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. 

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.