The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 116: Adventurers #10, November 1987

The end of book 1 of Adventurers (which I have mistakenly been calling The Adventurers to this point), and I think it's time for a break. I'll admit that over the last few issues I've been enjoying the story a bit more, but it's just not grabbing me the way some other comics do. There's also a bit of a jarring shift in art style this issue, as rather than Kent Burles airbrushed art we have Burles' pencils inked by Jack Torrance. Sadly, I find this reduces the quality of the artwork to a pretty standard, nondescript level, though I can certainly see how it might allow production of the series to maintain an even keel.

The climax of the first adventure, "The Gate of Chaos" is pretty much destruction and action the whole way through. Having been able to read three consecutive issues, I'm getting a better sense of the aesthetic of the series. The eponymous adventurers are really just small parts of some larger machinations that are occurring in their world, which makes me feel like the series should have been named something that would not make one think that the universe revolves around the focal characters. This is a difficult balance to maintain in titling a series. Adventurers certainly gives you an idea of the kind of comic you're about to pick up, but I certainly expected something far more along the lines of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons comic. This one could have been called "Anoria" (the world in which it is set), which would have communicated that the series was about the setting, not the characters, but then who would have picked up a series whose title conveyed nothing of what was contained inside?

So, the adventurers (those who've survived, anyway) triumphant, some of the devious plots foiled, and the party splits up. I have a far more complete run of book 2, so we'll see how that progresses, but maybe after a bit of a break. I think I want, once we're done with Klarion, to delve into the miscellaneous section of the letter A in my collection, and present some really weird stuff. But before that, we have two more issues of the witch-boy's adventures. I'll see you tomorrow for more necromantic madness.