“Dungeon Fun Book Two” continues the adventures of a girl named Fun Mudlifter as she sets off through a dungeon in order to file a complaint with the queen because she’s fed up with people throwing their junk off the bridge above their town, Deepmoat. Little does she know, the queen is totally evil and deals with complaints by dispatching her boss assassin, Hel, to eliminate the complainer.
Written by Colin Bell
Illustrated by Neil Slorance“The 61st Best Comic of 2013” (Comic Book Resources) has returned, with an all-new instalment of Dungeon Fun!
Book Two sees our heroes venture deep into the bowels of the dungeon Fun Mudlifter has spent her life on the outskirts of, and what they find there will challenge them to their very limits, or at least for the duration of this issue! Meanwhile, Madame Hel wages a campaign of intimidation against those that dared to complain to the Queen, and will Games ever get to sing his introductory song again? Ogres! Skellingtons! Door-to-door salesmen! Dungeon Fun: Book Two has it all!
Dungeon Fun Book One is nominated for Best Artist, Writer, Cover and Comic at the Scottish Independent Comic Book Alliance Awards!
Dungeon Fun Book One is nominated for Best British Comic (Colour) at the inaugural True Believers Comic Awards!
Dungeon Fun Book Two has a lot to live up to!
“Dungeon Fun Book Two” is 32 pages long and packed with wild and fantastic characters, plenty of great and imaginative action sequences, and some of the best timed jokes in comicdom. Colin Bell and Neil Slorance know exactly when to hold a panel or a beat or put the word balloons just so to get the maximum impact out of a book. There’s so much happening on every page, so much imagination exploding out, the book feels far more substantial than its running time.
It’s a great all-ages comic created by two people who obviously get each other. Bell’s wit is snarky, sharp, and snide while Slorance’s line work is — I don’t want to say rudimentary or simple and, okay, while, it bears a lot of resemblance to Ward’s Adventure Time character designs, it also reminds me of the Roald Dahl books I read as a kid. There’s this drollness and rudeness to them as well, that makes the book feel like a cartoon that’s getting away with murder. The flat colors and simple sets give it this perfectly cartoony feel that allows for the characters to bend and move and zip through the panels.
What’s more is that Slorance is able to make this book move. I’m not talking about pacing, though “Dungeon Fun Book Two” is quickly paced and enthusiastically rendered. I mean you can feel the characters moving between the panels; they have a life of their own, an animated sense about them. This is something I’ve hardly ever seen accomplished with the most objectified, naturalistic, photorealistic art. I think you lose something when you’re trying to achieve a realistic look in a comic, and while it might be nice to look at, there’s often a stiffness and snapshot quality to the story. These characters in “Dungeon Fun” aren’t supposed to be caught in a perfect pose, but are meant to act and react and move. And, frankly, I find that more animated feel to be far more entertaining and desirable when I’m picking up comics.
There’s an obvious influence from Dungeons & Dragons, including a wannabe Dungeon Master narrating the story as they navigate the dungeon labyrinth. A lot of the media I’m becoming increasingly more interested in has been created by people who played hours and hours of D&D — which makes sense, because it’s given their imaginations time to grow and for them to have a different perspective on how to handle a situation. Look at Adventure Time (which I’m going to admit right here that I consider to be the best show currently on TV) or Wiebe/Upchurch’s “Rat Queens”.
But I think there’s more to it than that. I think “Dungeon Fun” bears many of the same hallmarks that make Adventure Time so enduring or Disney’s Frozen so popular or Star Wars so embraceable. Namely: it takes all these conventions and archetypes you would see throughout fantasy stories and fairy tales and throws them all up to create a sort of fantasy/fairy tale remix. All the elements are here: young person who grows up in the middle of nowhere, dreams of adventure; told by the kooky and eccentric old man that she’s destined for greatness; gathers a group of friends together to set out for new and mysterious places. Plus there’s an evil queen villain and her right-hand henchmen and all manner of trials and tasks she has to complete on the way.
Continued belowExcept that: her mission is sort of arbitrary. Silly, even.
Except that: her village exiles her instead of waving her off on a warm welcome.
Except that: the wizard cyclops who sends her on her adventure doesn’t seem to care about much else besides sandwiches.
Except that: the boss henchman is an assassin ninja woman named Hel, who’s so cool that everyone can only watch in awe as she performs these fantastic feats of death.
Except that: her sidekick is the ghost of the previous owner of the sword she’s lugging around and is probably giving the worst advice imaginable to her.
Except that: none of the monsters seem particularly monstrous.
These elements seem new and refreshing and innovative not because they’re particularly new or refreshing or innovative, but because they force us to look at the common tropes and engage with how they’re being toyed with over here. It’s not a subversion to point out the faults of the genre, but a way to embrace these types of stories the creators obviously love.
It’s a love that comes through over here, on every page, and that helps make this book all the more exciting and entertaining to look at.
If there are any faults, I’d say that Bell and Slorance never linger long on some of their more interesting set pieces. The GO! GO! GO! attitude, every once in a while, creeps in so one particular monster encounter doesn’t feel as fulfilled as some of the others. A lot of characters have been thrown on the page, and Bell and Slorance give time to each of them at the expense of some of the others. (I’m thinking of a giant spider and an ogre.)
A lot of that might be how this book is created, which sounds like a slow process. But it’s well worth it — SO WELL WORTH IT. And these faults are just a nitpicky way of me not riding out at the same delighted high for most of the book.
Unfortunately, “Dungeon Fun Book Two” has yet to get an American distributor — though I hope that changes soon. You can get a print copy of the book directly from the publisher web site or Slorance’s Etsy page, and I’m sure there will be a digital copy floating around at some point. Right now it feels like an underground secret that you want to share with everyone you know. It has the same makings as Jeff Smith’s “Bone,” the same desire to pass it out to all of your friends and wish you could have plush figures of the characters chilling out on your desk. I can’t wait to see what comes next out of the rest of this series.
Final Verdict 9.4 — for a serious blast with charming art and great timing and huge imagination, you can’t go wrong. You just gotta find it.
