Some rambling thoughts on IDW's Dungeons & Dragons Classics Vol. 1

I've already written at great length about my affection for DC/TSR's 1988-1991 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons series, drawn by Jan Duursema and written by several writers, mainly Dan Mishkin, and noted that it was the first comic book I ever really read, and the one that served as my own personal springboard into the wonderful, terrible world of comics. As I've also mentioned here and there (here being this very blog, there being Blog@Newsarama), IDW has put together a trade collecting the first eight issues of the series, titled Dungeons & Dragons Classics Vol. 1 (Presumably because the "Advanced" part of the title has fallen into disuse over the years; the fine prints notes that the current owners of D&D, Wizards of the Coast, does indeed own the trademark for "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons," and that phrase appears on the original covers reprinted within the collection).

Despite the fact that I own all eight of these comics, and spent more than cover price to get them all—I had to buy #1 off the wall of a comic shop that used to exist in my home town, for, I think, seven or ten bucks, many times more than the $1.25 cover price—I went ahead and bought the trade anyway. Maybe not the wisest use of a $20 bill, but it was an investment in not-having-to-dig-through-my-longbox-midden-whenever-I-want-to-look-at-these-books. Aside from the second half of The Sandman, I think this is the only time I've re-purchased comics I already owned in trade format (Well, I owned most of the issues collected in IDW's Dungeons & Dragons: Forgotten Realms Classics Vol. 1).

Some thoughts upon rereading a series I first encountered as a preteen in the late eighties as a thirtysomething in 2011, and the package in general...

1.) This book collects the first two, four-issue story arcs of the series. The first is scripted by Michael Fleisher and apparently co-plotted with artitst Duursema (it's also the weakest of the entire series, in large part because the cast is still forming—one of the stars of the story leaves after the fourth issue, another transforms into a new person—and because that cast is still on their way to the setting. The second story arc is entitled "The Spirit of Myrrth," and is written by Dan Mishkin.

Quick synopsis: Interdimensional monster sorcerer Imig Zu wants to free his people from inside a magical gem the moon goddess imprisoned them in and, with them, conquer the world. To do so, he needs to find a prophesied half-elf maiden who can unlock it. That maiden finds allies in traveling adventurers Onyx and Timoth Eysebright, a dwarven thief and centaur fighter, respectively; Luna, an inn keeper; Vajra Valmeyjar, a warrior woman and friend of Luna's; and Priam Agrivar, a once mighty paladin who was cursed and crippled by Imig Zu.

The second story is a lot more complicated, and where the series starts to come into its own. The paladin has moved on (to co-star in the Forgotten Realms comic), and Timoth's off doing...something else. So the elf Kyriani, Onyx and Vajra are the only ones around when they're hired by the ghost of a legendary dead jester named Myrrth to prevent his grave from being robbed. Warring factions within the city's musician's guild are after his bones for different purposes; the jesters want to break away and form their own guild, and want to use his skeleton to create a colossal monster with which to terrorize the city, and a hardcore faction of the musicians want to use the skull to commune with Myrrth and learn the secret of his killing joke—a joke so funny that everyone who heard it laughed themselves to death. Our heroes get some help from an older thief named Conner, who has a mysterious past with Vajra.

2.) It did not occur to me until this reading that "Myrrth" is simply a different spelling of the word "mirth," and is actually a dumb pun. I guess that means that I was a dumb child.

3.) There's no bonus material of any kind in this volume—no introduction, no foreword, no afterword, no creator bios, no context, really. I think that's too bad. I like stuff like that, and would especially like to see it in something like this, which collects a 20 year-old series from talented but not necessarily super-star creators that would seem to have limited broad appeal.

Very little pre-production seems to have been done. All of the original coloring errors—which are fairly copious—are faithfully reprinted here. Other than removing the DC bullet and the UPC symbols from the covers, it doesn't look like anything else was done to the material to prep it for the collection.

I'm pretty sure it has a new cover, though. The above image isn't the cover for any of the series' 36 issues or one annual, and the style more closely resembles that seen in Duursema's current Star Wars work for Dark Horse, rather than what can be seen within the pages. I could be wrong though; maybe this was simply an unusued piece of art from back in the day, re-colored.

At any rate, it's welcome. For the Forgotten Realms trade, the cover was a repurposed, re-colored cover from an issue of the series:

4.) By the time I reached the 32nd issues of this series, I would have been reading Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Sandman and Batman comics from back-issue bins, so "diversity" wasn't really something I noticed in comic books, and I certainly didn't notice a lack of it.

Having read comics for over 20 years now, including more and more super-books as the years passed, and having read the comics blogosphere for the last five or six, diversity, like the depiction and treatment of female characters, is something much more in the forefront of my thought when reading Big Two adventure comics.

AD&D #32 was one of the three Tom Mandrake guest-pencilled issues (he drew two short, funny, Onyx-starring stories), and was the one with the umber hulk on the cover (I just mention that because "umber hulk" is a term I never, ever, ever get to use, and I didn't want to miss the opportunity). There's a letter column in that issue, and here, in part, is one letter to the editor that appeared in it:

I've talked to about twenty AD&D players regarding this series, and they are not satisfied for several reasons. Almost all AD&D players know about this comic and have judged it by now. It seems that the main objection is to the choice of demi-humans as the main characters...you need characters that exemplify the heroic spirit role-players are after. AD&D players are highly intelligent and creative people who usually depict heroes after their own image...Just looking at the cover of AD&D #1 most people thought, "What a bunch of wimps—how could they survive in the real AD&D game, let alone any dungeon."...Either AD&D players don't buy comic books or they have some objections to the format of freaks as heroes...Real heroes need to look the part—they should probably be at least 50% human in a group.

I won't mention the letter writer's name (I sure as hell wouldn't want some a-hole blogger quoting something I wrote a DC editor 20 years ago), and I grabbed the portions out of the letter that objected to the cast as being wimps and freaks.

I think it's well worth noting that the core adventuring party that make up the cast are a black woman, a caucasian (if we can apply that term to made-up fantasy races?) half-elf woman, a caucasian dwarf and a dark-skinned centaur (whose culture resembles that of the Native Americans; as did the elf's hometown of Shadowdale, come to think of it). AD&D was devoid of white male characters, at least as members of the permanent cast—Agrivar lasted four issues, Conner was in about three story arcs, and was as much an antagonist as an ally in some of them.

That's...kind of unusual, isn't it? I can't think of a DC or Marvel team/ensemble book without any white dudes in at the moment.

Is it worth noting that the black lady is the comic's undisputed alpha dog when it comes to beating people up? She doesn't come to blows with everyone in the cast during the book's run, but it's pretty clear she can kick all of their asses if she had too. The stats and experience levels and such that run in the back of the issues bear that out, too.

I think it's also worth noting that what the letter-writer was complaining about, that the book didn't consist of characters or settings or adventures that mirrored those of typical D&D gaming sessions closely enough, was actually one of the things I liked most about it. I've heard good things about the new IDW Dungeons & Dragons series, but have only read the first issue so far—and I was disappointed by how generic that seemed, like a comics artist was functioning like an artist in a courtroom during a game or osmething.

5.) Duursema was anything but lazy in her character designs and renderings for the characters in this series. There are three female characters in the main cast—Luna, Vajra and Kyriani—and four, I suppose, if you count Kyriani's original identity (This is kind of complicated and not really worth getting into, but when we first meet her she is an all-good version of herself, having had an evil exorcised from her as a baby, an evil which formed into her evil twin and, at the end of the first arc, the two selves are reunited into a new, complete self. The good self is fair of skin and blond, with a slim, girlish figure; the bad self is black-skinned, black-haired and has red eyes; the combined self has a white complexion, and brown hair and eyes, although she will re-combine later in the series and get a new hairstyle and purple eyes. Fantasy comics can be just as convoluted as superhero comics, if they put their mind to it).

Here are some panels from the collection featuring the female characters: None of them really have the stereotypical superheroine physique. Kyri comes closest, with an hourglass figure, and yet she still looks human, and like someone you might see in real life, compared to, say, one of those strange Ed Benes female creatures. The most superheroic of them, Vajra, towers above the other two, and has broad shoulders and cut, well-muscled arms.

6.) The centaur Timoth's design is fucking crazy. I don't know how easy it is to see from these pictures......but he apparently wears some sort of Dazzler/Lady Gaga glam make-up over his eyes all the time. He also wears a crazy ermine stole-vest most of the time, although he does wear less crazy clothes in other story arcs, like this sensible blouse.

7.) Onyx has the default personality of every dwarf ever. At least, all the dwarves I've read about or seen in movies. You know, surly, grouchy, stubborn, sensitive about their height and not terribly fond of humans or elves. Mishkin gives him a few wrinkles here and there—In "The Spirit of Myrrth" he reveals his dream of becoming a stand-up comedian, for example, and he eventually develops a bit of a crush on Kyri—but there doesn't seem to be a lot of range in dwarf personalities in fantasy fiction, does there?

Or maybe I just haven't read any of the right books. Can anyone recommend anything with a dwarf in it that's plays against dwarf-type? Anything that's not terrible and not over 400 pages, preferably...?

8.) That said, Timoth is pretty un-centaur-like, at least based on what I know of centaurs (Basically, just what I've read in Greek myth, The Inferno and C.S. Lewis' Narnia books). He's naive, trusting and almost comically sensitive (he's shown crying over the sadness of the elf girl's story twice in the first story arc), although his, um, whaddyacallit, Role? Class? Occupation? Vocation? I haven't played D&D in one million years—is that of a "Fighter."

9.)It also didn't occur to me until this reading that "Conner" is a bit of a pun to, as the character is a thief and a con-man.

10.) "Vajra" probably isn't the best name for a female warrior character, is it? When I read it as a kid, I pronounced her name as "Vajara" in my head, but now I see I was just mentally adding a syllable in there. It's actually just "Vajra," which I assume has to be pronounced "Vaj-Rah," which is a little too close to "vagina" for adult Caleb's tastes. To think I was once so innocent and, um, more mature than I am now that I could hear the syllable "vaj" over and over and not think about vaginas.

11.) Has anyone ever named a comic book character Penistro, pronounced like the name of the Green Lantern villain? Because I think that is a cool name.

12.) As I said of their Forgotten Realms collection, I do hope IDW plans to collect this whole series. I think they can do it with another four volumes. The next two story arcs are also four-parters, which would make the next volume perfectly symmetrical with the first.

After that, the stories vary in length more. There's a two-issue story featuring Kyri, a four-issue one featuring Luna and the whole cast, a one-issue Onyx story, a three-issue Vajra and Timoth story, a four-issue one featuring Kyri, a two-issue Onyx story, and then the four-issue finale. I figure they can do #9-16 in Vol. 2, #17-23 and maybe an annual in or something in Vol. 3 (There was a single AD&D annual, but the Forgotten Realms annual was an AD&D crossover, and then there's a short story from TSR Worlds), #24-30 in Vol. 4, and #31-#36 in a Vol. 5.

13). Looking through the old single issues, and marveling at how old they were (There are ads for the first Batman movie, Dead Calm, Both Bill and Ted movies, The Rookie and Child's Play on the backcovers; also, they apparently used to advertise movies in comic books), I see that the collection left out some of the back-matter that appeared in the backs of the original comics. Don't be stingy, IDW!

Some rather rambling thoughts on Dungeons & Dragons: Forgotten Realms Classics Vol. 1

Comic books and role-playing games have long been hobbies that are closely linked to one another. I always assumed that the reasons for this were simply that a) they’re both kind of nerdy or geeky (whichever adjective you prefer) pursuits, and thus there was a natural overlap between the nerds or geeks who liked one or the other, creating a group that liked both, and b) since neither a shop devoted solely to the sale of comic books nor a shop devoted to the sale of role-playing games materials was ever the easiest small business to keep afloat, particularly in smaller towns, hybrid shops selling both became commonplace.

Thinking about role-playing games and comics lately, as reading IDW’s trade collection of the old DC/TSR 1989-1991 Forgotten Realms comic series has got me doing, I realized there’s another commonality between certain types of comics and certain types of RPGs: The concept of an elaborate, shared, fictional universe setting that is more-or-less always under construction.

Those certain types of comics are, of course, superhero comics, with their DC and Marvel Universes, and the newer, smaller, similar universes that other publishers have launched over the years. And those certain types of RPGs are basically any of a certain size or longevity.

In both cases, settings, characters, histories and rules of some sort are shared between the units of the stories set in those settings, and a place that can be visited by users is created.

One such “universe” is, of course, Forgotten Realms, which was originally created by Ed Greenwood when he was a childe, and which he gradually developed and fleshed out and introduced to Dungeons & Dragons players through Greenwood’s magazine articles.

Over the decades, the Realms setting has appeared in scores of official RPG supplements and what must be well over a hundred prose novels at this point.

The Forgotten Realms comic was set in that world, giving writer Jeff Grubb—who had himself wrote plenty of those prose novels—a pre-made world to send his cast of a half-dozen or so adventurers journeying through.

Of those, one of them was previously introduced in a Michael Fleisher written arc of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, the first of DC/TSR’s line of comics, while the others were original to the Forgotten Realms comic. They all fell into easily identifiable types to anyone with even a passing familiarity with fantasy role-playing.

There were a couple of humans, an elf, a Halfling and a dwarf (sort of), and of these there was a magic user, a paladin, a cleric, a fighter, a thief and so on. The premise was that this group of characters, from all over the Realms, were the crew of a magical ship called The Realms Master. It would teleport from body of water to body of water, while its wizard captain sought out dangerous and powerful magical artifacts to dispose of (or make use of), before they fell into the wrong hands.

In other words, each story arc was a different quest, and Grubb had built in a few plot elements to keep a rapid-fire succession of quests plausible and easy to write about (None of the hundreds of pages of walking that one might find in The Lord of The Rings, then).

In addition to the monsters and magic and setting and culture of the Forgotten Realms “universe,” Grubb also made use of characters from the games and novels, who would basically have guest-appearances in the comic.

In the first two story arcs, “The Hand of Vaprak” and “The Dragonreach Saga,” which account for the contents of the IDW collection, Greenwood’s Merlin/Gandalf-like Elminster the Mage appears as a mostly behind-the-scenes, manipulator of events interested in the outcome of the events (in both of these arcs, our heroes are involved in quests that, if they fail, would mean the destruction of the Realms). Elminster’s ally Lord Mourngrym puts in a few appearances in those stories.

In the first arc, Alias and Dragonbait from the Grubb-co-written novel Azure Bonds team-up with our heroes. I only read a couple of the Forgotten Realms novels as a teenager, and Azure Bonds wasn’t one of them, but I remember the cover quite vividly for, um, some reason:In the late eighties, early nineties, I didn’t read the Forgotten Realms comics regularly; I read the annual, a crossover with the cast of the AD&D comic I did read regularly, and over the years tried finding all the back-issues. I own and have read about five or so of the eight issues collected in this volume, but I bought it anyway because I’d much rather have the whole series in trade then continue to assemble it in back-issues, which are inaccessibly buried in my miserable comics midden.

Some thoughts, in no particular order…

1.) I hope IDW’s committed to collecting the whole shebang. The whole series is only 25 issues long, plus an annual and a bit of material from a TSR Worlds annual, so I imagine they could probably finish the series off with two more collections, depending on where they want to include the annual material (IDW’s also collecting Advanced Dungeons & Dragons).

2.) I love the names of the characters Grubb comes up with: Priam Agrivar, Foxilon Cardluck, Dwalimar Omen, Ishi Barasume, Vartan Hai Sylvar. You could probably offer pretty good guesses about the character’s races and roles based merely on their names.

There are a few duds, though.

The aforementioned dwarf on the crew doesn’t look dwarven or female at all—her soul is trapped in the body of an iron golem, so she’s essentially a big iron dude with a lame name, Minder. (She presumably had a more dwarven name at some point; I never read the issue that explained what her whole deal is, although I believe that would appear in a second volume of a series of collections).

A woman with wings, whose race I don’t recall, is introduced later in the series. She’s simply named Jasmine.

3.) Dwalimar Omen has one of the coolest haircuts in the history of comics. Here are some scans of it from various angles:As you can hopefully see from those images, the top, back and sides are a sort of perfect orb afro, with the front cut away a bit to reveal his face. It is basically a completely insane haircut, one that I would imagine would take daily visits to a hairstylists to keep up using today’s modern haircutting technology, and yet the electric hair clippers had yet to be invented in this world.

So how does Omen get his hair did? Magic obviously, since he is a wizard. A wizard with a magical hairstyle, that he maintains magically.

4.) Beyond my affection and nostalgia for the setting and the RPGs that inspired it, the main reason I like this series so much is Rags Morales’ art. Morales has been a favorite of mine, and this book is an excellent showcase for his work, although as you can probably tell just form looking at a few of the images above that this is rather early work for him, and his style would evolve and sharpen quite a bit over the course of the 20 years to follow.

Rereading these stories though, it’s abundantly clear that Morales had already mastered “acting” through his characters in his art, and was quite adept at action and fleshing out fully-realized panels. The degree of background detail work in here puts that of most superhero comics of the 21st century to shame. Few things about the state of mainstream comics depress me more than seeing something from 20 or 30 years ago and realize that what used to be the norm in level of skill or quality has now become rare exceptions—one likes to think mainstream, direct market comics are getting better and better as the writing, the audience and the technology becomes more sophisticated, but that sadly isn’t always the case.

5.) Check out this crazy splash page Morales drew; I remember being confused by it when I first read it, and it took me a few seconds to figure it out again this time as well:That’s Priam Agrivar’s point-of-view as he looks up at some allies who have gathered around him to see if he was okay, having briefly lost consciousness. Apparently, he opened his right eye first, and Morales chose to draw the scene as if we were looking out from deep inside Agrivar’s skull.

I don’t know how successful the image is, but it’s certainly a strange one.

6.) It also occurred to me how rare art like this is these days. Morales is still drawing, and he’s gotten better and better ever since, but one never sees new art presented like this, with no special effects like lens flares and light-boxed or Photoshopped settings, no painted-by-computers gradations of colors, hell, even white gutters and borders between panels are something of a rarity these days.

It was…refreshing to read a comic assembled in the old-fashioned, pre-Computers-Doing-Everything fashion, even if it meant the colors were occasionally garish or unsubtle. Too many comics today, wrote Old Man Caleb, seem way too overproduced, which only draws attention to any deficiencies they might have in their story or the quality of the design and rendering at the heart of the artwork, underneath all the coloring effects.

I don’t necessarily want to say this looks cheap, but it doesn’t look overproduced at all, either.

7.)The collection includes the covers, which were naturally originally branded with publisher DC's logo, as well as that of then-Forgotten Realms and D&D owner TSR. IDW basically just whited 'em out. Here's what they look like:

8.) The only complaint I have about the collection was the lack of any sort of introduction or afterword. As I've said before, I really, really, really like those in a collection.

In this case, I would have liked to see something from Grubb or Morales about the experience and maybe how it fit into their careers, or maybe someone of some sort of authority sort of of explaining the reason why these older, minor comics are considered worthy of being collected and represented. Other than than their collection of the old Marvel G.I. Joe comics, I haven't yet read very many of IDW's "rescue" collections, but the publisher certainly seems quite devoted to finding older comic books from the '80s and '90s and re-presenting them for the modern graphic novel audience. I would have liked a little context for this collection's existence, I guess.

But then, I just like that little something extra in a collection format.

9.) If you're at all interested in fantasy or sword and sorcery comics, I'd recommend this as an especially fun, lighthearted example of the genre, with pretty great art. Plus, the more of you who buy it, the more likely it is IDW will collect the rest of the series, and maybe even Dragonlance and Spelljammer, the other two DC/TSR books, neither of which I've read any of before.