"Finieous Fingers" Topic

You know how, when you are "tidying" you tend to find things long forgotten and become diverted by them? This is what happened when I flipped through a 1982 copy of Adventure Gaming mag last night and found an episode of the best gaming comic strip ever written/drawn: Finieous Fingers. This series was well observed and funny and thus almost unique in early gaming mags (and later ones as well!). The only problem with it was its sporadic appearance and the fact it hopped from one publication to another; at one time, it was in the Dragon.

Does anyone know what happened to Finieous or, perhaps more importantly, its author?

JD was in the air force at that time. When Adventure Gaming Magazine shuffled off its mortal coil, we lost touch with JD.
There was talk of Dragon magazine picking up Fineous Fingers again but when WotC came from nowhere to snatch up TSR, I think Fineous fell by the wayside.
I wish I had more specific information for you, but alas I do not.

Finieous Fingers was a great strip! There was a small boolet of the collected strips published at some point in the early to mid 1980s, which included a new story (FF and buds go up the THE beanstalk). I picked one up on eBay, so if you are interested you might start watching there for one.

Very very funny stuff.

I once had the Finieous Treasury. I don't know what happened to it. It may or may not be at my Mom's house somewhere in my old junk. What a great cartoon! :)

We must track him down and DEMAND that hestart drawing again.

Oh sorry wrong board, I mean ask him if he knows or could compile a collection of his material.

I have read and reread Lead Leadhead a few times now.

Finieous is the best!

If you can track down a copy of the Dragon Magazine archives on CD-ROM, you'll get all the Fineous (and Wormy) strips in PDF format.

Weren't there Fineious miniatures, too?

Blast from the past! I only ever saw a few when they appeared in Dragon, but they were funny.

Actually, JD was a Navy pilot - that's why the strips were 'sporadic.' I still have the Fineaus Treasury around here somewhere, great stuff.

I did a search and found tons of hits for this subject but no collection of strips. Could we locate and ask the author to scan and put them on a website?

John, there were indeed fineous figures.
they sometimes turn up on ebay but the molds were destroyed long ago. (actually I think Tim Kask still has them but by agreement with JD, they were a limited run only.) The production molds were burned up in the process of casting as many figs as we were able in the time allowed us.
There were also 10 gold plated sets created at that time.
JD has one, I still have mine, The Gorb still has his I beleive. Im sure T. Kask has his and I'm pretty sure T Meire still has his. I have no idea where the other 5 sets are.
I know that one set went for $100 at an Origins auction a few years back.
Thats about all I can remember of them, its was abt 20 years ago.

Yeah, and Ravenscraft has the world's only unit of Grond.

The Fineous figures made their debut at the 1982 Origins in Baltimore.

IIRC, Ral Partha lured Tim Kask away from being editor of the Dragon to start Adventure Gaming in 1981. Tim brought JD & Fineous along.

During the big Partha management shakeup of '82, they decided to dump AG. A group of us tried to keep it going but we just didn't have enough capital.

I think after distributor discounts, we were selling a magazine with a $3.50 cover for $.90. The average distributor also had an average-days-to-pay of about 6 months even though terms were 2/10 net 30.

The Fineous figs were a last ditch effort to raise enough cash to cover production expenses. They worked to a point, I think we got out issues 11-13 on that money.

Regards, the Gorb

What about the run in Shadis? In particular I liked their fight with the space marine in the space emperor's throne room (whacky mood lighting, power fists with external on / off switches).

I believe the Shadis strips were "with permission". They did not look like JD's work, but they were welcome.

As to JD, a late '70's graduate of Auburn NROTC and the best D**n GM I've ever played with, the last I heard, he was married with a teenage daughter (Proof: There is a Dept. of Cosmic Justice.), flying for Northwest, and living in Michigan (?). As for the models for some of the crew, BoredFlak (Borflac/Everette Burge) was back in Selma, IDemandMore (Ozyamadas/Grant Castlebury) is doing the areospace thing for REAL money in TX and FF (me) is delivering mail in B'ham. I was going to get with JD at DragonCon '90, but that was when I started with the post office, and I missed him. Personally, I liked his mailing cover efforts for Space Gamer. Think Nuclear Hand Grenade.

Now he's gonna find me and claim I owe him $5 for that pizza back in '78...

For those with a real Fineous jones, I think Boredflak's "targeting ring" is still available from Atlantis minitures.
comes with a nice ruby looking stone.
cant remember the price. If Atlantis isnt alive and kicking you can try contacting Thunderbolt Mountain Miniatures who did production for Atlantis.
Man, do I miss Fineous!

WAAAAAAAAAAA! ME WANT FINEOUS!