Dungeons & Dragons has an inherent amount of silliness to it, derived its roots as a casual hobby filled with puns and friendly banter. You can absolutely do epic quests with it, but the game often works just as well if it tells smaller, sillier stories. This story is one of the latter, as Onyx the Invincible and Khelben Arunsun team up to deal with something that the city of Waterdeep has outlawed for years: lawyers.
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By 1990, DC Comics had four concurrent Dungeons & Dragons comics running: Dragonlance, Spelljammer, and two Forgotten Realms titles. A TSR Worlds Annual one-shot that year tied all four settings together, while the Forgotten Realms Annual featured a crossover between the two Toril-bound adventuring groups. Meanwhile, the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Annual went for something much smaller, but very fun…
D&D is the original role-playing game, yet the media that ties into it very rarely leans into the “game” aspect of it. That’s natural, since it’s hard to handle that sort of fourth wall breaking without feeling trite. “Players,” the tale told in the 1990 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Annual, manages to subvert that by simultaneously fleshing out our cast of heroes and presenting them as characters in a game. All it takes is a little magic…
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The heroes of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Forgotten Realms lines were part of the same adventure in “Jammers,” but they never actually crossed paths. The 1990 Forgotten Realms Annual changes that, as the crew of the Realms Master drops anchor in Waterdeep and runs headlong into the adventures who live at Selûne’s Smile.
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Our last adventure ended rather abruptly with Jasmine’s kidnapping. The resolution to that story doesn’t happen in the pages of the Forgotten Realms comics, though. Instead, DC tried to introduce a new line of D&D comics, bringing in the brand-new Spelljammer setting.
Released early in 2nd edition AD&D, Spelljammer served as a way to connect other settings. By using a magical form of space travel, characters could leave the Forgotten Realms to journey to Oerth, Krynn, or one of the many other settings that came out as 2nd edition got rolling. For the comic stories, this meant a chance to tie the two existing Forgotten Realms-based lines in with a new cast of characters, creating a grand crossover.
Quite honestly, I’m surprised that Hasbro hasn’t tried to duplicate this effort in the modern day. In an era where every major corporation sees its creative properties as content to iterate upon and where shared universes are all the rage, the many worlds if D&D offer a potential goldmine.
Then again, maybe I shouldn’t give Hasbro any ideas…
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In “Triangles,” the Realms Master added a new member of their crew in Jasmine…and I complained that she and Ishi were reduced to one-note romantic interests for Agrivar. But that was only her first story, so where are we now?
Well, the next tale, “Undead Love,” presents a lich seeking a bride…and selecting Jasmine as his wife-to-be. So it seems that the creative team has a very particular direction for this character.
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After a couple issues focused on providing some backstory for the crew, “Triangles” kicks off a longer story for the crew of the Realms Master and brings a new member into the adventuring party. True to this arc’s name, it also establishes a love triangle that puts the character of Ishi Barasume to the test.
I complained previously when “Spell Games” did Vajra dirty by running through a checklist of “strong female character” tropes that were already tired by 1990. Ishi is this title’s strong female character, and she also provides east Asian representation, since her homeland of Kara-Tur is a hodgepodge of legends and stereotypes taken from our real world. Is Ishi bound for the same tone-deaf treatment that Vajra got, or does “Triangles” offer something better? Read on and judge for yourself.
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The 1990s were rife with heavy-handed anti-drug messages. Many of them rang false because they didn’t connect with kids or simply went too over-the-top in their presentation. The message of “don’t do drugs” even landed in the pages of the Forgotten Realms comic, but I feel it’s more effective here than in many ad campaigns.
Perhaps it’s because the Forgotten Realms is already filled with over-the-top situations, or perhaps it’s because the story focuses on an addict’s perspective, but “Head Cheeese” works pretty well as an exploration of addiction and recovery. Don’t let the goofy title fool you–this is a pretty serious story that has a lot of heart.
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Following some epic adventures in “The Hand of Vaprak” and “The Dragonreach Saga,” the Forgotten Realms comic series pivoted toward some more personal stories. After all, we had seen the crew of the Realms Master in action, but aside from Agrivar, whose struggles we were familiar with from his previous adventures in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons title, we didn’t know much about the unusual crew.
First up for examination: Captain Dwalimor Omen. We know he’s hunting artifacts throughout the Realms, but why?
Continue reading “Comics & Quests: The Morning After”
It tooks all the way until “Phases of the Moon” for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons comic to deliver my favorite storyline, but the Forgotten Realms line did it in its second story. That said, while I enjoy “The Dragonreach Saga” for its main story, the real thing that gets me to latch onto this tale as something wonderful comes in its B-plot.
Let’s dive into a tale of dragons, villainy, and…mid-wifery?
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Tabletop RPGs can tell many different stories. The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons comic book presented a group of adventurers who took the tried and true track of living at an inn and facing whatever perils came through the city of Waterdeep. But the Forgotten Realms is a huge place, and not all adventurers stick to one locale. About a year after that first Realms-based comic hit store shelves, a second title emerged. Labeled Forgotten Realms, it followed a new group of adventurers who ranged quite a bit farther than the city of Waterdeep.
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Babbling Brooks 
