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MythAdventures is the collective name for a series of humorous fantasy novels written by Robert Lynn Asprin that are popular for their whimsical nature, myriad characters, and great use of puns. Each novel's title makes a pun on the similarity between the word "myth" and either the prefix "mis-" or the word "miss," with the exception of the first, which puns on the phrase "Another fine mess" (which was, incidentally, almost the novel's title, but for a mythunderstanding (har!) with the publisher.)
Characters
The stories mostly revolve around the adventures of a few central characters:
- Skeeve, a young, hapless wanna-be magician from the backwater dimension of Klah.
- Aahz, a green, scaly "Demon" (short for "dimension traveller") from the dimension of Perv, a world known for its foul-tempered reptilian humanoid inhabitants. Aahz (short for Aahzmandius) takes Skeeve on as his apprentice, despite having lost his powers through a prank pulled by Skeeve's now-late mentor, Garkin, at the beginning of the first novel. Later on, he and Skeeve dissolve their mentor/apprentice relationship and become partners in a magician-for-hire enterprise called M.Y.T.H. Inc.
- Gleep, a baby dragon with a one-word eponymous vocabulary, and Skeeve's excitable pet.
- Massha, a magician of truly monumental girth with a gaudy fashion sense, who eventually apprentices herself to Skeeve.
- Guido and Nunzio, a pair of hulking bodyguards attached to Skeeve as a favor from the interdimensional Mafia's light-in-the-loafers Fairy Godfather, Don Bruce.
- Chumley, an enormous but quite gentile Troll who doubles as the rowdy, churlish Big Crunch, and his nymphish-but-deadly Trollop sister Tananda.
Novels
The 'first' series was written under a 13-book contract with the now-defunct publishing house Donning Starblaze and includes these novels:
- Another Fine Myth (1978)
- Myth Conceptions (1980)
- Myth Directions (1982)
- Hit or Myth (1983)
- Myth-ing Persons (1984)
- Little Myth Marker (1985)
- M.Y.T.H. Inc. Link (1986)
- Myth-Nomers and Im-Pervections (1987)
- M.Y.T.H. Inc. in Action (1990)
- Sweet Myth-tery of Life (1993)
- Myth-Ion Improbable (2001)
- Something M.Y.T.H. Inc. (2002)
The 'new' MythAdventures series, co-authored with Jody Lynn Nye, currently includes three novels:
- Myth-Told Tales (2003)
- Myth Alliances (2003)
- Myth-Taken Identity (2004)
Illustrated novels
The first novel was adapted into an eight-part comic book series illustrated by Phil Foglio and published by WaRP Graphics in the mid-1980s, and was later collected into two graphic novels published by Starblaze Graphics. The second novel was adapted into another eight-part comic series by Ken and Beth Mitchroney and published by Apple Comics from 1987 through 1989.
Phil Foglio also did the cover art and accompanying illustrations for the first editions of many of the novels.
Motion picture
Short-lived rumors circulated in the 1980s that Wendy and Richard Pini, owners of WaRP Graphics, were considering turning their adaption of Another Fine Myth into a feature-length movie after doing so with their own property, ElfQuest, though the latter has yet to even make it past concept to this day.
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