Stripping and Other Stories by Pagan Kennedy

Co-created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, in 1974, D. The strip appeared during the height of the Reagan-era backlash against the fantasy role-playing game, which had become enormously popular very quickly. She is saved, ultimately, when Mike, a hunky Christian boy (“I’ve been praying and fasting for you”), takes her to see a pastor who has himself come “out of witchcraft.” Debbie meets the pastor and repents, accepting Jesus as her Savior: “I want You to be in charge of everything…not that lousy D. I think it’s time that you learn how to really cast spells.” But then Debbie’s friend Marcie commits suicide after her character dies in the game, and the new witch is wracked with guilt and doubt. Frost, who says to Debbie, “Your cleric has been raised to the 8th level. The Mephistophelean figure in the strip is the Dungeon Master, a raven-haired woman named Ms. Kennedy's best work, these stories are simple and undramatic, yet subtly provocative.In 1984, the comic-strip artist Jack Chick, an evangelical Christian, published a tract called “ Dark Dungeons.” In it, a young woman named Debbie is seduced into witchcraft through her participation in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. One, a philosophy student obsessed with Nietzsche, compares her old life to the state of Ohio: 'flat, but with a fast, sparkling river of doubt running through it.' The second, an aimless young woman on the fringes of the antiwar movement, examines her addiction to a man who compulsively creates bizarre theories about aliens to buffer himself against life. Both 'The Black Forest' and 'UFOs' are about young women forced to stop short and be painfully honest about the directions they've chosen. Although some of these tales are weakened by lethargic pacing, others reveal a rare talent for tussling with life's disquieting problems. From a teen-ager who wants a glimpse of Elvis Presley's toilet to a woman who exists in near-total silence, each of the main characters in 'Stripping' presents a different interpretation of the collection's title in story after story, we find them shedding unconscious layers of memories, rituals and beliefs. In her first collection of short stories, Pagan Kennedy examines a variety of situations in the lives of female characters - all of which provoke moments of life-changing awareness, and some of which are prompted by the most unlikely circumstances.

SHORT STORIES STRIPPING And Other Stories.By Pagan Kennedy.High Risk/Serpent's Tail, paper, $10.99.

Stripping and Other Stories by Pagan Kennedy