Here I am again! I saved up a bunch of chapter reviews in a word document this time, I've made it all the way up to the March across Maltak this time!



TWO THIEF OR NOT TWO THIEF

After another quite heavy arc about the central characters we have another story that’s … more low-stakes and about side characters, this time the stars are Stunt and Bumper! I hadn’t really thought of it, but they’ve really been out of the picture for quite a while, haven’t they? When were they last major players in a story arc? Ecstacy and Evil?

Anyway, I’m not sure if this where DD starts with this as a pattern, but there’s a rather long list of ****ty murderous characters being total pieces of ****, potentially killing a significant number of major characters, then getting this weird vague redemption.

So Stunt is mad at Pam because he’s a woman-hater who really hates women and openly agrees that he’s a misogynist. He comes up with a plan to invite over a bunch of criminal friends to rob Barthis flat broke as revenge because she’s … not okay with being stolen from.

Well Stunt’s always been a piece of **** so it feels in character, any time he allied with Dominic it was an enemy mine type situation where their interests aligned. I vaguely remember Stunt & Bumper as kind of a bumbling team rocket-type duo, but on my re-read I noticed that Stunt has been pretty cruel and violent quite early on in the story, he was always on a different level of villainy from the more innocent bumper.
Interestingly this is also the one part I like: Bumper functions as a sort of morality pet because Stunt legitimately considers him a friend, him actually caring about someone who isn’t scum honestly makes Stunt one of the few characters in DD who has a mean/evil streak who isn’t just …plain evil, so that’s nice.

As the chapter progresses we meet Urban Eddy & his gang of miscreants and discover these guys are straight from the pile of scummery we’re used to seeing in DD. That’s … fine, they’re crooks, sadistic ****heads who rob people exist. Urban Eddy isn’t particularly scary, but he does have an anti-magic amulet that allows him to very quickly take down any magic user that gets in his way, which results in him very nearly killing Luna. Only due to Stunt realizing he’d rather not destroy his friendship with Bumper over letting Urban Eddy continue with his continuous ****ed up and increasingly evil deeds.

Aside from some “NO HOMO” stuff as Stunt nearly dies, we get a resolution where we get the old familiar “grey colors” to indicate a character is at a crossroads, Stunt realizes he’s only holding Bumper down from progressing in life now that he’s found a way out of thievery and decides to go into exile alone, letting his one true friend grow and prosper.

This arc is … seriously quite good? Stunt is both the worst and the best he’s ever been, a couple of the complaints I had about what happened with Siegfried are ironically handled really quite well with Stunt here.
Although the writing can still feel a tad flat here and there, I actually feel that Stunt pushing his morals just a bit further than he feels comfortable with, and this finally making him stop and realizing what influence he’s truly having over Bumper feels logical and like a natural progression of his character, yeah he caused this mess but his genuine care for Bumper also fully explains why he decides to go against it in the end.

I don’t quite remember what happened to Stunt & Bumper further down the line, I do remember some weird stuff with Stunt at the Wild Edge, but if this was the last important thing the characters ever did I’d consider it pretty excellent character resolution.

This is possibly one of the simplest arcs so far, with antagonists that are only really threatening due to them having this little stone that messes with magic which takes Luna down like 5 pegs. But honestly, Luna feeling far more disturbed/violated than usual because some thug got the better of her rather than some powerful magic user actually felt like a good almost gut wrenching moment for her. I can totally understand how for a character like Luna who’s slowly built-up confidence and power over time, almost dying to Urban Eddy must feel like a complete confidence-shattering gut punch.

The character arcs for Stunt & Bumper made internal sense, felt like a fairly logical continuation to their previous story & didn’t rely on some weird made up nonsense being thrown in there out of nowhere.


The good:
- a chapter with an actual proper character arc for the major characters that felt completely natural for them, didn’t rely on totally new nonsense being thrown at us & had a resolution that matched the length of the arc? This feels unconventional for DD.
- I like Urban Eddy as a DD antagonist, he’s not some weirdo who wants to destroy earth, he's not someone with an oddly personal grudge against Dominic, he’s just a piece of scum with few moral qualms and a lot of greed.
- Stunt’s choice at the end was an interesting and fun one, he didn’t suddenly turn ‘good’ or get all buddy-buddy with Dom and Luna, but he realized he was toxic to Bumper and decided to self-isolate so his friend could properly flourish. That’s actually emotionally really satisfying.
- I won’t lie, Greg showing up to heal Stunt right as he was saying things he’d only ever admit when he was about to die was kinda funny. We know he was near, and his healing is stupidly busted so it didn’t feel too out of place. Actually a funny moment that felt earned.

The bad:
- I know I just praised urban eddy, but I said he was a good DD antagonist, I added DD there for a reason. My praise for him is an absent of “bad” things that actively annoy or aggravate me, of villain tropes that feel inconsistent or confusing.
But … aside from the anti-magic jewel being kinda neat there is an absence of … good things about him that I like? He’s not particularly charismatic, his design feels flat to me. He’s just pondscum so expectations shouldn’t be too high, but he’s not a character I’d ever remember personality or appearance-wise.

I think the simple pseudo-anime art style will always be a big problem here, but DD really struggles to captivate my interest with the base design or concept for a character. In the right art style even a more generic poor and down-to-earth villain could still look unique & feel memorable. Eddie … yeah, he doesn’t.


Wrapped up and Returned

Not really worth reviewing as it’s only like 5 pages, but the reintroduction of the infernomancer, Jacob & Celesto felt … yeah, not bad at all. Celesto and the Infernomancer’s visions appearing at the same time I kinda get, they came back together. Why did their visions coincide with Jacob sending shock images to his brother via scrymail to **** with him? I get that “Hey all 3 big villains are back” is neat, but I do wonder within-universe why all of them happened at once.

I do find it curious that Mookie makes a habit out of killing off, maiming and completely destroying any of the more minor villains (usually at the hands of Celesto), but these big 3 “major” villains + Karnak always manage to find their way back. I feel there’s a bit of a rule of cool at play in deciding what true antagonists Mookie wants to keep alive. (in contrast to the small time strawman-y villains)

Anyway the only thing I remember about Celesto after this point is him going full murder hobo on the world, so let’s see how that goes!

Class Action

Ok so this arc has a bunch of things going on … Neilen is trying to get in Luna’s pants, Dominic’s teaching his new class of students, Runcible Spoon & Cassafin Fork are both trying to become the new headmaster after Miranda Deegan gets hurled off of Mount Callan due to old age and uhm … gosh some orc stuff with Cassafin and her boytoy Reinholt. Also fire flinging intellectual apes … for some reason? They’re all named Reginald. It’s a joke, I guess.

Neilen’s another one of those … why must we put up with this? -villains. He’s a weird womanizer who wants to break up Luna and Dom for … ambiguous reasons? Initially it seems he wants to legitimately seduce her, but as the arc progresses it sounds like he just makes a sport out of ruining relationships because … he’s a changeling. We get a bit of dialogue about how it’s his choice to do this and not simply due to what he is, but how would I really know? He’s the only one we’ve seen in the entire story. The entire nature v.s. nurture thing would work better if the situation wasn’t literally n= 1.

Anyway Runcible reacts to finding out about Neilen incredibly rashly, meanwhile Cassafin goes off into the holy wasteland of Maltak and also acts highly irresponsibly. Due to this Miranda feels neither are fully qualified to take over her position. It makes sense she’s literally the only person to vote on it because she’s actually a ridiculous control freak, we’ll get to that more soon.
Anything else important? Oh uh Dom’s classes … I think the teacher scenes are … fine? I find the one student who keeps hitting on Dom and dressing provocatively conceptually a bit uncomfortable, I get it’s a joke but it’s …a really kinda weird one, but beyond that I think the class scenes are fine and work well. Dom intentionally pushing his students & making them face harsh truths worked well for me.

The best part of this chapter is the absolute excitement Dom shows when working together with Jacob on trying to figure out the stones from Maltak. We know he resents his brother and has this deep hatred for Necromancers, but it’s quite revealing that, when given a chance to work together with his brother and do research together, he does deeply long for their relationship to be mended and for the siblings to be close again.
It’s subtle but I feel this might be one of the strongest emotional points for Dom in the entire story, and there’s this deep underlying vibe to the scene that Dom’s resentment isn’t exactly with necromancy, but rather with necromancy “taking” his older brother away.

I don’t fully remember where the story takes Jacob, but I found this scene a fascinating look at their actual relationship.
This arc is … fine … ? The entire Neilen subplot feels garbage, he’s too evil and hard-headed, his plan comes from just genuine unpleasantness & we get to witness his manipulation too openly for any of it to really be shocking in any way. I’m trying to think of how I’d fix this particular plot point but I … just don’t like it in any way?

The good:
- Jacob and Dom together was a great scene.
- Dom teaching class was pretty nice, it worked well.

The bad:
- Literally everything about Neilen’s subplot.


SNOWSONG

A very strange little story arc, so an ex-chosen who survived the Storm of Souls incident showed up for revenge against Greg for “allegedly” attempting to kill her (it was her own ally but very few witnesses really saw what happened, I can accept that).
At the end of the arc we discover not all Is as it seems, as Dom foresaw Greg accidentally killing Snowsong due to him overflowing with white magic and he decided to “surprise” Greg by pulling a bunch of manipulative schemes to give Greg a Supermage-inspired hero encounter that is designed to slowly fuel him into suppressing his white magic enough not to kill Snowsong.

The big plot-relevant part of this story arc connects to Pam being absolutely furious about this entire secret plot being organized by Dex, Rachel, Greg and Dom and scolding them at the end of it. I don’t know if they informed the sherrif did they actually do anything substantially wrong? I know Greg is dating Pam so maybe it’s a relationship-thing but to me Pam’s reaction always felt a bit intense considering the alleged crime of the characters in question & the underlying motivation.

The story arc here is honestly pretty simple so I’m not sure if I need to explain it in detail, so I’ll just point out the individual moments of importance:

1. Greg’s superhero shenanigans: The superhero parody is … okay? Back when I read DD day-by-day I found this arc somewhat infuriating so disliked most of it, but honestly … that’s most because this story more than any others feels very … fillerish. The superman parody … homage? Whatever it’s meant to be is half okay half … why.
I don’t necessarily hate the idea entirely, but Greg suddenly dressing like a superman-parody/SUPERMAGE & taking on a secret identity feels really random and wildly out of place without the context that comic books and superheroes exist in this world’s fiction.
I think if we acknowledge the hindsight of Greg being a comic book geek & Dom intentionally setting this up, some of it sorta makes sense but eh. Satire or parody works best to me when there’s some bite to it, this entire arc mostly feels like an aesthetic homage to a wildly different genre just sorta … thrown in there.

2. Snowsong: She might be a contender for least favorite villain in this comic? An ex-chosen wanting revenge & being shocked at people not being pure parody-level order obsessed weirdos is ... sure, ok. DD villains to be have been more misses than hits but Snowsong just feels … the whole “we need to keep her alive & redeem her” angle feels off when she goes straight for murdering anyone in her way, including regular people despite given several opportunities to just give up on her revenge fantasies.

I think what makes Snowsong feel exceptionally bad to me is that there’s an entire story arc dedicated to dealing with just her and her alone. At least arcs like Storm of Souls & Ecstasy and Evil had multiple villains of which some were not the worst. When an entire story line is literally built around a really bland superhero parody & this pretty flat villain who is supposed to get redeemed but is just kicking and screaming the entire time … meh.

3. Dom’s manipulation reveal I thought was the only fun part of the story arc. Day-by-day this arc had a bunch of really -bad- pages like “magic is just magic”, but at the end of the story it’s obvious that was just Dom messing with Greg.

I know people find the puppetmaster stuff to come across as villainous but Dom doing it to Greg because Greg literally loves it … sure I buy it, it makes for a pretty ‘fun’ reveal at the end of the arc.
I get Pam getting angry at the plan to some degree, particularly because she wasn’t informed but …eh. Dex was the local sherrif and he got informed? Maybe I don’t quite understand how laws and hierarchy work in DD but that entire scene felt a bit … weird.
Is this the first proper story arc where we see her as the mayor? I guess she also had a relatively big role in Two Thief or not two Thief.
All in all this arc just felt a bit grating to me! Supergreg’s design offends my sensibilities, Snowsong might be the worst major antagonist so far and some parts of the plot felt a bit … forced.

The Good:
- I did kinda enjoy the structure of the arc where the final act reveals all the secrets. I think it could’ve been done a lot better but it was kinda fun.

The bad:
- Snowsong, literally everything about her
- The whole Supergreg thing, did this arc exist just to throw in a weird superhero parody? Not a fan.

The Shadow of Siegfried

Dom and luna visit the Winter Archipelego because Jayden and Milov are haunted by a strange demon variant of Siegfried. Trying to understand why this is happening and how they can rescue their old friend, with Dom’s help they get to discover that Jayden was cheating on Milov with Siegfried & That Dom knew all this time he ended up in hell.

This causes a major rupture between Milov, his society & the rest of the cast and ends Milov and Jayden’s relationship. Despite this, they still have to deal with Siegfried who, fueled by Karnak’s demonic energy is getting stronger and stronger and attacking anyone with close bonds/ties to him indiscriminately.
The arc ends with them shutting out Siegfried with Miranda’s help and them separating on lukewarm terms with Milov over what happened.

This arc’s … fine? My major complaints here are that to me it is entirely unclear how Karnak managed to give Siegfried so much power that he was somehow capable and willing to go around and slaughtering all his former friends. Is this just the whole thing of Hell making a person’s worst impulses even worse and Siegfried desiring to kill Milov to get back with Jayden? I don’t know, if Karnak is powerful enough to make demons under his control go on real-world killing sprees like this with ease you’d imagine there’d be demon attacks all over the place. I guess he specifically made Siegfried a lieutenant/more powerful just to mess with Dom? Is this a thing Siegfried had to consent to? Why is he just obedient to Karnak? No other demon seems to just magically obey other demons out of nowhere. Siegfried was a piece of **** but he had a certain sense of morality, I don’t understand why he’d just completely willingly subjugate himself to a demon lord within seconds.

I actually don’t think this arc is conceptually bad, I do find Jayden’s reasons for falling for Siegfried to make sense, seeing him grow so much over a short period of time rather than it being her liking his old gross self, I could buy it. What doesn’t work here is that up until this point, Jayden has probably been one of the flattest characters in the entire story. So to me her only two traits are “friendly pious girl” & “cheater”. Would I have enjoyed the cheating angle better if Jayden was a more fleshed out/interesting character? I don’t know, honestly. But it feels a bit weird that the first arc where she has any major role, it’s to highlight ..well, that.

The spellwolf/wolfmen culture … eh, I’m not entirely sure how I feel about DD’s race-based cultures that have a strange sense of … “if you are race x, you have culture and personality x”-to them. There’s this weird vibe to the comic where Callanians (white people) have no real specific culture and are sorta all unique individuals, but anyone outside of that group has these diverse and unique cultures and behaviors that are very strongly tied to their nature and race. I don’t know, this is just a trope I feel a bit weird about in general.

Anyway:

The Good:
- I don’t think anything in this arc really stood out to me in general, it wasn’t terrible but … no highlights.

The Bad:
- This isn’t isolated to DD but I don’t really like the style of writing where race, personality and culture are kinda just the same thing. I get this vibe strongly from both the orcs and the spellwolves.
- How magic and powers work in this world will keep annoying me through any arc where it becomes a big part. I kinda hate that this is a recurring thing that literally keeps popping up but the inconsistency of the magic system just constantly makes me ask “Why can this character do this?” or “what’s to prevent this from happening to other people?” I genuinely don’t think the concept behind this arc is necessarily flawed (unlike freaking Snowsong) but it’s annoyingly unclear to me why Siegfried can do all these things.

The …eh?
- The Jayden and Siegfried cheating thing, again, feels like it could be foreshadowed more? I checked the Battle for Barthis again and there’s not even like a little hint or set up for this or something.
I know it’s not necessarily bad writing to drop a reveal like this without foreshadowing but considering how quickly Dom’s seer abilities allow him to figure out things like this I don’t see how some set up or foreshadowing can’t be done sometimes to at least build up to events like this in the future.

Sieg’s racism: bam just dropped out of nowhere.
Jaden cheating: bam just dropped out of nowhere.

There’s this weird ass habit Mookie has that involves us learning something ****ed up/bad/questionable about a character’s backstory right before they get put through hell … or literally put in hell. The complete and utter lack of foreshadowing kinda makes me read this comic in a way that feels very … “oh I can’t wait to find out who was secretly a mega-racist in the next story arc.”


Endings and Annoyances
Not really a major story arc so I’ll not do a full review.
It’s fine, the arguing/conflict felt a tiny bit forced, but otherwise this was a pretty cute little segment.




Oracle Hunter
Ugh gosh, another one of these? To me Oracle Hunter & Snowsong are story arcs that feel like they’re really damn similar on a superficial level: Woman with some sort of undefined grudge shows up and threatens our heroes -> A lot of effort is put into attempting to redeem/sway this particular character from being evil despite their repeated killings and multiple attempts at brutalizing our main characters.

I guess the big difference with Snowsong is that the Oracle Hunter has actually had some success with this as she’s already killed a few seers.

I don’t really feel like explaining this arc in detail because it literally boils down to: evil woman hired to kill seers shows up, Dominic and friends stop her.

I’ll just go over some major notes again:
1. Szark gets over his love for Dominic because … he saw Dom throw up due to a virus. Uhm. Okay. That’s strangely shallow? I always unironically enjoyed Szark as a character, but this storyline has a few gay jokes that feel a bit too …flanderized & this weird moment of Szark’s affection for Dom feeling disgustingly shallow. Like his love for Dom was purely a physical/lust-based thing rather than due to their long connection and friendship. Kind of a weird way to treat the only openly gay character, isn’t it?

2. Luna’s evil sister is …okay, having her entirely equipped with items that are designed to take down seers & hide from them makes her a pretty credible threat and honestly a better one than Snowsong ever was, I also don’t quite mind her motivation just being pure greed. Luna has no luck with sisters at all, this is literally the 3rd one that’s a total piece of ****? The fact that Luna legitimately wants to keep her sister alive and help her get some redemption at the end does make sense due to that, the notion of her coming from a deeply broken and abusive family that made a lot of the siblings do awful **** does have some sense to it.
I still think the sister’s personality feels very … flat, which makes me not enjoy the redemption based on how I see her character, but I do think that having this particular sister find redemption to some degree is an interesting contrast to Luna’s first sister dying.

I feel thematically this could’ve tied in to Celesto’s ranting/arguing with Dom way back during the Storm of Souls & prior about who deserves redemption and who doesn’t. I don’t often feel like DD has bold/explicit themes, but questions regarding redemption are recurring. I do feel that the depth of who deserves redemption & how much can be forgiven don’t really get explored on a particularly deep level, but at least it gets played with.

3. Celesto’s part in this arc was neat. I knew Serk Brakkis never showed up again from memory, but I had totally forgotten he hired the oracle hunter after his arrest to deal with seers. This does kind of answer earlier complaints I had about him, someone with his money & loose morals would find a way to deal with that, right? Seems like this arc is literally a perfect response to a complaint I had so in that regard I’m happy this storyline existed. There is something amusing that the arc that introduced Celesto had team Dominic murdering a manipulative and wealthy Luna-Sister where Celesto complained about redemption, yet in this arc we see team Dom doing their hardest to redeem a Luna-Sister whilst Celesto is going more and more scorched earth as time progresses.

I’m guessing this switch might’ve been intentional on Mookie’s part? I might’ve played with that a bit more to make the way it contrasts to Ecstasy and evil more obvious and explicit. But I do appreciate that the thematic reversal is at least there to some degree.
Celesto just demolishing a political snake like Brakkis strangely reminds me of that one scene with V in OoTS, is it the moral thing to do? Probably not, but legally dealing with someone like Brakkis isn’t always possible. The man did Dom a service whether he wants to admit it or not. I do find it interesting to contrast those two scenes:
In V’s case the argument was one of actual utility and priorities, leaving a political snake around would be a massive distraction from the greater good. Celesto’s argument is mostly “he’s evil and should die”, no mention of the legal system never keeping a man like that contained. Considering how similar the situations are it’s interesting to compare the differences in dialogue and reasoning, this one feels kinda childish in comparison to me.

4. This arc really REALLY makes me like Donovan. So far I’ve barely mentioned him at all because he’s mostly cracked jokes/been a comic relief character or played music, which is fine but not particularly exciting to discuss, but him being willing to take an ex’s secret to the grave with him out of a sense of duty and honor is actually a pretty damn heroic and noble trait. In contrast, learning just how far Miranda goes in scrying and family research feels … genuinely concerning as all hell? Some of Miranda’s worst moments I’ve yet to discuss, but this is definitely one of the first moments where I’ve switched from “she still treats her grown kids as young kids”-mommy syndrome to reading her as unpleasantly controlling in a way that’s usually reserved for villains.

Miranda’s obsessive behavior as it’s described here legitimately feels kinda terrifying to me on a visceral level, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t even intentional? Freaking wild the stuff Mookie slaps onto paper without understanding the implications.


For how similar this arc feels on a superficial level to Snowsong, I do think it plays around with a bunch of concepts that feel worthwhile. Honestly in my mind I kinda designated the arcs as very similar and bland, but upon re-reading this one is just the superior version of these “twin” arcs.


The Good:
- Donovan got his first major role worth mentioning and … yeah, man’s cool.
- Celesto keeps cementing himself as the best recurring villain in this series, he’s a freaking jerk ass but honestly … most of the people he’s brutalized so far very much deserved it, go team Celesto.
- As much as I didn’t like Luna’s sister as a character, the resolution & the underlying broken family dynamics I did enjoy. In a better story with stronger dialogue and characterization I might genuinely find it touching. Even if the execution felt flawed I can accept the idea as emotionally satisfying and a decent throwback to earlier arcs.
- The oracle hunter is another villain that feels decently threatening due to literally being designed to take away everything that makes Dom strong. Some arcs & some encounters really make Dominic feel incredibly powerful, so it’s nice to get a reminder that anyone who has access to anti-scrying measures can quite easily crack the shell our protagonists are inside of.

the bad:
- as much as I like Luna’s sister thematically I … I just don’t like the character. She’s sorta just greedy, sarcastic and pretty vindicative for someone who is literally just hired to go on a murder-spree. I also don’t quite understand why she’s just keeping up the zealot-charade when dealing with someone who can literally mind-read. Good redemptions can be hard to do, and Mookie keeps writing these characters that don’t really feel like they deserve it that much, which is ironic considering he did it well with Siegfriend and then … well, we all know how that went.

- Dear god Miranda creeps me out. I’m putting this in bad because it doesn’t feel intentional? I’d almost enjoy her as a villain if this stuff was foreshadowing for her being obsessive to the point of it being a villain-trait, but no, I don’t think Mookie even understands how he’s making her come across.

- I find the way Szark is portrayed this storyline kinda offensive honestly. I was wondering how I misremembered him as this unflattering stereotype when so far he’s actually been one of the better characters. But the dude who daydreamed about killing Luna to be with Dom is suddenly no longer interested in him because he got sick? I don’t know, it feels off. Like Mookie needed an excuse to remove his gay crush.

The Mookie Eugh:

- THE STUPID “BROTHER” THING!!! I’ve been pretty forgiving about Mookie’s art so far, but why does he throw these stupid “wow you look just like ….” Mysteries in there that seem to literally rely on his samefaces making it impossible for audiences to catch on to the twist.

Also who on earth calls their brother-in-law just “brother”? the whole “I just wanted to mess with him” explanation is really garbage. There’s a couple of things in this comic that go beyond me just disliking it, and this one is up there. Actively terrible writing choice to me.

- Dominic in his He-Man outfit is literal eye-bleach. If Szark lost interest in him due to seeing that, I would’ve had more empathy for him losing attraction. Mookie needs to draw his characters with many clothes on, many many clothes on, because any time he removes them I get uncomfortable.
Oh Snap
A short little interlude chapter, it’s … fine? The concept of a mind-break is sorta interesting, I feel this gets pay-off later in the story? I don’t remember. If this is setting up something important later on, I’ll say I like the fact that it has some world building and foreshadowing to a thing existing that may be critical later.
Prento is kind of funny this chapter, the whole ‘nerd without a social antenna’ thing actually feels like a character gag that Is … character-specific? His jokes and bad phrasings actually land pretty well and feel unique to the character, it’s not high praise to give but I wish Mookie would go for more character-specific jokes like Prento’s v.s. just alliterations and word-puns for everyone.
In my arc rating I find it a bit hard to -really- rate arcs like this one cause they’re just incredibly short, but it’s fine for what it is!



Around the World
So I made a statement at the start of my first review about the art & decided to stay away from really judging the art unless there was something really particular or noticeable that stands apart from my usual art complaints.

This arc actually … *kinda* is one of the biggest offenders here? Like I’ll say right from the start: This is not the worst arc in terms of art by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it might honestly be one of the best in terms of effort & what’s portrayed.
But uhm … looking at the scenery pages and concepts for some of the locations our heroes are visiting I can’t help but feel … damn imagine how satisfying this arc would be in a comic with art that’s an 8/10 or better? Personally, I love sometimes popping splash pages that are literally just there to strut my stuff, pacing be damned. Spend 3 days on an old shack to make it look especially gorgeous just for a nice splash page? Heck yeah.
But this makes an arc that’s built around quite a few splash pages and exotic/fantastic locations feel a bit … barren, DD’s art style and Mookie’s general skill ceiling just aren’t quite high enough to make the pieces *pop* the way they’re meant to.
As for the story UHM … gosh this might be the most conflicting story for me in the entire history of the comic. Part of me liked all of the events shown to just be small little adventures Dom & Luna had without any further baggage, so initially the notion that it was a big conspiracy & set up to test Dom’s proximity to a mind break made me groan.
But then there’s the whole part that Rillian, the first Necromancer, had this group of powerful, ancient and influential beings to help him on his plan AND THIS BLOODY DWARF WHO JUST WANTED TO PUNCH SOMEONE’S BALLS.
Like the entire speech about how everyone had their own selfish reasons, and that dwarf is literally there in the lineup, it absolutely slays me. Like, if I read DD with genuine good will and a desire to let child-like enjoyment run free. Hell yeah, I love this convoluted plan somehow involving the and-punching dwarf. Brilliant writing.
Another slightly interesting thing here is that we’re getting some foreshadowing that there’s something up with Luna, her hearing and seeing things that Dom isn’t hearing or seeing. Personally, I’ve not been a huge fan of how each DD arc so far has made a habit of introducing subjects just to solve them in the same case, so a foundation being placed for Luna having more going on seems fine to me, it does kind of build intrigue.
Will the pay-off be satisfactory? It might not be, But in terms of pacing and foreshadowing I do see DD actually trending towards more long term and intentional foreshadowing, a thing it only seemed to do accidentally in the past.

All in all, this arc is fine, maybe this is just me but I kinda would’ve liked this arc to include an actual world map of sorts? I don’t think we’ve ever had one at all, right? This might just be the geek in me, but I enjoy seeing thought out fantasy maps for fantastical worlds that kinda give us an idea of relative location, distance etc. I don’t think we’ve ever seen a single map in DD. Bit of a shame.

The good:
- Having some actual world building is nice, I think if this comic’s art was a bit more impressive this might be one of my fav arcs just for the scenery chewing. Like, aside from a few atrocious writing choices that make me scratch my head, I do think a lot of DD arcs and scenes would land significantly better if they were more satisfying to look at, this being the standout in that regard.
- Some of the twists felt … fine, this might not be a popular opinion but I kinda like the fact that DD, as a story, puts focus on the amount of stress certain events can have on the main characters & how this can result in them lashing out and losing their temper. It kinda clicks & I feel that trauma processing after intense events is something that often gets dismissed or ignored entirely in quite a lot of stories.

The bad:
- I didn’t really have any major complaints about this arc beyond the usual “the more Mookie -tries- with his art, the more apparent his limits are”. Which is a shame because in the hands of an excellent artist this’d be an amazing arc to flex those skills. (Did I just add the same point in both good and bad? Hell yes.)
The amazing:
- Nut puncher Dwarf cemented himself in DD history by not just being a random aggressor, but apparently being part of this big plan involving all these powerful figures of historical importance and power. I originally kinda disliked the whole “This was all a big set up” twist until I saw him in the lineup, that single-handedly made this one of the best moments in the entire comic. It’s so freaking ridiculous it becomes hilarious, and I feel it is intentionally so.

Built To Resist
I’m reaching the part of the story where it’s harder and harder to remember details, I definitely remember a couple of things from this chapter, but the placement in the archive & specifics did actually surprise me a bit. Back in the day I remember really disliking Dex’s backstory, though I feel that was less due to the backstory itself and more due to Siegfried kinda giving me a really, really bad reaction to characters suddenly being shown to be “Way worse than expected”. I’ve always liked Dex so seeing his history was like … oh gosh are you going to ruin another guy?

Upon my re-read and with some basic memories of where characters end up, I don’t … hate this twist? Earlier I complained about how I had no idea how Dex put up with his team mates who were just really, really disgusting and … Dex being at the very end of a self-improvement path, getting rid of drugs and his own past behavior is actually an interesting answer to an issue I had.
Again, I feel DD has this habit of suddenly revealing backstory details whenever they’re important for that particular arc, which … I don’t know, I genuinely don’t enjoy that way of writing characters? I can’t quite put my finger on how often this happens in other shows or series, but in DD it always feels like random bits of backstory just get thrown in there with a “Hey this is relevant -now- (and only now)” type of attitude. While I’m happy that Dex’s history finally makes sense, it’s a mystery that never got mentioned within the story.

Just a simple page when Dex first turns on his team where Dom/Luna asks “How did you deal with these awful guys for so long?” where Dex answers with a dismissive “I’d really rather not talk about that” or something could at least foreshadow there’s something about his history he’s not telling, but DD basically never throws that little bone at the audience. This makes reveals like this feel kinda random and like Mookie decided to add them years later.

The story arc itself is … fine, I remember back in the day that a lot of snarkers were cheering Celesto on and declaring him Collateral damage man … yeah, that still rings true lmao. Dude does not give a flying [copulation]. There’s something about Celesto that just makes it impossible for me to hate him, his callous disregard for civilians dying is just kinda hilarious here.

This chapter’s … fine, I think the way the beast is being set up here is kind of interesting. The fact that traditional magic doesn’t quite seem to effect it is .. actually interesting in a way? We’ve had Dom being unable to scry things before, but in most cases it was known entities that were hard to scry or due to there being a glyph he could at least “Detect”. This entity just being a non-entity on his seer-radar does raise the stakes.
It's not a very long arc but I actually enjoy how this is starting to properly set up a more long-term big arc with some slow build up, considering how often DD arcs just introduce something and resolve it within the same arc it definitely helps change things up by having these little things Mookie’s set up slowly become more and more relevant.
Final note: Celesto sleeping with Rachel is … a thing. I think one thing I’ll always appreciate with Mookie’s writing is how he never stops surprising me with these totally out there choices.

The March Across Maltak

Ah here’s the big one, an arc I actually genuinely did not look forward to starting. The arc that destroyed the willpower of many snarkers, THE arc that people describe as the one to kill DD for them due to glacial pacing and uhm …

I … I think I liked Maltak??? O_O

Okay, okay, to be clear, I don’t think it’s masterful writing & one of the core parts of the story is a trope I find genuinely pretty ****ty, heck perhaps my genuine surprise at how positive I felt about it is in part due to me having the lowest expectations out of any arc but … I … I don’t really see the issue?

So let’s first get the big elephant in the room out of the way: Luna’s entire narrative here feels very white savior. VERY white savior, in fact, it’s literally just that trope, right? IF I had to slam this arc for any thing at all, it’s that. The oppressed discriminated against minority getting ‘saved’ by some prophet who is from the country to pull Imperialist genocidal crap on them. I don’t necessarily think the notion that someone not from Maltak is the savior is inherently bad, but yeah.

If I just accept that core premise of Luna being tied to Maltak because tusk mouth is a curse placed as revenge upon Callan, the arc itself doesn’t actually feel … to bad? The story of the different orc clans getting isolated and no longer seeing eye to eye due to Callanian intervention & them having to properly reunite to save Callan works quite well for me, when you can just binge the entire story it honestly doesn’t feel that slow-paced & I understand that there’s some time and set up required to both explore how the different clans operate & how to unite them.

I also actively enjoyed the part where the party gets split up and we get a couple of strange/unexpected team ups, e.g. Hansi & Dominic having to work together despite their past differences, I tend to enjoy those types of forced team ups/separations in stories and it worked just fine here. I didn’t actually have too much trouble keeping track of all the named orcs, who they were & what their role was when reading through the story in 1 go.

I forgot their names but the big ones are:
evil ponytail chief & his two sons.
“Reverse-racist” Nakta chief, his son & his underlings.
Huktak with his legendary weapon.
Huktak’s girlfriend/the crone
Ponytail-orc lady who is completely into Hansi and wants his children.
Melna.
Stonewater
Grench
Stoner Chief
Melna’s old clan and the evil and barbaric clan leader

A couple of other characters of note: Jacob, Dom, Luna, Donovan, Neilen for whatever reason and uhm … that’s about it I think?
There’s a few themes running through the arc, the holy ponytail clan’s chief has started using cruel and disturbing ways to gain power and energy, the Nakta chief is so hell-bent on revenge against Callan that it blinds him to ways to actually help Maltak, Jacob being a total piece of garbage human being. Hmm… Donovan actually revealing he was just faking his terrible Orcish, that’s a thing.

Honestly what kinda surprises me is that there’s actually themes that are built up and played around with, e.g. Jacob & Nakta-Son’s exploration of what is death, life and what their relationship is. Nakta-Chief having to let go of his hatred and desire for revenge to actually do what is required to help heal the land.
We’re not talking about god-tier writing here, and I feel some stuff like Luna’s tusk mouth thing being an Orcish curse, again, felt like it was only revealed the moment it was plot relevant (one of the big recurring annoyances for me with DD), but I was honestly kinda happy to read an arc that tried to tackle some themes where there were more sides than just “GRR BAD” and “YEAH WE’RE 100% GOOD!”
Sure the orcish ponytail chief was a total evil character, so we still had one of them in the end, but on the other side we had the Nakta-Chief who was honestly not entirely wrong in his hatred for Callan but also given a role that was more ambiguous until the end.


Honestly for all the complaints I remember about pacing, I felt this arc flowed just fine. I find myself with only two real complaints that I want to really focus on.
The first: The white savior plot I feel was already quite outdated/awkward back when this was made, but it’s only dated far worse since. The way DD very openly and unapologetically takes many references to real life oppression of people of color as flavor for the orcs makes the whole “Luna as savior of Maltak” subplot feel just … a bit painful honestly. I’ve actively tried to go for a good-faith reading and not letting sticking points completely ruin arcs for me, but if you really think about it a lot of the conflict with the Nakta-Chief & trying to properly unite the clans kinda hinges on his “irrational” hatred of Callanians pushing him to reject Luna entirely as the savior … which Is uhm … the only reason he’s really -wrong- is because the comic’s magic made Luna the savior? It feels a bit off. Don’t like that.

Complaint Number 2: Why is Neilen? Just … Why. I genuinely forgot he was in this arc and … for good reason, he has no real purpose here beyond “GRR ME BAD, ME REVENGE” or something. I might make a proper list of worst DD villains once I’m done with the entire series but Neilen might actually be a contender for that spot, he’s just a deeply unsatisfying antagonist.

The Good:
- I feel this arc actually has more thought and set up put into underlying themes & having a conclusion that characters genuinely have to work towards than most other arcs. Uniting the clans feels like a clear and logical goal that fits the theme of the story, the Nakta being a vital part of the cycle of life and important to properly rejuvenating the land also feels like a nice exploration that fits with some of the recurring themes in DD of necromancy/death not being “evil” in itself.
For all of Maltak’s flaws I have to admit that, reading through all of DD in quick succession, I can actually taste more effort being put into the full set up of this arc compared to a lot of others.
- I think this arc was really good in terms of various character interactions, the way it split the crew & who landed with who actually felt strangely … satisfying? Dominic & various other characters have generally always been paired with either a close friend or total antagonistic jerkasses, but mixes like Dom x Hansi felt kinda fun to me.
- Donovan actually faking his terrible orcish this entire time & him finally revealing how exactly he managed to broker that truce back in the day was a fun reveal. There’s a couple of characters throughout my read through I’ve genuinely liked, and Donovan is firmly on that list.

the Bad:
- Huge white savior complex core to the story just felt awkward and is so crucial to the entire story that it was a hard one to overlook. I’m still conflicted where to rate this arc due to this being so essential to the entire core of this story.
- Neilen.

The Hrm:
- Jacob was, again, being a total piece of garbage this arc but … I kinda liked his half-redemption at the end? Saving Luna from dying & him finally understanding that his connection to death and necromancy had a totally wrong outlook behind it. I still don’t like how Jacob was used in a lot of story arcs like e.g. the Storm of Souls, but this arc actually took his entire “scientist without morals or guiding principles”-character and developed it really well. Jacob’s another one of those characters where I feel the underlying idea & the underlying story arc isn’t just interesting , but has the potential to be genuinely good, but Mookie seemed directionless early on in the story making the character feel a bit inconsistent.
This is the type of stuff where I’m curious what choices Mookie would make differently if he could restart the entire story from the first page, would he actually make Jacob’s arc and general role through the story fit this eventual path more?





Anyway arc ranking:
1. To Thief or not to Thief
2. Visions of Doom
3. March Across Maltak
4. Battle for Barthis
5. Hello Nurse!
6. Storm of Souls
7. Ecstasy and Evil
8. Around the World
9. Class Action
10. The Oracle Hunter
11. War in Hell
12. Shadow of Siegfried
13. Opening chapters
14. Snowsong


Ranking arcs is becoming a bit harder as some arcs have a lot of good but also a lot of bad, and some arcs aren’t terrible but lack any stand out good moments.

It’s difficult to compare “good arc but ruined my fav char” v.s. “short and inoffensive arc but nothing super exciting happened”. If I seem to rate arcs with massive complaints higher than those with very few, it might just be that an arc like “around the world” is incredibly inoffensive but also just didn’t stick as much as e.g. Storm of Souls did.


I'm curious, the one recurring Mookie-ism I keep running into that annoys me is that he tends to just drop random new backstory stuff into arcs out of nowhere ... that's not common in most fiction right?