Robot Claw

While at the New York Comic Con some weeks back, I acquired a few issues of old DC Dungeons & Dragons comics from the late 1980’s. For your pleasure, here I present reviews of these very books! Each review is of a four-issue arc from each of three series, accompanied with lovely illustrations. Please enjoy 🙂

The Hand Of Vaprak

(Forgotten Realms comics, issues 1 – 4, 1989)

This arc tells the story of an artifact – the hand of a troll god – that is discovered by a Paladin and must be kept from getting into the hands of evildoers. The Forgotten Realms comics seemed to be based around the crew of a ship that would sail around the Sword Coast on their adventures, and they are all here. The story is exciting, the writing funny, and the art quite good.

A particularly nice touch in this series is the revelation that the artifact was actually created by Elminster, who sends a duo to help destroy it. Elminster’s pretty cool always (even in those terribad Ed Greenwood novels) and well presented during his brief cameos here.

Overall this was a fun read, and I’d score it 3 puffs out of 4 from Elminsters pipe. In fact, it made me want to track down more issues from this series…

The Spirit Of Myrtth

(AD&D comics, issues 5-8, 1989)

Uh, oh. Things go a bit downhill here. The arc tells the story of the search for a powerful ‘joke’ said to kill all who hears it. As it turns out, it is in fact a spell with no somatic components and not only the heroes but also the ‘jesters guild’ is after it. Hijinks ensue.

All things considered a mostly boring story with boring characters (35 foot tall animated flame-breathing skeleton notwithstanding). They do, however, manage to cram in a few of the more obvious D&D cliches.

I’d rate this one 2 wererats out of 5.

Raistlin’s Pawn

(Dragonlance comics, issues 5-8, 1989)

Ask the average dude on the street which D&D world he preferred to play in, and chances are he’d say Forgotten Realms. Ask him which one he’d prefer to read a comic in, and he’d probably say Spelljammer Dragonlance. This is not surprising, because most dudes on the street have a thing for Raistlin Majere.

So when the entire story arc is about Raistlin putting a scheme into play to delay the manifestation of Takhisis to keep himself at the top of the power ladder, well – by the Gods! – who wouldn’t want to read that? Certainly not ME, thank you very much.

Plus, Takhisis is pretty.

This is a quality work, well written and interesting. It’s got all sorts of nifty Dragonlance-y stuff in it that spoke to my soul and even a shocking twist ending! It should have gone on longer than only four issues. In my imagination it always will.

Oh yes, it has silver dragons as well:

I’d give it a 92%, and were it a ZX Spectrum game would even award it with the prestigious ‘Crash Smash’ medal 🙂

The Arena Of Istar

(Dragonlance comics, issues 9-12, 1989)

So here’s what must have happened. Back in February ’89, the editor of Dragonlance, Barbara K, was sitting in her office thinking the following:

What the HECK am I going to follow up ‘Pawn of Raistlin’ with…?

And then in swaggers Dan Mishkin, who says:

Hey Barb! I got this idea about a bromance story involving Tanis Halfelven and some Minotaur dude.

And history was born.

Imagine, if you will, that it was even remotely possible that Istar was in fact not destroyed in the Cataclysm (not to be confused, BTW, with the WoW expansion which shamelessly ripped off Dragonlance when it had run out of Warhammer material to rip off) and in fact remained under the Blood Sea of Istar, ruled over by a cadre of giant dragon turtles who turned captives into mer-creatures and had them fight to the death for amusement. Hard to believe isn’t it? Tanis thought so as well…

Into this unlikely world does Tanis and his cow-like buddy descend, and adventures would then follow. A strong fellowship is forged as peril and evil is overcome, and the reader decisively learns the answer to the age-old question “Can a man call a cow brother?”

This is a masterpiece. I have never, in all my years, seen comic art that so faultlessly illustrates emotion in a minotaur. This is doubly remarkable since no-one that lives now or has ever lived has ever cared about Minotaurs in Dragonlance or even knew they existed in Krynn. This is akin to reading a story about the day Luke Skywalker hung out with a bunch of Daleks and never even considered it unusual.

‘By the abyss‘ indeed Tanis. 10 out of 10.

Bonus Page…

(Forgotten Realms Annual, 1990)

I think we can agree that the rest of this one-shot can only go downhill from the above page 🙂