Comic Review: Dungeons & Dragons: Infernal Tides #3

Dungeons and Dragons: Infernal Tides #3

IDW

Writer: Jim Zub

Artist: Max Dunbar

Finally. Finally, finally, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a select few comic publishers have dropped new releases. It’s fitting that Infernal Tides is the first comic I review on the return of comic releases. I’ve spent literally hundreds of hours playing D&D since stay-at-home orders came down from Jay Inslee, the governor of my home state of Washington. While I wish I could have been going to work (I quite like my job) and hangin’ with friends, pretending to be on epic adventures in a fantasy world wasn’t a horrible trade-off. But how does #3 of Infernal Tides stack up to previous issues? Pretty darn well.

Escape from Eltrugard is a D&D adventure module that anyone who has played will know pretty intimately. That’s where Infernal Tides #3 starts. The heroes of Minsc, Shandie, and co. Find themselves in Eltrugard just as it’s being dragged into Avernus where a war between demons and devils take place. This war is known as The Blood War. While it’s a straight forward issue that focuses a lot on battling demons and devils, writer Jim Zub keeps the spirit of a D&D session alive through humor via silly one-line jokes, puns, and other clever dialogue.

As is typical (in my opinion) Minsc sorta steals the show. Maybe it’s because his personality is so big, and maybe it’s because his gerbil animal companion is so small, but he’s just a funny and righteous character to read about. While he runs around punching and slashing demons and devils, the others try to clean up the predicaments he gets into. While this could be irksome in terms of character intelligence in Minsc, due to the mechanics any D&D player would understand, Minsc’s decisions feel true to his character rather than unreasonable. Much can be said for the other characters as well, though they don’t grab the page liike Minsc does.

Dunbar doesn’t recreate the wheel in his art for Infernal Tides. He doesn’t have to. It’s an adventure story that functions, visually, on concise sequential storytelling. And for this, Dunbar succeeds admirably. There is never a panel or character rendering where readers don’t know what is going on. It feels invisible and that’s a good thing. The story is immersive. The panels flow together. There’s even a beautiful two-page spread that shows the scope of events. The monsters within the issue are awesome, and many D&D players will recognize baddies they’ve probably fought before, as well.

While Infernal Tides doesn’t add anything new to the genre it’s not masquerading as something it is not. It’s a fun adventure that has tons to love and a wonderful start to the return of comic books amid a lonely time around the world.