Choosing Your Own Adventure: Comic Quests

I’m an unabashed fan of classic “choose your own adventure” style gamebooks. Sure, most of my fondness for the genre has its roots in nostalgia, but I still collect them (there are treasures to be found at used bookstores), and I’m continually amazed at just how many different series there were.

From the OG Choose Your Own Adventure books to Time Machine, Twistaplot, Find Your Fate, Endless Quest, Lone Wolf, Fighting Fantasy, and so many more, the 80s were the absolute heyday for immersive gamebooks.

But they’re still around, and there are a number of series putting out new books that deserve more attention. In this series, we’ll highlight a few of the books and series that require you to read closely, make decisions, and hopefully avoid a gruesome end.

Quirk Books started publishing Comic Quests in 2018, and there are already a number of different multibook series. These books require you to make choices along the way, so they’re technically gamebooks, but the twist is that these are “pick-your-panel graphic novels.” Yep, they’re comic books you can play!

First of all, you’ll need to pick your storyline. Fan of swords and sorcery? Knights Club is right up your alley. Do your interests skew toward fairy tale settings? Then you’ll want to check out Hocus & Pocus. Or if you’re a Harry Potter fanatic, you’ll want to pick up Iron Magicians.

Despite the different flavors, each series, at its core, has the same basic mechanics. You read through as if it were a normal graphic novel, but every panel is numbered. And you need to keep your eyes peeled for numbers within the art. Those numbers represent your choices.

For example, let’s say you’re standing in the middle of a village. You might see 220 on the door of a building and 375 on the road leading out of town. Turn to panel 220 if you want to open the door and enter the building; turn to panel 375 to follow the road.

Take a look at this panel from Knights Club: The Bands of Bravery. The three numbers represent your choices for continuing through the woods in one of those three directions.

Some panels have two or three choices; some have upwards of six. But that’s really all there is to it. Most of the choices are decisions about directions to move, so they’re really that simple. There are other, more traditional choices to make along the way that affect the course of the plot, and some of them even require you to keep track of your weapons and supplies.

Each book also begins with a “how to play” section, which walks you through the rules, including mechanics specific to each series. For example, Iron Magicians includes combat, Hocus & Pocus involves the care and maintenance of magical creatures, and Knights Club requires you to keep track of your XP (experience points).

None is as complicated and dense as something like Fighting Fantasy or modern-day RPGs, but for kids just diving into the genre, they’re a fantastic gateway and springboard to those more involved types of games.

At the time of writing, the following six titles are available: