Saturday Morning Adventures #1 // Review
Back in the early 1980s, TSR and Marvel animation studios worked together to develop an animated series adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons. While it might have come across as at least slightly lame to most fans of the game at the time, it DID introduce a whole new generation of kids to the sword and sorcery fantasy world of the game, with some of the best voice actors working in Saturday morning cartoons. Decades later, IDW brings an adaptation of the classic cartoon to the comics rack with Dungeons & Dragons: Saturday Morning Adventures #1. Writers David M. Booher and Sam Maggs return to the story of the series with artist George Kambadais.
Back in the 1980s, five high school kids and an eight-year-old kid brother went on a Dungeons & Dragons-themed ride at a theme park and found themselves transported to the Forgotten Realms. Aided only by a mysterious Dungeon Master and a set of suspiciously powerful magical artifacts, they made their way across the realms looking for the way home. Now, it’s been long enough that they’re all kind of wondering whether or not they’d even be ABLE to return to a normal life of school and homework after all of the adventure.
The original animated series ran for three seasons. After 27 episodes of magic, danger, and adventure, Booher and Maggs take the team to its next natural destination: acceptance. They’re all quite capable adventurers who can hold their own in battle with just about anything now. They’ve all found a kind of peace with being in the Forgotten Realms. Booher and Maggs nail the overall feel of the animated series almost perfectly. The dialogue feels synched up with the old scripts of Mark Evanier, Paul Dini, Steve Gerber, and the rest. The voices of Willie Aames, Don Most, and company can clearly be heard echoing through dialogue balloons as the story continues after a 38-year hiatus.
Kambadais’s art bends the cell animated feel of the original animated art in a direction that is a bit more stylized. The distinct look of every character is vividly on the page, but Kambadais slants it in a direction that feels more kinetic. Marvel’s animation on the original series could be awkward, flat, and clunky at times--even for Saturday mornings in the early 1980s. Kambadais corrects this with art that launches itself across the page quite gracefully. There’s a depth of characterization that also seems to make up for the lack of voice work to deliver personality in the ensemble.
The six-character party holds a special place in the hearts of those who remember the animated series in the early days of Dungeons & Dragons when the property was owned by a tiny little company that operated out of a resort town in southern Wisconsin. With storytelling that seemed to speak to a vague sense of character development from episode to episode, the original animated series seemed to be a bit ahead of its time. It’s nice to see the return of a few old friends.
