Trondheim & Sfar's Dungeon: The Early Years

Lewis Trondheim & Joann Sfar's Dungeon (or Donjon, in the original French) is my favorite comics series of all time. It's a giant, sprawling epic that's both a love letter to and a send-up of fantasy spectacles. It spoofs overly convoluted world-building and plots while establishing its own deep lore. The essence of the story is this: there is a dungeon, run by its Keeper, that actively encourages adventurers to attempt to take its treasures. Of course, it's full of horrible monsters and traps designed to murder any party, which means the keeper takes all of their treasure as well. All of its characters are anthropomorphic animals, which makes sense since Trondheim drew most of the early series, and that is his style. 

The main title, nicknamed "Zenith," shows the dungeon at its height and introduces an idiot duck named Herbert trying to get a job in the dungeon. He befriends the Keeper's top man, a dragon named Marvin, and accidentally acquires a sword that demands he go on a quest. It's funny but also satisfying as a solid piece of genre fiction. The conceit is that Dungeon would run for a hundred volumes, but Zenith only had 10 volumes.

Trondheim & Sfar didn't want to do a conventional narrative. They wanted to play with the story in fun ways, asking the question, "Hey, how does it all wind up?" So they zoomed ahead to volume 101, starting a series of stories called "Twilight." Years later, we see what became of Herbert, Marvin, and many others, and it's a surprisingly grim story, still leavened by lots of slapstick. If that wasn't enough, they zoomed back in time to volume -99, called "The Early Years," which introduces us to the keeper in his youth. (There are also Antipodes + and -, which go way further into the future and past, but those haven't been translated into English yet.) 

NBM had originally published these in small digest format, which hurt the reproduction of the art, which was originally published in France in the oversized album format. NBM finally reprinted them again at the right size and published all of the Early Years stories. The six original French albums have been published in two editions: The Early Years Vol 1-2: The Night Shirt, and The Early Years Vol 3: Without A Sound. Overall, these volumes are a great improvement over the previous editions. There are still some quirks; there are lettering errors in the translation, for example. It's still exciting to see so many volumes of Dungeon translated into English, though NBM's recent shift to mostly doing biographies would seem to indicate there won't be any more forthcoming. 

There is a consistent character arc in the series that is reflected by the protagonist of each of the main series. The hero initially is highly naive and idealistic, but they are eventually worn down by their experiences and become corrupted and cynical. This happens to the Keeper, aka Hyacinth de Cavallere, and it happens to Herbert (and it's shocking when it does). Marvin the Red, the hero of "Twilight," is certainly naive at the beginning, but as the world literally falls apart, his narrative goes in the opposite direction: from a wannabe hard-boiled killer to a family man. 

"The Early Years" focuses on Hyacinth's journey from pampered son of a warlord to cold-blooded assassin. Both Early Years and Twilight depict an old order crumbling before the eyes of the protagonists, and the stories are that of adaptation and finding a new steady-state. In "The Early Years," the old world of knights, warlords, and chivalry came to an end, symbolized by the fall of the capital city Antipolis. It's the seat of all knowledge and law, but it's being undone by its own corruption, greed, and squalor. The first three volumes (-99, -98, and -97) detail Hyacinth becoming a sort of bumbling vigilante named "The Night Shirt," who fights for justice in the corrupt city. His undoing is falling in love with a snake-woman assassin named Alexandra. 

The narrative then jumps ahead to volumes -84, -83, and -82. Hyacinth is rich and powerful, and secretly the head of the assassin's guild, but he is in mourning because his lover Alexandra has murdered his sweet wife. His own greed helps settle the city's destruction, and he's forced to flee to his family castle. By the end of the last volume, he's assembled the crew that would make up the foundation of his dungeon, including a five-year-old Marvin the Dragon. Christophe Blain drew the first four volumes, and he was an outstanding choice as someone who has done so many action epics. Working within the Dungeon style, Christophe Gaultier brings a darker, grittier quality to the story than the others, but it's fitting for how nasty his chapter was. Stephane Oiry's chapter is brighter and clearer, which was also befitting a more optimistic story. Selecting the right artists for the job showed that Trondheim & Sfar were smart editors in addition to being great artists. "The Early Years" might be my favorite entries in the whole Dungeon saga, as they are satisfying in how they create the character narrative as well as having tons of fun lore-related easter eggs for fans of the rest of the series. 

Some thoughts on the new version of Dungeon: Twilight from NBM

I've said it before: Dungeon (or Donjon, in the original French) is my all-time favorite comics series. For the uninitiated, it's masterminded by L'Association founders Lewis Trondheim and Joann Sfar. Trondheim and Sfar combined to create a cartoony, anthropomorphic character design style that's a little grittier than Trondheim's usual style and a little more stylized than Sfar's. The central characters are an idiotic duck named Herbert and a philosophical but brutal strongman named Marvin. The genre is high fantasy, using every trope and trick in the book with regard to quests, epic adventures, spells, wizards, monsters, treasure, etc. you can imagine. What makes the series special is that it's simultaneously an irreverent send-up of all of these tropes and a loving tribute to them. It's akin to the most ridiculous D&D campaign imaginable with ridiculous characters who nonetheless have a job to do. 

In French comics, serialization is in the form of approximately 48-page albums. The Dungeon series began with volume one of the Zenith storyline, introducing Herbert and Marvin and featuring the titular dungeon at the height of its success. As Trondheim and Sfar continued along, they asked: what if we skipped ahead to volume 101 of the series? What would be happening then? The result is the Dungeon: Twilight series of albums, where Herbert is the all-powerful and evil Grand Khan and Marvin is the Dust King and wishes only to die. The first volume of this series is #101! Then they imagined: what would the story be like if they went back in time to the beginning of the Dungeon, focusing on the original wizard master and where he came from? That would be Dungeon: The Early Years, featuring Hyacinth, who would become the creator of the Dungeon and its tower, and that volume started off at -99 and counted its way up to 1! Of course, neither artist intends to produce all of the volumes. They did ten volumes of Zenith, six volumes of Early Years (which skipped around, going from -99 to -97 and then to -84, -83, and -81. In Twilight, it goes from 101 - 106, and then 111 and 112. To date, 25 volumes relating to this storyline have been published, as well as another 28 volumes telling stories of side characters, early side stories featuring Herbert and Marvin, more stories of the far future and past, and other oddities. That's over 2500 pages of comics, most drawn by artists other than Trondheim, but that's a crazy level of output for one world!

This is a densely-plotted series of interconnected epics with dozens of characters, but one that's also easy to follow because it mostly focuses on a few key ones in each set of stories. Translating Trondheim's comics has always been somewhat thorny, because American audiences don't always take to his funny animal style of art and dry sense of humor. NBM, who's been translating European comics for well over forty years, tried a few different ways of translating these comics. First, they tried a black & white (grayscaled) version of this in comic book form, which no one much liked. Second, they started combining two volumes at a time in a smaller, almost digest-sized form. This was at least in full color, but the frequently intricate art was shrunk so much that it was hard to read, especially since they're also pretty wordy. 

At last, however, NBM has made the wise choice of reprinting the series again, this time at something approaching the original scale. Even better, they're packing four albums into one collection at a time, making them highly dense 200-page volumes. I just read the first collection for Twilight, and the result was a version that simply breathes better. Trondheim drew the first half of this volume, and much of his art has always depended on negative space: pauses, vistas, quiet moments that the art emphasizes. Printing it at the correct size helps this, and also helps when there's a lot of dialogue. 

And with a new character, a rabbit named Marvin the Red, there's a lot of chattiness. This Marvin eventually befriends the original Marvin, much to the latter's chagrin, since he's done with fighting and everything except going to the dragon burial grounds and dying. However, that's not in the cards for him, so he confronts his old friend Herbert. In Zenith, Herbert acquired a legendary sword that was a pain in the ass, and it talked about sending him on a quest for other legendary objects. In Twilight, we learn that he completed the quest, but at great cost: he took all of their evil into himself and became the tyrannical Grand Khan. Marvin was tired of living after his own years of battle, tearing out his eyes rather than see his own children because of religious customs. 

Then Trondheim and Sfar make the bold move of inflicting doomsday on his characters, as they now have to hop from island to island. Sfar is the artist for the first three chapters, the only ones he drew for any of the series. The husband and wife team of Kerascoet handle the art duties on the last chapter, and it's not quite as good as the ideal version of the characters that Sfar draws. There's a little too much texture in the line art, a little too much detail, and it's distracting at times. However, once one settles into their style, the story is flexible enough to adjust to this change and there are fewer distractions. 

Marvin the Red is the breakout superstar of this story. He's mean, stupid, and violent. He's also loving and loyal. He does anything he can to protect the Dust King and his little bat friend. He's absolutely fearless in the face of great danger. He's also a lover and a cad, romancing several women at once. Of course, he has no guile or skill, and he gets taken advantage of as much as he's just trying to get into their pants, but it's one of the funniest things about Marvin. He's a wonderful send-up of Conan-like barbarian characters. 

The ideal world would see each volume published separately, in English, with precisely the same coloring and line resolution. This collection doesn't have that. Sometimes, the resolution looks a bit wobbly. All that said, this is still a vast improvement over past attempts, and my hope is that sales are brisk enough to give the same treatment not just to Dungeon, but to other Trondheim books. Fantagraphics only published one volume of Ralph Azham before Kim Thompson died, and this kind of series seems ideal for NBM to publish if they get the rights. 

Dungeon is bawdy, bloody, raucous, contemplative, tragic, and triumphant. It's a series of interlocking storytelling puzzles in the tradition of Carl Barks. It's a love letter to fantasy fiction and even roleplaying games. It's a devastating satire of all of these things, all at the same time. Any fan of fantasy comics or fiction at any level will enjoy both its reverence and irreverence, often on the same page or even the same panel. NBM has published an omnibus for Twilight, Zenith, and Early Years. Hopefully, they will finish those out and then turn to Dungeon: Monsters, Dungeon: Parade, and untranslated work like Dungeon: Antipodes. 

D&Q: Poppies of Iraq

There's a gentleness to Brigitte Findakly's narrative voice that makes her descriptions of growing up in Iraq, in territory now occupied by ISIL/Daesh, feel understated and restrained. Poppies of Iraq is the third major memoir regarding growing up in the Middle East produced in the west (along with Marjane Satrapi's famous Persepolis, of course, and Riad Sattouf's The Arab of the Future), and it's so much more compact and less focused on tons of personal minutia than those other books. Findakly's past is every bit as painful and shattered as any ex-pat, but it's clear that these events feel a lot more distant to her now.

Co-written and illustrated by her partner Lewis Trondheim and colored by her (she's a professional colorist, not a writer), it has the feel of a fascinating, narrated family album. That's magnified by the chapter-ending photos that she provides of herself and her family. Findakly's narrative is straightforward, as she opts to portray her life and family as ordinary in nearly every sense but also affected by extraordinary times. Her father was a dentist, and it was not unusual at the time in the Middle East for those seeking higher education to obtain it in Europe. Her father met her mother in France, and she returned to Mosul when he was ready to start his practice as well as work for the military. The history of post-World War I Iraq is one of a nation being freed from years of Ottoman Empire rule and a great deal of continued foreign occupation. It is unsurprising that there might be instability in an ancient, proud country after years of colonial interference, and so in Iraq there were military coups and deposed monarchs, all leading up to the Saddam Hussein era.

For Findakly and her family, there were simply long periods of living a relatively carefree and fun life. She discusses going to public school and wanting to learn from the Quran like her friends (even though she was a Christian). There was her best friend who lived next door, with whom she played constantly. Throughout the book, Findakly jumps back and forth in time, revealing the fate of various friends, adding context to relationships that she only became aware of much later, and examining the irony of so many friends having to call her in Paris to make sure she was safe after the latest attack. As her narrative slowly moves forward, she reveals details about how her family was affected by whatever the latest coup was. When Christian-led forces had control of Iraq, her family was feared and mistrusted. When a Muslim-led government was ascendant, there were moments of great danger. In both cases, her father's status as a member of the army saved her family from a potentially harsh fate.

Findakly also addresses her betwixt and between quality as part French, part Iraqi. Her parents were able to use their status to get groceries and supplies that many others didn't have in times of crisis, but Findakly always wanted to have what the other kids were having. It was especially amusing to see her want margarine instead of butter! There were also little side-strips called "In Iraq", wherein Findakly would share a tidbit or two about one of her country's idiosyncrasies, like injections always being considered superior to pills, or families blessed with multiple children sometimes giving a new baby to someone in the family who can't conceive.

Her family left for France for good in 1972 because of the slowly crumbling infrastructure and increasingly corrupt government that was taxing her father unfairly. Findakly reverses the usual "we were happier in the west!" narrative by explaining how difficult her family had it. Her father couldn't practice dentistry in France; her mother's family cut her off when she went to Iraq; and it was difficult for her to adjust to an all-French classroom. Over the years, Findakly could sense growing unhappiness among her relatives when she'd visit, while at the same time she felt more and more comfortable asserting herself in France. She went to protests, she explored her talent in art, and eventually moved out on her own. She still felt drawn to what she considered to be her home country and even considered a drawing gig doing a children's book for the Ministry of Culture until she realized that it would mean working for Saddam Hussein. By the end of the book, her remaining friends and family in Iraq were shells of their former selves after the American occupation and its ensuing chaos, while the family members living abroad had their own prejudices. Findakly, remarkably, was able to empathize with them and their situation and tried not to judge, because everyone was affected by Iraq's chaos differently.

What's interesting about the book is that it's quietly about seizing control of one's own life and agency in subtle, gradual ways. Whereas the young Marjane character in Persepolis is bratty and unbearable as a teen, young Findakly is friendly & agreeable and carries those traits into adulthood. The art by Trondheim well-matches his skill in drawing from life (especially big, sweeping backgrounds) and his friendly, gentle character designs are a snug fit for the fondness she has for her family, extended family and friends. There was not much internal drama for Findakly growing up, and the move to France actually cat a time when she was champing at the bit for more freedom. In terms of what Trondheim did on the page, he used an open-format six panel grid that often collapsed panels. This contributed to the book's light, breezy feel that sometimes masked the more serious aspects of the story. This book doesn't try to be a major event or a profound commentary on the Middle East; its lack of such pretensions and focus on particular details make them all the more memorable and funny, as Findakly tries to connect her own story to any other story about growing up in any kind of unusual environment.

Tying Up Knots: Dungeon Twilight Volume 4

The Lewis Trondheim/Joann Sfar epic series, Dungeon, was finally tied up with a frenetic, over-the-top conclusion that lived up to the many prior volumes. These books are best read back-to-back, because there are so many characters and plot twists that it's hard to crack open a new volume and be expected to remember everything--especially six chapters into this story. Dungeon has always been Sfar and Trondheim's fantasy playground series, wherein they get to play around with genre conventions while gently tweaking them at the same time. The heart of the series surrounds lazy duck Herbert and badass dragon Marvin; their ascent began in the "Zenith" series of the Dungeon books. The origins of the fully-stocked Dungeon were told in the "Early Years" series. While the authors jokingly noted that there would be a hundred volumes in each series, they wound up producing a still incredibly-impressive forty volumes, when you throw in the various Monstres, Parade and other affiliated series.

The first of two collected volumes in the 4th volume of NBM's Dungeon Twilight collection is titled High Septentrion. Essentially, Sfar and Trondheim caused the end of the world in previous volumes, seemingly as a way for them to come up with one of their never-ending storytelling solutions to thorny plot twists. The genius of the Dungeon series is that each chapter's plot-dependent twist is inevitably a wacky gag that is nonetheless treated with deadly seriousness. In this case, the twist is wiry rabbit warrior Marvin the Red continually switching bodies with the zaftig cat-woman Zakutu. The reason why is so that some objects of power stay safe, but it allows Sfar and Trondheim to go nuts with Marvin fondling his new body at every opportunity. The other thing that made this series great was not just the frenzied action (there's actually an incredibly tense climax in this book) or the wacky gags, but the way Sfar & Trondheim cleverly developed every character. There's a density of character built up through book after book that makes the denouement of this book especially pleasant, as a changed Zakutu and Marvin the Red go off to find adventure together. The artist Alfred handled the visuals in this story, hewing close to the character designs set down by Trondheim but adding bits of flair here and there.

Of course, the real heart of the series is Herbert and Marvin the Dragon. They are the stars of the final volume, The End Of Dungeon. It's a worthy final entry, as the two old friends fight together and against each other, get captured, pull of an incredible escape and finally finish off the "Dark Entity" that caused them so much trouble. The exact plot details are incredibly convoluted for any newcomers, but suffice it to say that there's not only a satisfying ending, there's also a lovely coda about the nature of fame worthy of Shelley. Once again, all of that is less important than the focus on the two main characters and the genuine affection they share for each other over many years. Sfar and Trondheim also slip in an extended bathroom joke that fits in perfectly with the frequently vulgar humor the series has always possessed. That's been a key element in their spoofing the fantasy genre: establishing their characters as human (or anthropomorphic animals, as the case may be), with human desires, frailties and physical qualities. These quests are based in mud and dirt and all the characters are essentially bags of meat and bones, all of which will fade away. That sense that everything great will eventually come to a bitter end, that there's no such thing as an ending (happy or otherwise), adds a sense of pervading sadness to the proceedings. Serving up the tart with the sweetness of comedy and action is another reason why Dungeon is the greatest genre series of all time.

Sequart Reprints: Little Vampire, Kaput & Zosky

First Second continues to build on their impressive stockpile of comics aimed at kids with collections of Lewis Trondheim's Kaput & Zosky and Joann Sfar's Little Vampire. Both of these comics have appeared in English in other formats, at least in pieces. Some Kaput & Zosky shorts were translated in the much-missed Trondheim spotlight series The Nimrod that Fantagraphics used to publish. A couple of the Little Vampire stories were published by Simon & Schuster five years ago, but the series ended there. First Second, with their solid design, aggressive and smart marketing and understanding of how to reach their desired audience, picked up the banner for Sfar and Trondheim.

Little Vampire is the prequel of sorts for Vampire Loves, another charmingly ambling set of stories featuring the friendly vampire. Little Vampire lives in a haunted castle with all sorts of monsters and ghosts. His desire to go to school leads to an amusing sequence where his mother and father (who turns out to be the Flying Dutchman) arrange for the whole menagerie to attend a school at night. He does the homework for a human boy, and the two wind up as fast friends. Sfar manages to make the monsters and ghosts simultaneously friendly and gruesome. Maintaining that balance is his best trick--the supernatural in all its occasionally frightening forms is on every page, yet the boldness of Little Vampire and the boy Michael offer a reassuring presence for even the youngest of readers.

The stories are Sfar at his best. The first story is about friendship, the second is about standing up to bullies, and the third is about animal cruelty. Sfar manages to get across lessons in the least didactic manner possible, thanks to his lively line, attention to the forward propulsion of the story's action, and vivid colors. At the same time, he's not afraid to go off on tangents and character soliloquies, trusting his audience enough to know that they'll realize that he'll snap back into the main narrative shortly. The second story, "Little Vampire Does Kung-Fu", takes a pretty simple idea (Michael must deal with a bully) and takes it into some very odd directions.

Michael and LV step into a painting in the haunted castle, where a rabbi points him in a direction where he can learn kung-fu. In a hilarious sequence, Michael goes through a clever series of vignettes to achieve his quest--only to find that the castle monsters have eaten his tormentor. Realizing that that would never do, he and Little Vampire have to consult a group of sorcerers to bring him back to life, but not before nearly sparking a wizard war. Finally, the bully was brought back to life a little too effectively--he became a monstrous giant who nearly squashed our heroes before they got a little help from LV's father. This story encapsulates what Sfar does so well here--he creates a narrative that doesn't talk down to children, but rather respects their intelligence and thirst for the unusual, the bizarre and even the scatological, all while crafting characters that are enormously sympathetic, distinctive and affectionate. Above all else, these stories are funny--the drawings are funny to look at, and his dialogue is filled with punchlines, plays on words and even amusing non sequiturs.

On the other hand, Lewis Trondheim's Kaput & Zosky is done in the tradition of the Warner Brothers or Terrytoons--stylish, hilarious and glorious cartoonish violence for its own sake. These stories are about two inept intergalactic conquerors whom, despite their taste for mayhem, find themselves foiled on every planet they visit. These stories were mostly drawn by Eric Cartier in a style very similar to Trondheim's, and they were later adapted for an animated series that was once aired on Nicktoons. This collection also contains a number of "The Cosmonaut" strips, written and drawn by Trondheim. In gag stories like this, Trondheim is at his best because his plots unfold like puzzles, slowly unveiling the story's clever solution (and resolution) in hilarious fashion.

For example, a planet where every being obeys them not only frustrates their desire to conquer bloodily, it winds up driving them off the planet when Kaput's suggestions of things he doesn't want to happen come to pass. On one planet, when Kaput wins on a slot machine and doesn't want the money (preferring money stolen), the money keeps doubling and doubling until he owns the entire planet--and then walks away because he doesn't want to rule a world without "kicking butt". They conquer another world by getting elected in a democratic process and are forced to flee when they're expected to live up to their promises ("...the ugly shall be beautiful!"). The duo are fleeced by a traveling arms merchant who sells weapons and something to overcome them to both our protagonists and the planet they're trying to conquer. When Kaput manages to solve the problem of the annoying salesman in a very direct fashion, it leads to the natives learning from his example and driving them off.

Like all of his comics aimed at kids, Trondheim really makes them for his own enjoyment first and foremost. As a result, any adult can read and enjoy them for the liveliness of the art, the clever storytelling, and the way he manages to slip between sophisticated and crude humor so effortlessly. The "Cosmonaut" interstitial pages fit in perfectly with this style of humor, and are perhaps even more vicious and scatological than the Kaput & Zosky strips. This book is not quite as appealing as the stories from Dungeon , mostly because these are deliberately one-note characters designed to fit a certain kind of story design. These stories are pure parody, sending up sci-fi's hoary cliches while still managing to utilize clever premises. Kaput & Zosky isn't the first book I'd recommend for someone looking to explore Trondheim's work, but it still serves as an example of his long winning streak in comics--I don't think I've ever read a Trondheim story that wasn't at least clever, well-crafted and enjoyable to read at worst, and transcendentally brilliant at best.

Sequart Reprints: Sardine, Tiny Tyrant, Black Diamond Detective Agency, Professor's Daughter

The newest Sardine In Outer Space book is more of the same. Sardine, her uncle Captain Yellow Shoulder and Little Louie fly around the universe having light-hearted adventures. They're always running up against space dictator Supermuscleman and his mad scientist Doc Krok. This edition gets a bit meta, as our heroes are not only aware that they're the stars of a comic, but that they also only get 10 pages a story! Guibert and Sfar run with this idea in "Why Don't We Make A Movie?", where famous movie director Kubik tries to convince the gang to let him make a movie about them. The plot he describes comes to life as our heroes have a big space fight with Supermuscleman, but Sardine tells Kubik that his ideas aren't quite as exciting as their real lives.

The book is at its best when the premises are at their most absurd, because the plots are repetitive. The best stories include a visit to the Kingdom of Yummy, with fields of french fries, wild Burgeegies, the ketchup eruptions of Mount St. Heinz, and Weddingcake Mountain--with the King and Queen atop it. Along the meta lines, "The Sabotage Artist" is about a plot to make Sardine's comic unpopular by adding poorly-drawn characters, thanks to Supermuscleman. Then there's the Queen of Applet and her agents Dotcom, Clickalink and Doubleclick, who steal a statue and get tracked by the kids. As I noted in my review of the previous edition of Sardine, the book is best read a bit at a time, because there's not a lot of story or characterization to latch on to. However, it's ideal for younger children, especially those just getting into "real" books and comics. While Sardine's set-up is limited, the wacky scenarios that Guibert cooks up and Sfar playfully draws is a great way to get kids into comics.

Tiny Tyrant, on the other hand, is a stunningly hilarious work because of its tight plots and superb gag resolution. That's no surprise, considering that Lewis Trondheim is a gagman supreme, in addition to his many other talents. He's aided by the fantastically clean & expressive art of Fabrice Parme, whose style is reminiscient of 1960's animation. This clear-line style is a nice match for the frantic and energetic stories of young King Ethelbert, 6-year-old ruler of Portocristo. The king is a spoiled brat and terrorizes his ministers and citizens with his whims. The design of this book is fantastic: panel frames are left out. Instead, each story has a pastel background that brings the most out of the linework and the bolder colors used for the figures.
With the knowledge that Ethelbert is a little spoiled brat who will happily threaten those who disagree with him, Trondheim concocts plots that come up with an escalating set of problems and then devises an unexpected solution. In "The Ethelbertosaurus", the king is told of a dinosaur fossil being found. He immediately wants it named after himself, but balks when he sees it's a tiny creature. Wanting a larger dinosaur, he demands that his scientists create one. Through an unlikely series of events, one is created that immediately menaces him. The creature is sent back in time with Ethelbert (by accident), and the story resolves itself with a wacky set of events that is topped by a punchline that cleverly folds in events from earlier in the story.

What makes these stories so funny is that Trondheim stacks gag on top of gag, giving each story a momentum that plows toward the punchline at the end. Parme is more than up to the task of illustrating these gags, given his exaggerated figures and facial expressions. In "Safety First", Ethelbert is assigned a personal bodyguard. In order to test how good he is, he takes out a contract on his own life, and we proceed to see his bodyguard rescue him from catastrophe after catastrophe. Parme drawing "the Dastardly Detroiters" popping up out of a bunch of garbage cans is a hilarious image, one of many in a story that has genuine excitement from panel to panel. Once again, the final punchline is not only funny, it unexpectedly references an earlier plot point.

In The Professor's Daughter, Sfar and Guibert trade roles for what was actually their breakthrough work a decade ago. Guibert's moody, fuzzy art here meshes well with Sfar's melancholy fantasy romance. What I like best about this story is that its most absurd aspects are played straight. In Victorian England, an archeologist's daughter falls in love with the mummy of a former Egyptian pharoah that has come to life. Sfar understands what makes for a compeling story, because the plot is less concerned with the hows of the mummy's return than why he falls in love with the woman. Sfar spins this into a story of a son's relationship with his father, and crosses it with an ocean adventure, a prison breakout, a courtroom drama, and an absurd encounter with Queen Victoria. The comic almost feels as though it was originally twice as long, but Sfar cut out everything that wasn't essential to the story. Indeed, on the first page of the story, we're introduced to the mummy wearing a suit and out on the town with the titular daughter.

Color is a crucial component in the story's emotional narrative; the washed-out tones (watercolors?) evoke their environment so acutely that one can almost feel the fog or smell the ocean reflected in a cabin's light. As delicate as the coloring is, it's the liveliness of Guibert's figures that add drama to the action. The dreamy quality of the art allows the reader to make an easy transition between the action and several dream sequences, as well as even more absurd sequences like two mummies being laid up in hospital beds. While the book certainly has its share of shenanigans, it lingers in one's imagination because of the underlying sadness and emptiness of all its characters. The attempt to fill that void is at the heart of the book, and even the final page of the book has its own moment of tragedy despite what is otherwise a happy outcome. This book just feels like both artists having an enormous amount of fun riffing off each other, using a kitchen-sink approach to throw in everything they wanted in a story, and leaving out whatever disinterested them. It's simply a pleasure to read, from beginning to end.

Lastly, we have Eddie Campbell's The Black Diamond Detective Agency. It's based on a screenplay, and promises "mayhem, mystery, romance, mine shafts, bullets" and it certainly delivers. The story takes place around the turn of the 20th century in the American west--both in a small town and the big city. The anxiety surrounding the changes in the modern world is a running subplot that winds up holding the key to the story's mystery. The story begins with an argument between a man and a woman and the destruction of a train that kills dozens in his small town that is subsequently attributed to him. The man, John Hardin, is the sort of super-competent but haunted hero that's enormously compelling. Throwing him in with the eponymous private detective agency reminded me a bit of "The Fugitive", except the twist is that Hardin manages to disguise himself enough to temporarily join the agency!

While the story has interesting characters and some intriguing twists & turns, it really isn't much more than a rousing potboiler of an adventure story. What distinguishes it is the tour-de-force of design and composition that Campbell creates on the page. He combines his trademark scratchy style with a washed-out palette that perfectly depicts the grit and grime of the era. Acts of violence are in bold penstrokes and brighter color, popping them off the page. The pages go from full-page splashes to smaller grids to panels placed at odd angles to move the eye along the page with confusing images. Those readers who know Campbell from his autobiographical work might forget that his long-running adventure series Bacchus; he's no stranger to convoluted adventure stories. Still, this book isn't in the same league as something like Fate of the Artist, but it's a more-than-amusing diversion.

Once again, First Second excels at advancing comics that are another strain of "new mainstream" books. These comics are accessible to anyone, and the fact that they aggressively market comics for kids as well reflects the vision of the line's editor, Mark Siegel. He wanted comics to attain the same sort of respect and widespread cultural importance that they have in France, and wisely aimed his books directly at the bookstore market, but has done this so as to attract a wide audience. I wouldn't regard any of the books in this most recent wave as Great Works, but they do address comics' need for more solid, accessible and entertaining works. The term "middlebrow" is a bit too much of a pejorative to describe these well-drawn and written comics. These are, however, comics that anyone could enjoy but are clearly the personal vision of the artists involved.

The Plot Thickens: Ralph Azham Volume 1

One thing that I don't think Lewis Trondheim gets enough credit for is just how dense and intricate his plots are. In his genre stories, he has a knack for telling "hang-out" stories pinned on impeccably and subtly designed plots. That is, his main characters seem to just be hanging out, cutting up, making mischief and generally behaving like idiots for page after page, until Trondheim suddenly tightens the knots on what seemed to be incidental details and pulls together a series of clever twists. Ralph Azham is his newest solo series, after years of working on Dungeon with Joann Sfar. That series got so incredibly convoluted that I imagine Trondheim wanted a shot at a more conventionally-paced fantasy series that still contained his trademark mix of high and low humor. The story concerns the titular character who happens to be the village outcast, an especially cruel fate considering that he was supposed to be some sort of prophesied Chosen One who failed the final test as a child. As a result, he's pretty much loathed by everyone and plays up to that loathing with his obnoxious personality.

Much like Herbert in Dungeon, Ralph is a classic Trondheim anti-hero. He seems to possess no redeeming qualities or abilities; his sole power seems to be the power to predict how many children someone will have. Also like Herbert, Ralph manages to rise to the occasion when things really get hairy. The story finds Ralph sentenced to be tied to a pole inn a pig sty after the flirty Claire kisses him, angering her father and brother. The blue-haired Ralph manages to make the best of his punishment as his father comes to him and brings him food. In the early going, no one appears to be more disappointed in Ralph than his father, who nonetheless keeps supporting him. Every person that Ralph meets winds up having some kind of impact on the story in a manner that is completely organic but frequently surprising. The little kid whose parents die after leaving the town winds up having some kind of powerful sonic scream. The village doctor/pharmacist winds up being complicit in an elegant cover-up. Ralph's dad is at once more caring and more diabolical than he seems at first. The "chosen one" plot rears its head toward the end of the book after a horde of invaders threatens to kill everyone in Ralph's small village, but with a series of unexpected twists.

What's interesting about this book is that what starts as a seemingly lightweight exercise winds up going to some pretty dark places. Ralph winds up getting the power to see and talk to the dead, for example. The first evidence of this is the many fetuses he sees hanging around the village doctor, who specialized in brewing an abortive tea for unwanted pregnancies. As it turns out, spirits wind up hanging around those who killed them, a revelation that renders that scene both hilarious and cringe-inducing in retrospect. Indeed, there's plenty of what seems to be incidental dialogue as Trondheim flashes back to Ralph's failure and his father's role in it that winds up revealing everything. The book ends with a betrayal of trust and the promise of greatness on the part of both Ralph and his new, young companion. In many respects, this is a conventional first volume of a fantasy series: the character is introduced and his beginnings are explored, and his humdrum life is eventually transformed by a tragedy. The book ends with the quest just beginning. One is left wanting much more, yet Trondheim unquestionably delivers the goods in creating a compelling, memorable set of characters with dubious motives whom we nonetheless root for. It should be noted that Bridget Findakly's tasteful color choices not only make this book beautiful to look at, but also have an impact on the way the reader understands the narrative. Editor Kim Thompson transforms a book that was a 50-page album in the standard European style into a hundred page book by cutting each page in half, printing them in a landscape format, and recreating the gestalt by having the original component panels of the page face each other. Trondheim is unquestionably the top genre comics artist in the world, which is amazing because he's also one of the top slice-of-life cartoonists, autobio cartoonists, children's cartoonists, gag cartoonists, experimental cartoonists, etc. There's never been a cartoonist as versatile as Trondheim who was able to work on virtually any kind of project and certainly not one who could blend his funny animal-style into any genre.

New Review @TCJ: Dungeon Monstres, V 4

Over at The Comics Journal, a review has been posted of Dungeon Monstres, Volume 4, by Lewis Trondheim, Joann Sfar, Jean-Emmanuel Vermot-Desroches, and Yoann.

Sequart #120: Little Nothings

This review was originally published at sequart.com.

I first became aware of Lewis Trondheim's work with a long strip in the legendary SPX 2000 anthology (an anthology that introduced a number of remarkable European artists to American audiences). This was an excerpt from his excellent autobiographical comic APPROXIMATIVEMENT, much of which focused on his travels. Other excerpts were translated and reprinted in the much-missed Trondheim spotlight comic THE NIMROD (Fantagraphics), so this was the material I associated most with Trondheim. Of course, it was also the least commercial Trondheim material, and to date a complete translation of APPROXIMATIVEMENT has not been published in English.


American audiences have been slow to appreciate Trondheim's comedic brilliance, but some inroads have been made, thanks to clever format changes. Fantagraphics initially reprinted what should have been the audience-friendly Lapinot stories (as McConey) in a format very similar to the original French albums--a format that for some reason baffles American audience. When NBM started to reprint the Dungeon stories in smaller, manga-sized volumes (packing in more pages, albeit in a more econonomical package), they've achieved a great deal of success. Combine that with First Second's success in aiming these books at children and young adults, and one can see that American fans have much to be grateful for with these smartly-designed volumes.


That success has led to reprinting some more recent Trondheim autobiographical comics, with the hopefully-numbered volume 1 of LITTLE NOTHINGS (subtitled THE CURSE OF THE UMBRELLA). What separates Trondheim's autobiographical stories from so many others of its kind in the world of comics is that each page is a perfectly self-contained unit with its own punchline. At the same time, he manages to collect a series of quotidian observations into a narrative of sorts, deftly weaving in references to past events to create a story with weight and heft that addresses a number of ideas in addition to delivering jokes.

There's a sobering moment early in the book, when he notes that his family acquires two kittens in case one of them dies, "we won't be as said thanks to the second one". He then pauses for a beat, then notes, to his own dismay, "Just like with the kids?" Trondheim also muses on fate, the creative process, comics themselves, dealing with the public, his friends and the various places he visits. Travel is obviously a big part of his life, but writing about travel gives these musing a sort of forward momentum, a propulsive quality that helps draw in the reader and keep them focused on Trondheim's voice. By varying his settings, Trondheim helps the reader enjoy a variety of "little nothing" moments where Trondheim is riffing on a TV show or at home in his studio as well as seeing him in a variety of settings. By keeping the tone light and putting a punchline on every page, Trondheim is able to sneak in his thoughts, feelings and ideas without force-feeding them to the reader.

One interesting aspect of this comic is that Trondheim riffs on the nature of humor itself. He's a funny guy in everyday life, which sometimes makes him an irritant. "Advising" a man on how to get a rental car out of a hotel lot ("You just have to crash through barrier with the theme of Starsky & Hutch blaring"), he skips a couple of beats as the man stares at him, and then thinks ("In his place, I'd have thought I was a moron, too"). He reacts with annoyance when someone snaps off a punchline about feeding cats to a Venus fly-trap, saying that it should have been his line. A joke he plays on a friend (pretending to find a 50-euro bill after finding a dime on the street) turns against him and then escalates into paranoia after a man accosts him, saying he had lost such a bill. When he receives the Grand Prize at Angouleme, he gives an interview where he solemnly claims to be depressed that this is the height of his career and that it's all downhill from there to the media--and then chuckles to himself as he walks away, having played his own little prank on the public. Trondheim operates with a bit of a long-form improv artist's sensibility, building up narratives that culminate in punchlines down the road. That's capped off with the final page of the book, which doubles back on an earlier punchline from a museum with a wordless, full-page image that is instantly recognizable as a killer punchline.

Trondheim's calling card has always been his remarkable versatility. He's made comics where the images hardly ever vary, instead depending on his witty dialogue. He's a master of bon mots along with naturalistic dialogue, generating a score of vivid characters. He's made comics that were mute and depended entirely on his compositional and storytelling abilities. He's made abstract comics that depended entirely on composition and use of color. Trondheim has done many autobiographical stories and is equally proficient in genre stories of all kinds: fantasy, science-fiction, mystery, action-adventure, horror, romance and more. He writes comics aimed at kids that don't talk down to them and that any adult can relish. He does it all with a decidedly unfussy line and a preference for anthropomorphic animals as his characters (his own representation is a bird), a refined color palette and a love for comics qua comics that shines through all of his work. There's really no American equivalent for what Trondheim has done in his career (maybe the Hernandez Brothers come close) with regard to the variety of genres he's embraced; for Trondheim distinctions of "high" and "low" in his art don't exist. And now, with LITTLE NOTHINGS, there's a single volume that I can recommend to a general reading audience in America. Needless to say, this book instantly makes it to my short list of "books of the year" for 2008.

New Review @TCJ: Approximate Continuum Comics

Here's my latest review from The Comics Journal, on Lewis Trondheim's Approximate Continuum Comics.

Dream Team: Dungeon The Early Years, Volume 2

Rob reviews the second volume translation of the Dungeon: The Early Years, by Lewis Trondheim, Joann Sfar and Christophe Blain (NBM).

Twenty-four volumes of the various DUNGEON books have been translated into English by the stalwarts at NBM, reprinted at smaller size in twelve editions. That leaves thirteen volumes still to be translated, with the Trondheim/Sfar team at this point writing the books and leaving the art to a variety of people. In addition to the three main storylines (Early Years, Zenith and Twilight), most of the untranslated volumes are in the miscellaneous "Monsters" category--stories that fill in cracks between other stories. Trondheim and Sfar love playing around with time jumping; indeed, in this translated edition, we go from volume -97 (of a lighthearted series that began at -99, reflecting the "early" notion of this story) to volume -84. That second story, "After The Rain", is a much more grim depiction of our hero, Hyacinthe, the future Dungeon keeper of the Zenith books.

One of my favorite trends in comics over the past five years has been the concerted effort made to translate Sfar and Trondheim's work into English and the way in which audiences have responded. Kim Thompson at Fantagraphics tried to do this a decade again with full-color translations of two books in the Lapinot (in English: McConey) series and then several issues of a Trondheim grab-bag series called THE NIMROD. The latter had some of Trondheim's best and most unusual work, but with the decline in the overall comics market and comics that didn't have any kind of genre-related hook, that series didn't do well. For the McConey books, it was proof that Americans just don't like the French album format. Those slice-of-life books were easily approachable and witty, but simply didn't draw readers in.

NBM took up the torch first with a black-and-white series that translated DUNGEON, ASTRONAUTS OF THE FUTURE and some McConey stories. With the rise of the graphic novel in bookstores and libraries, they switch over to smaller-format, full color translations, a strategy that has worked wonderfully. First Second came along and has translated close to a dozen works involving Trondheim or Sfar. Fantagraphics will be getting back in the game by finally publishing Trondheim's autobio classic APPROXIMATIVEMENT, most likely next year. There's still a ton of Trondheim work to be translated: VENETIAN BLIND, more LI'L SANTA, more TINY TYRANT, comics involving monsters & dinosaurs, and some more cutting-edge material. It's become clear that Trondheim & Sfar's genre material has found an audience, one that continues to grow.

A highlight of the Early Years story is the third member of this artistic dream team, Christophe Blain. With his SPEED ABATER, and ISAAC THE PIRATE books, he's proven himself as an artist who creates imaginative and exciting action scenarios. His art for DUNGEON combines the charming character design of Trondheim with a fluidity of movement that results in a work that's both funny and thrilling. Trondheim's art in the series was always better suited to more satirical stories (even when they were darker in tone), but with Blain we get the rush of adventure along with affectionate jabs at genre.

The first story in the volume, the aptly-titled "Innocence Lost", sees the ramifications of Hyacinthe's romantic dalliance with the serpentine assassin Alexandra. Manipulated into killing a man, Hyacinthe starts down a slippery slope from being a noble avenger of wrongs (as The Nightshirt) to a cynical aristocrat leading a double life as the head of the assassin's guild. Through it all, his real concern is his doomed romance, and this is another area where Blain truly excels. His GUS AND HIS GANG book was a similar mix of action and dead-end romance, and Blain was able to create pathos with a character who had been a mix of walking comic relief and hubris. The character's design, as a diminutive and cute anthropomorphic bird, made this especially challenging for Blain. By the end of the story, when we see Hyacinthe dress up in his Nightshirt outfit but see him visit Alexandra instead of going after criminals, it's clear that our protagonist has allowed his entire moral code to lapse for the sake of his love.

The second story is a much grimmer one and covers the eventual ramifications of his actions. Hyacinthe and Alexandra don't marry, and he keeps up appearances by marrying someone that his lover murders. As the story opens, the human price just paid for his double life suddenly become much clearer, and is complicated by a plot contrivance that forces him to deal with the woman he now both loves and hates. That contrivance (the potential destruction of the city thanks to faulty construction) is an entertaining side-story of its own, thanks to the almost robotic ruthlessness of Professor Cormor. He's the man trying to stop the construction who turns to Alexandra, who in turn agrees to help him if he'll help her get back with Hyacinthe. Things eventually go horribly awry, winding up with a downbeat ending that signals the beginning of what would become Hyacinthe's rule as the Dungeon Keeper.

This volume marked the first time I wished that NBM could have kept the larger page format. There are some spectacular action scenes that felt cramped shrunk down to a smaller size, and other pages crammed with panels that felt similarly claustrophobic. A lot of darker colors were used in this volume, which made those pages feel a bit muddy at times as well. In an ideal world, we'd get an "absolute edition" of DUNGEON on oversized pages and nice paper, but as a reader I'm grateful that we're getting this much Trondheim & Sfar in English. Trondheim and Sfar have taken the series into greatness by refusing to repeat themselves and have instead upped their degree of difficulty with ever-more complex plots and nuanced characterizations. DUNGEON has gone from being a bit of a lark to one of the greatest genre series of all time, affectionately spoofing and celebrating not just fantasy, but the investment of a reader into a world of fantasy.

Knots Tying Knots: Dungeon Zenith, Volume 3

Rob reviews the latest collection of translations from the DUNGEON: ZENITH series, BACK IN STYLE (volume 3), by Lewis Trondheim, Joann Sfar and Boulet (NBM).

The third volume of the english translation of DUNGEON has been long-awaited, but I wouldn't recommend reading it until one has reread the first two volumes. The saga becomes increasingly plot-heavy here and immediately follows the events of the last volume. There are some ways in which the fantasy send-up/homage by Lewis Trondheim & Joann Sfar reminds me a bit of Jeff Smith's BONE. Both started their series on extremely lighthearted notes and spent a number of pages carefully establishing character relationships. Once Smith spent a couple of years doing that, it was off to the races with a quest, action scenes, plot twists and the like. He had earned his audience's trust before he simply shipped his characters all off into their wars by carefully but casually dropping mysterious clues as well as seeing them interact in a mundane matter. We knew each character's quirks, desires and loves as well as the ways in which they interacted with each other, which made the conflicts they wound up later all the more involving.

DUNGEON's first volume (with each volume collecting two of the original French albums) introduces us to an anthropomorphic duck named Herbert and a peculiar lizard named Marvin. Herbert's a smartass dungeon flunky and Marvin's a fierce but quirky warrior, and the whims of fate throw them together. Their hijinks manage to simultaneously parody sword 'n sorcery stories while at the same time put together a startlingly intricate, straight-faced fantasy epic. Seemingly trivial or even farcical details from these stories either have complicated backstories (explored in the Early Years stories) or have serious ramifications in later years (as detailed in the Twilight stories). The "main" narrative, or the "Zenith" story, mixes humor with action, making neither seem out of place.

That said, there's a certain grimness to be found in the two stories in BACK IN STYLE where one can begin to see how Herbert and Marvin wind up in such dire circumstances in the future. That's felt in the Keeper being kicked out of his own dungeon at the end of the first story (after a series of cleverly designed action pieces that ramped up the tension and the stakes in succession) and Herbert returning to his home city and finding a deadly welcome in the second. Both stories have a downbeat, uncertain ending--a far cry from the more neatly tied-off story threads in earlier volumes. Despite the intricacies of the plot, building on dozens of story developments from prior volumes, these stories work because of the way Sfar & Trondheim found every aspect of the story on character relationships.

Herbert and Marvin are obviously the foundational relationship of the series, but the interactions between Herbert and his oily nemesis Delacor established a delightful, mutual aggravation. Delacor's general sliminess (hiring a lawyer to seize the dungeon) made him a source of friction for everyone he encountered. The ass-kicking princess, Isis, was another interesting catalyst in the way she prodded Herbert and moved so easily in the company of thieves. The dungeon Keeper himself emerges as a sympathetic character, taking on a paternal quality to his minions when he realized he was about to lose it all. Herbert's parents are introduced in this volume, and their complicated relationship with him adds another layer of intrigue to what was once a seemingly simple parody character. Even seemingly incidental characters like the postman Pollyplume, a sad sack thrust willingly into an exciting new life, add
new perspectives to the saga.

The most startling change to be found in this volume is that Trondheim passed on the art duties to Boulet. For the most part, Boulet stays faithful to the character design that Trondheim established. However, the quality of his line is much slicker and clearer than Trondheim's slightly ramshackle line. The effect is a jarring one; the idiosyncratic nature of Trondheim's art was a perfect fit for the slightly off-kilter nature of a saga that was half serious and half joking. Boulet doesn't really try to make funny drawings; even ridiculous scenes have a slickness to them that takes a while to get used to. I almost would have preferred an artist try a completely different approach (like in the Dungeon: Monstres side-series) than this sort of hybrid approach. That said, Boulet did quickly master drawing a cast of thousands and really is a master at propelling adventure stories forward. The sequence where Herbert and his friends escape from a tavern by taking to the rooftops and eventually flying away was a particular highlight, a spectacular and visceral set of panels that perfectly balance drama and wisecracks.

Despite missing Trondheim's line, the Sfar/Trondheim duo did not disappoint in this latest volume, taking crazy story risks and throwing in plot twists and character reversals at the drop of a hat. DUNGEON remains my favorite genre-related series of all time, and anything that helps new volumes appear more quickly is fine by me. If Boulet is going to be the regular artist for Zenith from now on, it'll be interesting to see how he adjusts his style in future volumes.

Fending Off Stasis: Little Nothings 2

Rob reviews the latest collection of Lewis Trondheim's strips from his blog, LITTLE NOTHINGS 2: THE PRISONER SYNDROME (NBM).



Cartoonists are often known for living a sedentary, secluded lifestyle. By its nature, drawing is usually a solitary pursuit, demanding hours of labor. The great Lewis Trondheim, through his comics blog on his website, seems dedicated to being the exception to this rule. The strip that lends this collection its name discusses "the prisoner's syndrome" wherein a lack of activity leads to a further lack of desire for activity, creating a vicious circle that leads to stasis and intellectual death. Trondheim has always been interested in not just art but what it means to be an artist and how this relates to being a human being in general. In his "At Loose Ends" autobio strip, he obsesses over the relationship between age and creativity and how it seems to have affected so many cartoonists. His LITTLE NOTHINGS strips act as a diary strip, of course, but they also seem to serve a larger purpose. There's a lushness to his drawings and use of color that establishes that he's drawing and coloring simply to keep that act pleasurable. By the same token, writing about amusing, poignant or bizarre moments of his own life (even if he does take creative license with certain details) is an easy way to keep a creator's story-creating facility sharp. He's "drawing from life" in both senses of the phrase--drawing what he sees, and drawing from his well of experiences.



He's careful to draw himself on the move as much as he is at home. To combat prisoner's syndrome, he intentionally accepts as many invitations to appear at comics festivals as possible. Staying in motion and seeing new things seems to be key to him to stave off intellectual decay, and these strips are a sort of exercise he's sharing with readers. Trondheim expertly elicits an emotional response from each strip, be it laughter or sympathy. What separates him from most other journal comics is that he's hilarious and a master at framing small moments into punchlines. Some of that humor is physical, like the way he draws himself swatting at tiny insects. Other strips delve into his own fantasy world, delving into some paranoic daydream. Others are situational, dominated by his own internal narrative as he negotiates his world.


Of course, I'd urge anyone interested in this book to also pick up the first volume in this series. There are echoes of the first book that sound strongly in the second. For example, when his family took in two cats in the first book, he immediately worried about one of them dying, but consoling himself that the other would be around. He has to face up to the mortality of one of the cats in this book and how it relates to his internally generated belief in karma and bad luck. Another digression in this book concerns Trondheim's adventures as president of the Angouleme comics festival, an honor he received in the first volume. He depicts being in charge as not what it was cracked up to be--he can't even get an open bar at his hotel. When the torch is passed to a new artist at the end of the festival, Trondheim allows himself a moment of self-pity, even if he is winking a bit at himself while doing it.



That dry sense of humor is what I like best about Trondheim's authorial voice. It allows him to get away with all sorts of slapstick and physical humor without seeming too silly, and also allows him to write about more serious topics without seeming too ponderous. It helps that his style, depicting characters as anthropomorphic animals, is enormously expressive & clever without being cloying or too cute. His characters are his vehicles of expression, slightly abstracted for comedic effect, while his backgrounds are often lush and naturalistically depicted. With the characters, he wants us to "read" them in the context of a narrative. With his backgrounds, he wants us to look at them (and of course, he wants to look at them as well).


Of course, Trondheim lets us in on a little secret: one's life narrative is not the same thing as one's life. Details can be forgotten or omitted, or shaped to fit a story better. His partner calls him out on one strip where he depicts his family as deliberately "defiling tradition" by opening their christmas presents early. In a later strip, his partner provides more details, showing that the way Trondheim drew it omitted crucial context and information that changed the nature of the event. Trondheim drew a corrective strip but also fumed, "I can't even do what I want." That moment, and later strips where he's reading blog comments on things he discusses in past strips, reflects his own self-awareness about the difference between narrative and experience. As readers, we are fortunate that Trondheim is a master of connecting micronarratives and simultaneously embuing them with a wide range of emotional possibilities. He's a born storyteller and can't help but spin even the smallest moments into narrative, his mind in constant motion to combat the prisoner's syndrome.

The Details of Armageddon: DUNGEON MONSTRES VOLUME 2Lew

Rob reviews the latest collection of stories from Lewis Trondheim & Joann Sfar's DUNGEON series, DUNGEON MONSTRES VOL 2: THE DARK LORD (NBM).

Lewis Trondheim and Joann Sfar are two of my favorite cartoonists in the world, in part because of the dizzyingly broad range of subjects they're interested in. Trondheim's work ranges from abstract, conceptual comics to slice-of-life to autobio to children's books to rip-roaring adventure. He automatically becomes one of the best artists in any genre he chooses to work in, and fantasy comics are no exception. He and Sfar didn't just choose to create a lark of a series to affectionately parody fantasy and role-playing tropes in DUNGEON, they wanted to create a genuinely involving story that worked on multiple levels. They wanted the adventure aspects of the story to be simultaneously exciting and silly as they built an entire world, Tolkein-style. As such, they set out a plan to tell the story of the titular dungeon in its glory days (the "Zenith" stories), to tell the story of its origins (the "Early Years" stories) and its downfall ("Twilight")--and planned to write a hundred volumes in each series!

If that plan wasn't ambitious enough, there are also side volumes that tell smaller, funny stories of the main characters ("Parade") and volumes that focus in on particular characters at particular times ("Monstres"). DUNGEON manages to be the rare series that is simultaneously complex and simple to follow, zeroing in on a few characters over time and expanding the cast from there. It's by far my favorite genre-related series of all time, enjoyable on every level. Of course, given the scope of this project (which they may never complete), Sfar & Trondheim have recruited a number of different artists to step in to draw the stories. NBM is reprinting each series two volumes at a time, and DUNGEON MONSTRES 2 is the latest edition. This volume features art by Andreas, known for his Lovecraftian horror stories, and Stephane Blanquet, an artist who specializes in the grotesque.

Both artists are inspired choices. In the first story, "The Great Map", Andreas' horror background is merged with the funny animal character design aa we follow the rabbit warrior Marvin the Red on a quest. The story does get a bit confusing if you haven't read the Twilight stories, so I'd recommend brushing up on those volumes so as to avoid confusion. That said, the
specifics of the quest are less important than Marvin's confusing love life, somehow trying to simultaneously pitch woo to two very different women at the same time. Marvin is one of the best characters in the entire series: a young warrior oblivious to the larger events of the world naively seeking glory. His single-mindedness in the face of total chaos is both exciting and hilarious, as he's both hero and comic relief.

The second story, "The Dark Lord", is drawn by Blanquet. His style is so distinctive that it was impossible to completely subsume within Trondheim's character design. This wound up working out quite nicely, as his monsters were especially gross and the violence especially visceral. This story follows what happened after the downfall of Herbert, the duck hero of Zenith who had become corrupted by power in later years. This story gives us a number of important details as to exactly how Herbert wound up in such a horrible position (he wound up being possessed by a dark entity connected to various objects of power he had collected) and follows him as he cleverly gets out of one near-death experience after another. Following such a haunted character after focusing in on such a naive character like Marvin was an interesting contrast, and I especially like the way that Trondheim & Sfar connected the two stories, telling them from different points of view. Any fan of Trondheim and Sfar should be reading DUNGEON, and any fan of DUNGEON should probably pick up every volume. This volume was an unexpected visual feast that was still entirely within the sensibilities of its writers.