * Motor Mouth: The comic in Dragon #67 (November 1982) had an example (see the last two panels).
 * Ms. Fanservice: Dixie Null is basically the ultimate sexy geek Girl Next Door (aside from her extended stint as a bikini-wearing supervillain).
 * Neck Lift: Once happened to a game-company flack who interrupted yet another attempt by the hosts to address the topic of Sex In D&D. One panel shows him being subjected to this trope; the next reveals that it's Dixie, rather than Phil, who's doing it.
 * Nice Hat: Phil's bowler.
 * Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Magic card illustrations.
 * "Howling, flying, righteous, firebreathing, berserk mammoths"
 * "Okay - You want this horde of zombies carrying swords made of lightning, to be erupting out of a volcano, riding dragons made out of lava..."
 * "On the Next...": Perennially subverted by Running Gag promises that "Sex in D&D" would be next month's topic.
 * Or Are You Just Happy to See Me?: This strip reveals the disturbing nature of orc flirting.
 * Our Dragons Are Different: A recurring character (or plot device) was Growf, a tiny purple dragon that induced Squees followed by third degree burns, and reproduced by Explosive Parthenogenesis when wetted.
 * Our Elves Are Better: Parodied here. And here.

"Goont: Hey... if he wants the chief spy job that bad, he can have it."
 * Our Gnomes Are Weirder: What's New? offers this take on exactly why there's no consensus on gnomes.
 * Pirate Girl: In its Magic the Gathering days, the strip depicted semi-retired characters, including Benalish Hero turned into a Pirate Queen and converting the Island Base into a resort.
 * Production Foreshadowing: Towards the end of the run, Krosp from the then-in-development Girl Genius makes several appearances.

""This cartoon, for instance. It would be a shame if something happened to it.""
 * Pungeon Master: A proposed "Jester" archetype for Dungeons & Dragons is shown to kill monsters with pun-attacks. (And, not incidentally, his party, demonstrating that Puns aren't picky about targets.)
 * Rage Quit: "Oh! No! A power failure!"
 * Ridiculously Cute Critter: Growf
 * Riddle of the Sphinx: In this What's New? report on riddles, Phil is caught by a sphinx who reveals that since everybody knows the answer to the traditional Riddle of the Sphinx now, she's switched to a new one: "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?"
 * Robot Me
 * Page 1 and Page 2 from Dragon magazine #63 (July 1982).
 * And the rematch.
 * Running Gag
 * In the 1980s run of What's New?, Phil and Dixie kept promising that their expose of "Sex and D&D!" was on its way, only to be put off for another month each issue. One might suggest that they ultimately provided this with XXXenophile...
 * Mammoths.
 * The mail snail became a slo-o-owly crawling gag.
 * Shame If Something Happened: The gnomes' modus operandi.

"Head minion: Done much minioning?
 * Shock Party: One of the strips in Dragon magazine was about espionage Tabletop RPGs. Part of it explained why it was a really bad idea to throw a surprise birthday party for an undercover spy. It starts in the last panel here and concludes at the top of this one.
 * Shout-Out: Regularly.
 * This comic on werewolf variants features a were-aardvark who looks just like Cerebus.
 * Also cleverly namechecks Cerebus Syndrome with a pun when the doctor comments "It's more serious than we thought!"
 * Gazebo Boy (Eric and the Dread Gazebo)?
 * Gallimauphry magazine and the Winslow on the next page (Buck Godot Zap Gun for Hire).
 * "Godzilla Festival" also has the Winslow.
 * And DM girl reads Buck Godot behind her DM-screen.
 * Something Person: The look at roleplaying superheroes featured Gazebo Boy.
 * Stripperiffic: Dixie's ninja outfit, among others.
 * Stating the Simple Solution: Lampshaded in a strip about minion recruitment.

Krosp: "All is in readiness." "You're a genius, sir." "Don't screw around -- kill him now!"

Head minion: Not bad, but Volrath won't listen to that last one.

Krosp: They never do."


 * Stop Helping Me!: In a piece on animal companions: "Some animals possess human level intelligence or better. These can be disastrous. And some are just animals that want to help you and think they can. These are worse."
 * They Fight Crime: Magic: The Gathering - The Movie
 * Underboobs: When Dixie is in her Ninja persona, her outfit includes underboobs.
 * Weapons Grade Vocabulary: The strip in Dragon magazine #72 (April 1983) was about jesters. The middle of this page has a jester killing a monster with bad puns. The next panel shows the danger of unintended side effects.
 * What Did I Do Last Night?: The end of the Heel Face Revolving Door arc.
 * What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: An episode about superheroes included a panel about the need to have powers that are actually useful: "Gazebo Boy finds his singular power of metamorphosis useless against the evil Termite!"