Disobey the Duke if You Dare featured wide Reviews 

The Webcomics Weekly #235: The Daring, Dorito Defying Duke (5/30/2023 Edition)

By | May 30th, 2023
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

The Webcomics Weekly is back in your life, this time with a print-y twist! Webcomics are good and all but sometimes I just need to review something with that good, good pulpy smell. Oh, what’s this? “Disobey the Duke if You Dare?” Don’t mind if I do.

Disobey the Duke if You Dare
Volume 1 (Chapters 1-12)
Original Work by Romance Machine K
Adapted by Chanmi Lee
Line Art Illustrated by aesp
Colored by Sau, Juseon Lee
Storyboarded by Koo seul
Backgrounds Illustrated by Woo
Assistance Provided by Dewdew
Translated by Judy Hur
Edited by Sydney Thompson
Designed by Cindy Kim
Reviewed by Elias Rosner

A few weeks ago, Manta sent me a review copy of volume 1 of “Disobey the Duke if You Dare” and I figured, I’ve reviewed a bunch of webcomics that went from page to scroll, why not try it the other way around?

You’d think this wouldn’t be a big deal. After all, webcomics have been released in print with little issue for at least a decade, maybe two now. Well, despite what Scott McCloud may have argued in “Reinventing Comics,” it wasn’t until (the then LINE) Webtoon’s meteoric rise here in the US that the “infinite canvas” became something more than an experimental, aspirational comicing approach; the scroll, though not infinite in all directions as McCloud postulated, does blend and bleed scenes into one long experience and blows the traditional panel, gutter dynamic apart. Translating the “infinite” and borderless into the finite and bordered, therefore, becomes a much more challenging prospect.

I’ve seen it done well, “Lore Olympus” and “Hooky” come to mind, and I’ve seen it done poorly, like many of the early Tapas releases. How does “Disobey the Duke if You Dare” stack up? I’d say it largely succeeds. The book itself is well constructed and hefty. It’ll hold up far better than some of the stuff the big publishers are putting out – looking at you Penguin! Glue your spines better!

Internally, the flow from panel to panel is smooth, pages aren’t too crowded, and splash pages/two-page spreads are deployed at opportune moments for maximum drama or sexiness. They seem to be taking a page from the Brian K. Vaughan school of chapter ending cliffhangers.

As for the story itself, I found myself surprisingly pulled into the story from the get go. It’s a play on “Beauty and the Beast” and a particularly fun twist on the formula, whereby the Prince, or Duke as it were, thinks he’s some sort of monster. We get glimpses of a demonic form in the mirror every so often but no one else can see it, just the Duke, and that’s tainted the way he interacts with people. Though, as Masha over at WWAC pointed out, he’s just got tiny hot guy face on snake-chimera body with Dorito torso. So…not exactly “monstrous.”

Lily, the deuteragonist, isn’t the typical bright-eyed nor rebelliously naïve female lead of these kinds of historical/fantastical regency romances, though she remains frustratingly passive for many of the chapters. Instead, she’s a twice-widowed commoner with a strong understanding of the machinations of noble society, her noble father having seen to that. She has been shaped by that family’s ambition and much of this first volume is focused on pushing back against it via the new power she has as the Duke’s wife.

I don’t love the romance novel tropes “Disobey” indulges in during the early chapters. There’s a lot of generic stuff we’ve seen a million times before and it’s not done in a particularly new way. I also didn’t like the nebulous consent on the page in chapter 1, but the story quickly assuages those concerns, in part by invoking her previous two arranged marriages and her deep unhappiness there as well as showing how the Duke’s coarseness is mostly born of fear of self rather than control. There is physical passion but boundaries. Plus, the story wanted to keep up the “mysterious, gruff and aloof” Duke image before dashing that on the rocks in subsequent chapters so I can forgive it that little leeway.

Still, the rest of the volume flies by as Lily frets over how best to disobey the Duke and see his face before being goaded into it and as she navigates her position. That’s the part I wanted more centralized and explore, though I’m invested in seeing how Lily and the Duke end up helping each other get past their respective traumas too.

Continued below

Pacing wise, I think the story benefits from being read multiple chapters at a time. I can’t imagine reading this week by week. The chapters are quite short and the story only really advances every two-three chapters. That’s fine but I think these volumes are the way to read it.

As for the art, it’s nothing to write home about. It’s clean, it’s expressive enough, and it has the proper balance of abstract backgrounds and solid environments to ground us in a place and then create a subjective view briefly. You know how Shojo manga will suddenly explode in a flurry of flowers when a character says something particularly vulnerable that makes the main character swoon? That. It does its job but rarely impresses. My biggest issue is everyone’s foreheads! I don’t know what it is but every so often they’ll just have these massive foreheads and their features seem to melt. It’s quite weird.

Even with my faint praise for the art and issues with its use of tropes, it’s a smart series thus far, one with a darkness that’s yet to be explored, and plenty of mysteries to keep one coming back. Give it a read and see for yourself whether the Duke needs disobeying or not.


//TAGS | Webcomics

Elias Rosner

Elias is a lover of stories who, when he isn't writing reviews for Mulitversity, is hiding in the stacks of his library. Co-host of Make Mine Multiversity, a Marvel podcast, after winning the no-prize from the former hosts, co-editor of The Webcomics Weekly, and writer of the Worthy column, he can be found on Twitter (for mostly comics stuff) here and has finally updated his profile photo again.

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