Customer Reviews

World Of The Dragon Lords

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Disney studios astonish me. For years, they've turned out one bad movie after another, all the while literally sitting on storyboards for what could be some of the greatest animated films ever made -- first Don Rosa's The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, and now this masterpiece by Byron Erickson and Giorgio Cavazzano. Originally comissioned as a 12-issue serial by Disney's German publisher, last year Gemstone Comics presented it to English-reading audiences for the first time, and like Rosa's book, this is a Disney comic that far surpasses its contemporaries to tell a story worthy of the finest graphic novel libraries.

Huey, Dewey and Louie are on a picnic with their uncles Donald and Scrooge when a rift opens up in the fabric of reality. A human magician and warrior from another reality have escaped to Duckburg, with the dragon-riding creatures called the Morg hot on their tails. The ducks are pulled along to their homeworld and get embroiled in the fight by the human resistance to free themselves -- and their former friends, the dragons, from the despicable Morg.

This really is a true fantasy epic. The ducks are separated early and, caught up in a war, find themselves working sometimes at cross-purposes, sometimes together without realizing it. New characters are introduced -- friends and enemies both, and we see our heroes from every angle. The nephews are brave, Donald is determined, Scrooge is conniving -- all characterizations that perfectly match our heroes, and further the story.

Simply put, this long Disney adventure is one of the true masterpieces of the form. It's the sort of book parents can read with their children and both sit on the edge of their seats, and there's something seriously wrong with Disney for not pursuing the other avenues to tell this incredible story.

This book is a great adventure tale for all ages. I really enjoyed the story and the art is simply beautiful. If reading short duck stories leaves you crying "more!," then this is the book for you.

Okay, truth be told, I tend to be kind of a purist ("bigot," some might unkindly suggest) as far as my taste in Disney comics goes: anything non-duck-related is hateful to me, and the canon for me will always consist of Barks and Rosa. I occasionally enjoy the odd work by another writer (if I had to choose a distant third, I'd go with Marco Rota), but I always consider them kind of...unofficial.

Still, with Gemstone sadly dead in the water and Disney comics in the US looking like a non-starter for the foreseeable future, I thought that perhaps I would try to expand my horizons a little bit. I had never had any interest in this here Dragonlords book before, but I figured if I was GOING to give it a shot, it would make sense to do it NOW, before it goes out of print and becomes difficult and expensive to find, as has happened with Rosa's seminal Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. And I decided that, come hell or high water, I was going to like it or dislike it on its own terms, without making perhaps-unfair comparisons to my favorites.

So, the story: Scrooge, Donald, and HDL are transported to this alternate world where humans are being oppressed by orc/ogre-type creatures called morgs, where they end up teaming up with the human resistance movement. The idea that the entire WORLD has been overrun seems highly dubious, both logistically and in terms of what we see depicted: must everything be a do-or-die existential crisis, even when that makes little sense? The answer, apparently, is yes. A fantasy epic of this nature seems like a dubious proposition within the confines of the Disney comic, inasmuch as one is permitted to depict death or real violence extremely sparingly if at all. I have to admit, though, Erickson does a reasonable job of it--the exigencies never feel particularly limiting.

I've never cared for the loosey-goosey artistic style favored by Italian duck arists, as best exemplified by the late Romano Scarpa. But once I got into World of the Dragonlords, I didn't have any great problem with Cavazzano's artwork. It'll never be my favorite, but it's all right, and some of his panoramic splash panels of cities and battles are actually pretty impressive.

In spite of myself, then, I was actually enjoying this book quite a lot for the first half or so. There were occasional clumsy bits of exposition, and the odd plot twist that relied too heavily on convenient happenstance, but nothing too off-putting. It had a genuinely epic feel to it, and it was quite a page-turner. But then, well, the story built very quickly to its climax, and it felt like kind of a letdown. The whole thing reads VERY quickly, which is okay except that it ultimately feels insubstantial. Don Rosa (okay okay, I'm doing what I said I wouldn't do, but it seems relevant) would cram so much detail into fifteen pages that his stories would feel much longer and more substantial than their length alone would indicate. Erickson and Cavazzano don't, and their work suffers for it: one thinks this whole book could have been much better at twice the length. As it stands, the build-up seems insufficient, none of the human characters (except perhaps Jute, the annoying spykid) receive the development they need, and the climactic battle doesn't feel anywhere near as climactic as it should. Doing the penultimate chapter without dialogue is cool, but it doesn't accomplish much. And it must be said, not killing off the baby dragon at the end feels like a massive failure of nerve. Even in kid lit, is it so much to ask for SOME tangible demonstration that war, no matter how just, still has its price?

Still, the fact that I actually *wanted* the story to be longer could and should be read as praise of a sort. For all my complaints, I can't say that it ever bored me (I especially enjoyed the short "meanwhile, back in Duckburg" vignettes, which detail the travails of a morg stranded in regular-world). Kids would probably get a kick out of it. Because that's what it amounts to, in the end: Barks and Rosa, at their best, wrote richly multilayered stories that can be enjoyed on multiple levels by both kids and adults. World of the Dragonlords, on the other hand, is strictly a mostly well-told but never transcendent children's story.

This is a long adventure serial starring Huey, Dewey & Louie, Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge. The ducks are transported to an alternate reality, where they help human beings battle against alien barbarians. It is well written, with great artwork. This is very different from other Disney comic books, but it's a lot of fun.