Rick And Morty Verses Dungeons & Dragons #3 - IDW Publishing

RICK AND MORTY VERSES DUNGEONS & DRAGONS No. 3, November 2018

For those readers able to wade through this twenty-five page periodical’s opening dialogue-driven half, there’s an incredible amount to enjoy in “Reality Bites (For 3D6+1)”. Indeed, once Kiir Bravian’s band of adventurers encounter their first wandering monster, Patrick Rothfuss & Jim Zub weave an incredibly entertaining narrative, which is not only absolutely packed full of some sense-shattering Fifth Edition-inspired shenanigans. But also contains some genuine ‘laugh-out-loud’ moments, such as when the party’s pointy-eared wizard successfully goes toe-to-toe with a Half-Ogre sorcerer; “You motherf****r! I’m going to rip off your d*ck and kick it into the sun! Who the f**k plays an Abjurer? Seriously!”

Disappointingly though, the same praise cannot arguably be heaped upon this comic’s first few scenes as Rick attempts to locate “a dimension where the Dungeons & Dragons paradigms are real” following Jerry’s unfortunate destruction of the fuming-mad scientist’s fantasy gaming simulator. Sure, there’s undoubtedly some fun to be gleaned from the family’s friction over this turn of events. However, there’s an incredible amount of word balloons to be navigated before a somewhat familiar-looking “smarmy little dice-deucing megalomaniac” of a Dungeon Master finally transports the central cast literally into the heat of battle.

Fortunately, this publication’s penmanship improves dramatically once Morty’s father surprisingly leads his family against a pair of truly massive Ogres, and with some satisfaction witnesses both his wife and children successfully overcome the super-strong monsters. This action-sequence really is enthrallingly written, and contains plenty of moments of genuine concern, courtesy of the alternative world’s visitors all being vulnerable to death should they tragically receive a fatal wound.

Suffering somewhat similarly to this comic’s storyline, Troy Little’s artwork inside Issue Three of "Rick And Morty Verses Dungeons & Dragons" is also debatably a game of two halves. The Canadian cartoonist’s pencilling prior to the lead characters’ transforming themselves into their role-playing alter-egos looks decidedly off-point when compared to the illustrator's much more detailed panels later on in the book. In fact, there’s such a marked contrast between the quality of the drawing, that some bibliophiles may well have found themselves checking the comic’s creators to see whether someone else was responsible for the early layouts.

Written by: Patrick Rothfuss & Jim Zub, Art by: Troy Little, and Colors by: Leonardo Ito