Computer Warrior (1985)
Debuting in the British comic Eagle just a few years after Tron hit theaters, this plucky adventure strip (created by a pseudonymous Alan Grant) found schoolboy Bobby Patterson fighting to rescue his friend, who had become trapped in the digital “nightmare zone” after discovering a code that allows the player to enter computer games and experience them for real. Die in the game, of course, and you’re trapped there. The key point of interest with Computer Warrior was that, thanks to an agreement with British games publisher U.S. Gold, which specialized in domestic conversions of American arcade games, Bobby would be sucked into games you’d actually heard of. Gauntlet, Impossible Mission, Outrun, Bionic Commando and even Zak McCracken And The Alien Mindbenders all formed the basis of ongoing story arcs. Movie games like Ghostbusters and Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade also got the Computer Warrior treatment, in mind-boggling transmedia crossovers that would give today’s licensing departments a migraine. The strip ran until Eagle’s demise in 1994, far outliving the Tron hype that inspired it, and it eventually became something of a fantasy epic, with Bobby inheriting the mantle of the Computer Warlord and ruling the digital realm like a joystick-wielding Conan.