Dungeons & Dragons: Saturday Morning Adventures #2 // Review
Hank just lost the vote to be the leader of the team. So did Sheila. It’s okay, though. The vote wasn’t like...planned or anything. They’ve made it through the Forgotten Realms pretty well so far without having any kind of formal leader, but a simple disagreement on basic direction could prove to be a challenge in Dungeons & Dragons: Saturday Morning Adventures #2. The four-part tribute to the old 1980s animated series from Marvel Studios makes it to its halfway point courtesy of writer David M. Booher and artist George Kambadais. Color comes to the page thanks to Josh Burcham.
The team finds itself in Waterdeep--one of the largest, most notorious cities in any Dungeons & Dragons realm. They’re being led into a monastery that Hank doesn’t feel comfortable entering. Sheila wants to heed the warnings of the woman who has offered them her protection. The team doesn’t have long to consider their options. Driders and Darkmantles are in pursuit. Once inside, they find enough magic items to keep the place safe from a major threat. The woman who led them to safety within the monastery has a dark past. The team might just be able to help her out.
Booher really launches everyone into conflict. He seems alarmingly aware of how little time and space he has to deliver a compelling action fantasy story that also happens to be heavily grounded in the world of Dungeons & Dragons in order for it to make any sense at all in the spirit of the franchise. The sudden and dramatic introduction of a woman suffering from wild magic is totally natural. Booher’s script could have easily felt rushed, but there’s more than enough time with every character in the ensemble to make it all feel more or less perfectly framed.
Once again, Kambadais finds a stylish middle ground between the visual reality of the old cel-animated series and a more contemporary visual feel for the comic book. There’s a heavy weight to the inky shadows in the big, empty monastery that is given vivid contrast by the powerful light and illumination of Burcham’s colors. Magic appears powerful and dangerous in Burcham’s hands. There’s a rich, gritty texture to the massive interior of the monastery that could have otherwise felt cold and lifeless. Kambadais puts the drama of the story well in view in the center of the panel with emotionally resonant renderings of everyone in the ensemble.
The script format of a four-part series begins to seem like something that might have fit rather nicely between a couple of episodes of the old Saturday morning series. That means that the first couple of issues would constitute a single episode. The overall feel of the story is true enough to the original series that it is a little weird being fitted around the plot structure of a couple of issues of a contemporary comic book, but it remains a lot of fun to hang out with a few old friends again.
