When I first heard of the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon coming out on DVD, I tried, for some reason, to be indignant instead of enthusiastic — “why the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon, and not some more worthy cartoon from the Eighties?” I thought. After realizing how idiotic that statement was, I let nostalgia get the best of me and dropped it in the Netflix queue.
There’s one glorious moment on the D&D DVD, and it has nothing to do with the episode itself, but rather the commentary track. The commentary, for the most part, is unforgivably dull, as it features one lone writer, surrounded and overshadowed by a bunch of studio executives who talk endlessly about “optioning the property,” “standards and practices,” and a variety of other dreary topics. The writer, however, gets in one good shot — as one of the studio execs is rambling about the studio “wanting to have a say in the show content, because the studio paid for it,” the writer says dryly, “yeah, they were very dictatorial.”
“Presto, we cannot tell anyone what happened last night…”
The exec gives a choked, sputtering sound, and dead silence falls on the commentary for a few seconds. There’s no dismissive laughter, no attempt to defuse the awkwardness of the moment — just stunned silence before another exec hurriedly changes the subject. The writer doesn’t speak much for the rest of the episode, as he probably spent the rest of the half hour surrounded by grim men in suits with their hands in their jackets. And, yes, that’s pretty much the high point of the DVD — save for one other instant I’ll get to later.
In case you were a blastocyst during the Eighties, the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon was a vague take on the roleplaying game of the same name, which would gain some notoriety in the Eighties for changing vulnerable kids en masse into killer Satanists. Think of the current hysterical flap over video games and violence, and you’ve pretty much got a handle on it, except that instead of endless Dateline: NBC episodes about kids beating their parents to death with Playstation controllers, we got one Rona Jaffe movie about Tom Hanks going batshit and trying to jump off the World Trade Center because he thought he was a level seven cleric. How far we’ve come.
LFG Hellfire Peninsula!
The story of the D&D cartoon revolves around a mismatched group of kids who jump on a carnival ride and are inexplicably transported to a mystical land full of monsters and old Scooby Doo background paintings. They are met by “Dungeon Master,” a wizened, crypto-fascist homunculus who bestows upon them a few useless, cut-rate magical items and gleefully hurls them into one mind-bogglingly dangerous situation after another. Venger, the cross-eyed sorcerer (voiced by Transformers staple Peter Cullen) is the “force of evil” in this world, whereas Dungeon Master is more of a force of jovial, murderous indifference.
The vast majority of the plots are identical. Dungeon Master finds some “new way home,” which usually involves the kids doing something suicidally hazardous. He gives the group a series of simple, yet irritating, clues (which everyone in the party utterly fails to grasp), and then disappears, to the perpetual surprise of our heroes, who seem to have no long-term memory to speak of. The kids then dither around uselessly, backbiting and squabbling amongst themselves the entire time, often overcoming their obstacles by sheer accident, but always too late to get home — usually because the goddamned talking unicorn fucked up their program again. The characters struggle briefly with the hopeless caprice of their situation, but then laugh it off — it’s a sort of juvenile No Exit with monsters and a bow that shoots light.
“Fear not, I have Korean knock-off weapons!”
Now, although the D&D cartoon contains elements of the roleplaying game, it should surprise no one to learn that (according to the commentary) the show was just a retread of another fantasy cartoon concept that failed to sell, and was retooled with some D&D elements shoehorned in to sell action figures and copies of Keep on the Borderlands. Evidence of this can be seen in the way the show treats its monsters — Tiamat the Dragon, a fearsome staple of high-powered campaigns, is here the mythical equivalent of Raymond Chandler’s “group of men with guns,” bursting through the door when the action gets slow. Tiamat is not so much a fearsome opponent so much as an omnipresent nuisance, uselessly throwing its breath weapon around until it is either outsmarted once again, or simply totters off due to lack of interest. Similarly, Lolth, Demon Queen of Spiders, just happens to be hanging around some back alley, having nothing better to do than briefly snarl at our heroes before being effortlessly dispatched. Finally, despite a nearly infinite library of cool monsters in any one of the myriad D&D monster manuals, the show instead relies mostly on giant scorpions, giant beavers, etc., with the notable exception being the bullywugs — quite possibly the lamest D&D monstrosity this side of the vegepygmy.
“Out of mana LOL”
The protagonists are no better, of course. The ranger has feathered hair, and his little brother the barbarian recklessly charges everything he sees, and yet, inexplicably, is never violently killed. Eric, the cavalier (voiced by Happy Days alum Donny Most) is a generic, snobbish rich kid who sneers in indignant disbelief at everything (perhaps in an attempt to play analog to the audience — the problem with that is, he’s also an annoying moron who never shuts up). Presto, the magician, is quite possibly one of the most useless characters in heroic fiction, mumbling half-baked magic words and pulling “funny” objects out of his hat. Despite the fact that he never does anything useful, the group constantly shrieks at him to use his magic to get them out of trouble — further contributing to the theory that the characters are trapped in some Memento-esque purgatory of lost memory and hysterical anomie.
Incidentally, I got into hot water with my girlfriend by positing the theory that Presto the magician and Harry Potter are fundamentally the same character — both are bewildered, well-meaning dolts who can’t use magic to save their lives, but both of whom are fortunate enough to have a body of benefactors around to consistently save their bacon. The primary difference being, of course, that everyone sucks up to Harry Potter, whereas Presto is ruthlessly mocked for his failures. As she is a big Harry Potter fan, this theory did not earn me any brownie points.
Of course, snidely judging a kid’s cartoon by adult standards, no matter how amusing, is a bit unfair, and dodges the real question: does the cartoon hold up? Well, no, not really. By any modern cartoon standard, Dungeons & Dragons mostly stands as testament to how very far we’ve come in terms of kid’s animation. My list of complaints with the D&D cartoon are largely the same as when I watched it as a kid — why doesn’t the ranger’s bow kill anything? Why do the monsters suck so much? When is Venger going to smear that fucking unicorn across the landscape with a single, sorcerous blast of hellfire? When will these dimwitted kids realize that Dungeon Master is, in fact, the architect of their pain, a grim psychopomp* who’s toying with their lives to pass the time in his banal hell dimension? When will it be time for vengeance? Adulthood brings no answers to these questions. Even Venger, whom I once thought was the epitome of cool, is revealed as a cross-eyed, blustering eunuch, unable to best even a gaggle of disorganized teenagers, much less the queen of the dragons.
Still, it was fun to watch this show again — this time armed with a six-pack of Blue Moon Belgian White and some good friends to mock it with. And, to be fair, the cartoon does have one other moment of brilliance — this shot. To the artist who took time out to make that happen — I salute you. This single frame of Sheila the thief’s white cotton underwear probably left a proto-sexual imprint on hundreds of kids, who would probably later grow up to watch countless episodes of Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi and buy used ladies’ underwear off the Internet. You did not know your power, sir. Godspeed.
* credit to Reverend Matt for this fine phrase.
