Just What Is ‘Dungeon Crawler Carl’ Anyways?

If you’ve been in geek spaces in the last three or so months, you’ve heard the name Dungeon Crawler Carl. It’s gotten to the point that either you’re a Crawler, or you know nothing about the series. So just what is Dungeon Crawler Carl?

How Did It Start?

Prior to 2020, author Matt Dinniman made his living traveling to cat shows, and making illustrations of the show cats for their owners, while writing fantasy on the side. A story began to form about a man and his intelligent cat crawling a dungeon, RPG-style. He began writing snippets of it and publishing it via the platform Royal Road. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Dinniman switched to writing the series full-time and self-publishing via Amazon. Now, the series has released eight books of a planned ten and is a global phenomenon.

What is it?

After an alien invasion flattens the planet Earth, leaving only those coincidentally outside at the time alive, Coast Guard veteran Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s show cat Princess Donut enter the alien’s cruel second act — entering their reality show Dungeon Crawler World’ Donut quickly gains intelligence, and the duo team up to conquer the dungeon. Carl and Donut begin adventuring through the World Dungeon, gaining friends, allies and climbing the leaderboard of the cruel game show.

Where can I find it?

The series is readily available on all eBook platforms. The series just made a deal with Ace Books for new print editions, all of which are available at all major booksellers. The audiobooks are Audible exclusive and are produced by narrator Jeff Hays’ Soundbooth Theater. The series is (in order) Dungeon Crawler Carl, Carl’s Doomsday Scenario, The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook, The Gate of the Feral Gods, The Butcher’s Masquerade, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride, This Inevitable Ruin and A Parade of Horribles (released just two weeks ago on May 12th).

A big draw for the series is Hays’ amazing narration in the audio books. Simply put, these are some of the best produced audio books I’ve ever listened to. Hays is a voice actor that could challenge such modern greats as Frank Welker and Eric Bauza, and his work on the audiobooks is second to none.

Additionally, Webtoon is publishing a comic book adaptation of the series, with Vault Comics adapting it to print — the second season of the Webtoon launched earlier this month and Vault’s first collection was released last week. Vault is also releasing an original story within the universe next year, Dungeon Crawler Carl: Crocodile about supporting character Florin. The series has also been optioned for a live action adaptation at Peacock, with Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane producing.

Why is it blowing up?

Despite its insane premise, DCC is actually a story of found family. Carl and Donut rapidly build their party to include a pet velociraptor, a shape shifting art professor named Katia, Donut’s manager (and another shapeshifter) Mordecai, and many more, such the residents of a skilled nursing facility, a shepherd and her intelligent charge, a god-possessed sex doll head, and… well, it would just keep getting crazier the more I list. 

Dinniman’s writing is also immensely quotable. “Goddammit Donut!” “Mongo is appalled!” and “IWKYM!” have all made it into the fandom’s lexicon. Hays’ performance has also buoyed that, particularly with the system AI’s “Neeeeew achievement” exclamation.

The amazing thing though is despite the literally explosive action (book five starts with Carl murdering 40 alien hunters with a series of well placed explosives), the book has an amazing amount of character development, genuine relationships and fascinating world building.

On top of that it has a very distinct anti-capitalist and anti-fascist message. Carl and his fellow “Crawlers” are portrayed as a slave class, and Carl’s entire mission is to dismantle and break the system that has murdered so much of his world, as well as all of his friends and family. And when the mega-corporation that runs the crawler is owned by a race frequently named as “fish Nazis” you know that it’s not just a message of “eat the rich.”

And sometimes, you just need to look the system in the eye and tell it that “you will not break me.”