The Legacy of Dominic Deegan II: Don't Be Clothed-Minded!

[elros]

In a way I am glad to read that a lot of the arcs I skipped were actually pretty good. Mookie wrote regular updates for years, and he never had an editor to improve his work. Good for him for making something better than I remember.
I am curious what you write about the final arcs because I remember not enjoying them, but I may let the comic’s flaws overshadow the actual work.

[Gez]

Molasses look fast compared to this webcomic's pacing.

I'm sure this is one of the arcs that will end up being not that bad in an archival read. But right now it's excruciating.

[Neoriceisgood]

ATTACK OF THE ARCHMAGI

King David & The Beast have somehow corrupted and brainwashed all the archmagi except for Miranda (not sure how she avoided it?) and are now planning a counter attack to our heroes, as it’s now public knowledge they’re trying to turn against the king.

Various people are brutally murdered including the masters family (the parents at least), the two battlecasters at the Lunarian church die as the church gets demolished and, as the zombified archmages attack alongside the infernomancer, Bumper gets killed in an absolutely brutal way, first losing his hands and then having his heart pierced.

Hey there’s also a Snowsong cameo … that’s … something! Hi Snowsong!

We also get the whole “THE FACE OF GOD IS THE HEART OF MAGIC” … thing, I know it’s meant to be cryptic but it sounds just totally silly to me, haha.
While all this happens Miranda gets in a weird fake-fight with King David that ends in a stalemate.
This arc is weird, there’s not a whole lot of to describe as it’s a lot of action but … man. King David & The Beast almost but not entirely succeeding in converting all the arch-mages into their minions actually makes them feel really frightening, but then the archmages are kinda weakened, trying to resist & basically all killed in this conflict.
I know the loss of Bumper is kind of a big deal, he was a nice & friendly character but if we really look at it …
Losses on DD’s side: An ex-thief without any major skills + the masters parents who we’ve only known shortly and … two heavily injured battlecasters.

David-kun’s losses: literally all of his powerful archmage slaves.

Although this is clearly meant to be an Empire Strikes Back style “low point” for the heroes, including a major character death, it also feels a bit odd when at the end of it the bad guy’s side suffered significantly larger tactical losses.

The biggest “loss” on the side of the heroes is probably the sacred treasure, though … I don’t know enough about what it does to really feel emotionally bad about that.

I wouldn’t necessarily call this arc bad, and it’s weird to say this considering one of the oldest recurring characters got brutalized but … I totally get the complaints people have about the Beast & King David? This feels like it’s meant to be their victory, the moment the chips are down and I’m still not … that impressed.

The biggest reason they did the damage we saw was due to the infernomancer doing stuff he could’ve theoretically done all the way back in the Errosus arc (glove people to death violently) & some of the archmage zombies & battle casters doing a lot of damage, with the zombies now being out of the picture.
I don’t remember exactly what happens at this point in the story, but if this is as bad/low as it gets for the heroes … it’s not *that* bad.

I feel a bit ambivalent about Bumper’s death, like … his character arc sort of “completed” a while ago and his death here was extremely graphic and didn’t seem particularly poetic or meaningful, heck the infernomancer even managed to get the treasure Bumper was protecting.
I know that “sometimes people just die awful meaningless deaths” is a way to deal with character deaths in a story, (-tips fedora at Goblins-) but it does feel kinda odd that a character like Bumper is just randomly … dead now. I guess I’m supposed to feel somewhat emotional about him dying in Stunt’s arms but … I don’t.

Maybe if Stunt and Bumper had a little moment to reconnect before everything went to absolute hell it would’ve landed better, but now it kinda feels like Mookie moved his narrative chess pieces in such a way that Bumper would die exactly in the right spot to fall in Stunt’s arms. Eh, it’s not criminally bad writing but it almost felt a bit random and rushed?


THROUGH THE TEMPEST

More Nimmel fun, I kinda forgot he kinda became a bit of a protagonist in his own right for this comic. Anyway we run into The Klo-Thark-race guys … or THE ELD. Hm… Actually that’s a good name, I like it! I never liked Klo Tark much but the name sounds right & kinda cool, good job Mookie.
We find out Katya is an oracle of sorts as she can still hear Nimmel despite him being trapped in the plane of air, we have some more exposition on THE FACEBATH OF MAGIC and so on.
All in all a fine chapter, nothing amazing happened but I always did sort of wonder what exactly Klo Tark was.
THE MAD KING
We finally learn David’s full villain backstory, I actually find David himself a more interesting villain than the beast, who is just this Lovecraftian creature with a kinda generic angry and vengeful personality? The backstory’s … fine, it explains a few things like, if I understood it correctly, the beast being David’s eyes? That’s actually kind of a metal origin, I dig it.
Otherwise there’s not much to say about this chapter, a lot of the reveals are more “logistics” of how things we already knew came together, the only real twists we get here are more flavor-based ones in my mind. It does kinda explain -why- the beast has been so weak & why previously the beast wasn’t even on the radar of team DD.

I don’t mind this chapter existing but I can’t say it had any like “OH WOW THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING” twists.

ALLIES FALL, POWERS GAINED, WANDERERS FOUND

I … I really hate the name of this chapter! LOL, It feels like a bad summary of what happens instead of an actual name.
The team decides to take a final stand against David as he uses Rillian’s necromantic powers to level a terrible attack on the Lunian church, heavily injuring Milov & Jayden in the process. During this process we discover the dragon has been nearly killed, that THE CONDUCTOR has been corrupted/enchanted somehow (it’s a bit unclear to me what the deal with him is) and that David has been picking off potential allies left and right without the main cast noticing.

Dominic surrenders himself to David to stop the attack and tells him he could lead him to the heart of magic now that Celesto is once again missing, saving Jacon, Jayden and Milov from dying, but in doing so he does surrender himself to David’s torment.

Everyone who is battle-ready and willing decides to join up to try and rescue Dom, splitting into basically three parties:
1. Dom’s students and Nimmel who try to help the eld get out of the plane they’re stuck in.
2. Team Miranda/Luna/Co who launch a full-frontal attack on David
3. Team Donovan/Stunt/Quilt who use a secret entrance to try and rescue Dominic.


So here’s a rare moment I’ll give Mookie art credit! The corrupted sanctum that Dom’s kept prison in actually looks sufficiently creepy and honestly …not badly drawn?
I can’t think of many moments in DD where I actually -liked- the art, but the disgusting oozing and fleshy walls of the sanctum being visible in the corners and behind characters really give the vibe of them being in a disgusting corrupted place.
Back in the day one issue I’ve often had with DD beyond snout-face and some other art issues, is that the backgrounds were often barely ever drawn & in many cases really plain and uninteresting (see: how Maltak & Hell, two of the prime locations in the story, are just big wastelands). And even if they were interesting in concept, they weren’t that well drawn (around the world).

I’m not talking about high arts still but the relative sense of location is made pretty apparent despite Mookie juggling several conflicts in various places at the same time here & in following chapters. Not bad.

We are definitely reaching a point where I can’t quite argue the chapters are entirely disconnected again though, each chapter is now fully part of this big final arc & only designed as set up for the next storyline. I would say that starting with “Attack of the Archmagi” we’re fully in an age of DD where all the chapters fairly seamlessly connect into a clear multifaceted story arc that leads into the “epic conclusion” of the comic.

Interlude: CELESTO RECOVERS

.. this one’s … fine? It’s just 5 panels showing Celesto and Bort, it does make it clear he’ll somehow feature in the final conflict, which isn’t surprising.
RETALIATION
As David’s attack continues and he uses Rillian’s magic to shoot these massive necromantic blasts to try and destroy Maltak & other parts of the world, our heroes fight desperately to stop it.
On the outside Jacob does his best to apply his knowledge from Maltak to disarm the bombs & in helping disarm one Luna gets uh … flung all the way to Maltak? Again, I wish Mookie provided us with a map cause I have no idea how far that is.

The biggest thing here is that in their fight with the Infernomancer, as Stunt escapes we see Quilt sacrificing himself to kill the infernomancer by killing Rillian & letting his necromantic corruption overtake them both. It makes sense that someone as hard to kill as the Infernomancer goes down through Rillian’s influence.
Quilt dies with a smile having avenged his friend & we see the infernomancer back in hell with … I was gonna say Karnak but that kinda looks like a generic demon, the horns feel wrong (okay after quickly checking Court of Karnak, he ended up with a single horn in the middle at the end of that! Uhm okay.)

I kinda feel the Bumper death was literally designed to have this “you killed my Bumper, prepare to die” encounter, which is … fine? But I’ve always felt the Infernomancer a pretty bland villain so I can’t say that “finally” seeing him die is that impactful when he felt like a pretty typical griever character.

MINDBREAK
As everyone is desperately fighting David & the Beast who seem incredibly difficult to kill by convential means, we discover Dom is stuck in his own mindscape trying to fight his own mind-self who is teetering on the verge of a mind break, simultaneously we learn that the Eld’s society was once destroyed by a mind break, which is where the obscure knowledge came from that Prento discovered back in the day. That’s kinda neat, that’s the type of world building that makes total sense and feels decently foreshadowed, I like the way Mookie went full circle with that.

As Dom is struggling to figure out where to draw the line between protecting himself & not exploding the world around him, we get some exposition with Rillian (now in his chubby human ghost form), the prophet Luana etc.
The eld & dom’s students can contact him through the various psychoplanes and help Dom snap out of his mindbreak for long enough that he can organize a plan, which is to effectively ensnare the beast in the Elemecca and have his mindbreak take both of them down together while they’re there.
Although it initially seems Dom’s plan fails, it turns out this is where Bort took Celesto & at just the right time Celesto comes to even the odds.
With their help and a bit of scrying help from Luna they managed to subdue the beast long enough for Dom to try and destroy it, Rillian/Luana try to shield Dom from the blast, but the Beast hid inside Dom to survive. The beast steals his vision/powers and becomes a strange evil copy of Dominic in the process.





THE FINAL VISION

At this point Celesto uses his corrupting/explodey powers on him, clearly considering taking down Dom too, but he reconsiders and actually properly saves the day without collateral damage for a change! Yay Celesto, took you long enough to do the right thing.

Naturally Celesto immediately gets punished for his good dead as the beast manages to grab a hold of him and pull him down into the Elemecca, at this point Celesto EXPLODES IN PURE CHAOTIC ENERGY to kill the beast together with himself proper. I don’t know … knowing Celesto I can imagine he somehow cheated death once again, dude’s built differently.

Either way as far as we know this is the last we’ll ever see of Celesto Morgan, the comic’s true protagonist.

After this Dom gets to actually “see” his final vision, the future King David feared. As Maltak rises in magic, Callan industrializes and discovers that technology is the way forward, we get a lot of flashes into the future of Dom’s surviving friends and family doing well and living the good live in the future.
Nimmel and Kayta, Luna, Jayden and Milov, Jacob, Pam, Greg & FACEBATH, Stunt & Szark + Husband. Also Dom’s parents of course.

We also see some multiverse shenanigans showing that all these planes of existence and the so-called face of god are just one of many, many magic constellations/galaxies out there. We conclude with Dom realizing that his second sight is gone forever. (I wonder, is Mookie a known fan of Fullmetal Alchemist? I’m seeing a lot of similarities in the conclusion?)


-------------

So with that I’m almost at the very end, the only chapter I still have to review is the epilogue. I think when I’ll write down my review for that chapter I’ll also go into more concluding thoughts.

In rating these final chapters I’ll combine them all into one because they’re so intertwined I don’t think there’s much point in trying to rate them entirely separately.

If I have to say where I’d rank this final arc, I’d actually put it up relatively high. I know people really, really dislike how strong Miranda is, but considering King David, the Beast, an entire army of magic Battlecasters & the infernomancer were all enemies, I feel a character like Miranda (and her allies) worked well in keeping the King’s forces at bay whilst most of the mainstay characters focused on the stuff that resonates more with readers, e.g., trying to save Dominic.

Whilst I don’t think DD has improved in shocking ways over the years, I can definitely tell with these latter arcs that everything feels significantly more deliberate, and foreshadowing compared to story arcs like Storm of Souls. When I was reading day-by-day I looked at many early arcs with very rose-tinted glasses & I had a hard time enjoying/appreciating arcs post all-time-lows like the weird Melna rape stuff & whatever the hell Mookie did with Siegfried’s entire storyline, but if I don’t let those ruin future content for me I’ll have to admit that most of my fav arcs, or at least the ones I found best constructed, are found further on in DD’s lifespan.

I still much prefer the smaller more emotionally resonant arcs over the conclusion, I definitely don’t think it was super bad & the beast + king David did feel threatening to some degree, I do feel where this final arc kinda suffers for me is that it falls more in that “everyone gets to show up for one final hurrah”-type of climax writing rather than giving characters a very strong emotional resolution that naturally fits the characters (Jacob might be the exception).

This is e.g. a thing that feels weird with Quilt. On paper his death scene was “fine”, but it didn’t necessarily feel to me like it tied into any existing arc beyond “he liked Bumper”.

Anyway rating arcs by number can be pretty difficult & I feel if I read it all -again- I might push some around, but on a whim I’d say this is my final view of each major arc:

Anyway arc ranking:
1. To Thief or not to Thief
2. The Search for Celesto
3. Visions of Doom
4. Walk the Wild Edge
5. March Across Maltak
6. Battle for Barthis
7. King David & The Beast/Conclusion
8. Altered States
9. Just Deserts
10. Hello Nurse!
11. Storm of Souls
12. Ecstasy and Evil
13. Around the World
14. Class Action
15. The Court of Karnak
16. The Oracle Hunter
17. War in Hell
18. Be your own Bard
19. Shadow of Siegfried
20. Opening chapters
21. Face to Facebath
22. Snowsong


I'll have to think a little bit about how I'll structure my final thoughts after the re-read, beyond giving my overal thoughts I also wanted to think a bit about what I like most about Mookie's comic & writing and what parts I dislike the most.
I think I'll also try to think a little bit about how I'd rewrite or restructure this comic if I were tasked to basically make largely the same comic with the same cast myself. Just cause it's a fun exercise to not just complain, but also to really think about how to fix the things I dislike & turn them into something good.

In a way I am glad to read that a lot of the arcs I skipped were actually pretty good. Mookie wrote regular updates for years, and he never had an editor to improve his work. Good for him for making something better than I remember.
I am curious what you write about the final arcs because I remember not enjoying them, but I may let the comic’s flaws overshadow the actual work.

Yeah, I will say I am intentionally turning off cynicism for this & giving Mookie the benefit of the doubt in a few places.
I'm reading this comic to try and enjoy it, not to ridicule or hate it. This means that the only things I'll actively complain about are those that
are annoying me so much I really can't enjoy it.

I think a big issue DD has is that it did a few things so fundamentally WEIRD or BAD, that it made people resent the work as a whole, even if the content that came after wasn't that offensive by a long mile.

[Vinyadan]

Concerning Attack of the Archmagi, the chapter hits a lot less than it could or should. The archmages are handled as mere plot devices. They aren't developed characters and they aren't that dangerous. One ferries Rilian to the King and publicly denounces him, igniting the final confrontation. One traps Nimmel in another dimension, and another gets Nimmel the cloak, ushering the Eld plot. Finally, the big bug serves as a distraction to let the Infernomancer approach. They all are conveniently easy to take out, which also makes the arc repetitive and anticlimactic (the King himself admits that things aren't going well).

Second problem: low or unclear stakes. The King gets the Treasure, and this should be terrible, except the comic doesn't do much to transmit this. Compare The Lord of the Rings: the Ring will spell immediate doom for the good guys, if Sauron gets it. Not just that: Sauron is winning anyway, and the only way to defeat him is to destroy the Ring. Now, those are some clear, high stakes! And then you have a couple of additional hurdles to spice things up: the Ring can only be destroyed in the worst possible place and it tortures and corrupts anyone who carries it.
Mookie never really explains what the Treasure does, or, if he does, it gets lost in the text. Will it make the King immensely strong? Will it make the Beast immensely strong? Is it simply the means for a long-term project to syphon more power from the Heart and create a humanity of wizards? Is it some necessary sauce to make the planet easier on the Beast's digestion?
Also, the King is never in condition to use the Treasure anyway, because of Celesto.
Add to this that the good guys never really put any effort into getting or studying the Treasure, it was just handed to them.

About Ilario's death, that's again just a plot device to justify Quilt and Stunt joining the usual gang into something that is way above their head. This way, Quilt can kill Rillian, who can only be killed by Quilt, something no-one knew anything about, so that's lucky that Ilario died, uh? Also, Ilario hosing the Infernomancer's eyes with blood from his stumps is honestly too weird to be taken seriously. It's like those campy Asian horror movies where people strangle each other with their intestines. At the same time, vengeful Quilt is admittedly a good development. Overall, the death's fallout is handled well on the level of the surviving characters.
(plotwise, Jacob could have told Quilt that Jacob had to take care of the blighted, and so Quilt was the only one in the team that could kill Rilian. A not-dead Ilario could have been among the blighted.)

The deaths of the Battlecasters and the Masters suffer from the opposite problem. Mookie went for parallelism, and showing off the aggressors. Instead, he should have shown the victims dying. Again, a plot contrivance to remove the legal ways to depose the King (which I honestly had forgotten about; I think those deaths would have been more poignant if the victims had been the main characters of their own little arcs). This way, team Miranda is pushed towards a violent resolution.

Also, is Dominic immediately using the bugged crystal ball again after the attack?

I have to say however that this carefully built net of plot devices works for the fight between Miranda and the King. It's something I had first noticed in Snowsong vs Rachel & Co., Mookie can create some good battles by planning them out and working on action, reaction, and available resources. The King and Miranda having a bunch of tricks and expedients made for a nice battle, I think. The problem is when it's just devices without giving drama the means to breathe.

[Neoriceisgood]

EPILOGUE

So I …we?’ve reached the end of the original run of DD, the epilogue is kinda nice, we get a bunch of quick resolution scenes for major characters, we see Stunt finally coming face to face with his mother’s lover, Thuen Gor going #notallcallans after other countries discover the king’s horrible plans and his war crimes.
We see the Eld plopping down a city in a random desert and living the good life, Dom and Greg connecting over the fact that both of them have lost their powers.
A little scene where various characters “celebrate” the lives of the characters who died in the final conflict, trying to remember their best moments (and many puns).

At the very end we get a little page showing Luna and Dom growing old together and living happy peaceful lives, which apparently includes them getting kids after all. The how or why isn’t clear, but that’s whatever. Sometimes magic’s just magic.

I don’t think this is a bad epilogue at all, for most of the major characters we get a glimpse of what’s in store for them in the future, we get some attention paid to those who died in the final conflict & none of the major story beats feel unresolved.

With that out of the way let’s get to my …


GENERAL THOUGHTS:


1. Mookie Brings up wildly controversial topics without anything interesting to say.

Hell, heaven, rape, suicide, abuse, racism and homophobia, lynching. The number of controversial or taboo topics that pop up over the course of DD is staggering and definitely a big contender in terms of reasons a lot of people either outright hate the comic, or at the very least fell out of touch with it.

Throughout my entire read through there were decent arcs, bad arcs, cringy moments & moments that made me question what made Mookie decide it was a good idea, but y’know what I almost never felt? Some level of insight or some unexpected dept or nuance that really made me stop and think.
Whilst some arcs like TWO THIEF & JUST DESERTS had moments of introspection or personal character growth for characters that really needed it, even those arcs didn’t have anything that made me really stop and go “wow that’s deep or interesting”.

Like, I’ll be honest. I don’t personally think topics like rape or suicide should be taboo, there’s incredibly powerful works out there created by survivors that express their complex emotions through their own writing or art. But Mookie’s underlying motivation, as far is stated publicly, tends to come down to “Oh I want to try and justify a sexy rapist character”, or “yeah let’s make suicide/rape this character’s backstory cause it’s dark”.
This mentality can be seen in how many scenes are so gruesome it almost becomes comical, on a base level he understands that someone dying horribly will make that person’s friends sad, but most horrible things that happen, most of the dark topics he decides to venture in there, seem to be either chosen on a whim, because they’re “metal!” or because they fit a certain plot trajectory he had in mind.

Like, what’s the goal of the frequent use of uncensored slurs? It seems to just be to make clear some characters are very homophobic and evil.

Why show somewhat graphic imagery of lynching of children? To hammer home how evil Siegfried and his dad are.

Why -show- the rape scene between two kids? To show us how ****ed up and evil their culture was.

Sometimes leaving in slurs or actively not beating around the bush could add power to a point being made, but when the greater goal of all these controversial choices comes down to “wow these guys sure are pricks, huh!” or worse, “hah I figured out how to justify my sexy rapist hero” it’s absolutely wild. I know Mookie’s expressed in interviews that he hates how people look at his writing and reflect it back on him personally, but uh …
The sheer callous irreverence for the topics he decides to depict, combined with the seemingly shallow reason he felt it was worth doing so does really make me wonder if he seriously has no clue how freaking distasteful his choices & the underlying reasons can actually be.

The only character that has somewhat of an arc/exploration of his prejudice in a meaningful way is arguably Stunt, but … I don’t even see the logic to his? Apparently part of the reason he was so sexist was because he was raised extremely religiously & his mother cheated on his ****ty dad with a lesbian lover but …
How come only the sexism remains & his religious upbringing/history isn’t really found anywhere else in his character?

Like if that’s the best exploration of these sensitive topics he can bring it leaves me kinda speechless.


2. The art isn’t the comic’s biggest problem but it certainly doesn’t help.

So through almost my entire re-read I’ve kept comments and criticism of the comic’s art on the downlow because commenting on every cringy piece of art, constantly repeating discussions of sameface and snouthmouth would get boring.

But man. It still blows my mind how I just consumed over 10 years of content, and side from steadier lines and one or two moments of interest, the art just absolutely stagnated through the entire run.
I do find this particular topic/criticism a difficult one to deal with because, in all honestly I feel Mookie’s hit a particular skill ceiling he has significant trouble breaching & aside from a mayor time investment that might come at the cost of pacing, I don’t think he’d get much better by just *trying harder*.

There’s a certain point where truly improving requires dedication and time that would invariably affect the comic’s pacing & update rate.

So it’s hard to say what would help DD that wouldn’t counterintuitively also make it worse by slowing the pace to a crawl.

I think one thing that stood out to me in the original run is that in many cases, when Mookie put in more effort it actually only made things worse. The most glaring example is how a lot of his large full color splash pages put his wonky anatomy front and center, where drawing the characters larger and more detailed only makes it clear how much he struggles drawing human limbs and proportions.

His strongest points are mostly in readability in a small scale, his flow of action is generally relatively easy to follow despite his ridiculously small panels & when he makes more intricate or detailed designs it’s generally fine.

I know that in the Legacy he finally stepped away from snout-mouth, which is a major step up. I don’t think that way of drawing faces is as much a cardinal sin as some describe it, but the biggest glaring issue is that facial diversity/avoiding same-face is an absolute nightmare if you follow that design trend. Snout-face/snout-mouth effectively removes the entire nose area of the face as a potential option for diversifying face structure.
I feel what might’ve helped DD most might be more diverse and cartoony body types that utilize simpler predefined shapes, one particular aspect of his style that stood out to me is that the way he puts bodies together has a very “malformed doll” look, like he just tacked a few arms and legs onto a ragdoll in the hope that they’d fit. This, in my opinion, is why his characters invariably looked at their worst when they were wearing very few clothing, because it puts the awkward and iffy anatomy front-and-center.
All-in-all if we ignore the sameface issue readability was mostly fine, I could tell what characters were doing, I could usually tell which characters I was looking at & the environments were easy to understand. But that entire list of positives is effectively a list of bare basics.

I’m curious to compare the changes in style between DD & The Legacy, but from what I’ve seen it’s different whilst adding a few issues not previously seen, but I’ll withhold judgement when I get there.
It is a shame DD’s art is as bare basics as it is, it’d be a lot easier to forgive some of the writing flaws if there was at least good high quality eye-candy glued to it.

3. Revolving cast(e) of random adventures
DD’s general narrative is … strange, I know a lot of people in the snarker community like the entire Caste-system theory, but I almost feel the Caste-system is too generous in assuming there’s rhyme or reason to character arcs. I don’t think that for most of early DD there actually is, in a weird way the earlier story beats kinda remind me of those art projects where every person writes a page of a story, and the next person continues the story with the page given.
Kinda what happened to the Star Wars trilogue sequels, I guess! Hand it to a different writer/director and see what happens.

Except instead of different authors, it’s just Mookie’s flavor of the month inspired by some game he liked, character he grew bored of or niche interest he wanted to fling into the narrative.

Near the ending we do see more long term planning & story arcs clearly being designed to tie into future events, this doesn’t necessarily lead into amazing writing, but retrospectively I can say: Ah Bumper’s death was meant to motivate Quilt & Stunt specifically to join the final team proper. Just deserts? Ah it was to get Stunt the treasure & back in the narrative. Search for Celesto? Force the King to make rash decisions/take action.
Early DD arcs had little foreshadowing, frequently introduced all the essentials for that narrative within the chapter & resolved it within the same chapter as well. Luna has another sister? She does now? Dominic’s mom is famous and powerful? Surprise!
Hearing Dom’s interviews about why he made some big choices like Siegfried’s death or Stonewater’s past come down to “Well I got bored of him” or “I wanted to make a sexy rapist”, amazing foresight and underlying motive.

When it comes to frequently recurring issues like “Who is redeemable and who isn’t?” we do run into issues that are not exclusive to Mookie. I’d argue that his habit to make people who do equally heinous **** either totally redeemable or complete irredeemable monsters on a whim tends to resemble a decent amount of mid-tier fiction.
What people describe as the caste system, in my eyes, kinda comes down to Mookie deciding when he starts a story which character will be redeemed, but not quite having the writing chops to actually make a persuasive argument why they were actually less evil than previously irredeemable characters.
I think part of this issue comes down to the fact that … I don’t think Mookie is the best at writing complicated and unique characters that stand on their own.

Extreme acts of violence, silly puns and alliterations, grumpiness, anyone is capable of all of these at any point if it’d make sense for a scene. Mookie doesn’t blink twice to use humorous violence and punches and “evil” violence punches alongside each other in the same arc. Have an empathetic and heroic character make crude puns around a corpse? Sure why not, puns are great.
It's hard to pry into the brain of Mookie to know what was preplanned and what was just made up on the spot, but in a lot of cases I get the sense that the revolving cast of characters feels like a bunch of toys he pulls out of a box, and once in a while if he gets bored of one, he throws it out.
Ironically this is one of the more fascinating parts of the comic, I really get the sense that Mookie does not care one iota about traditional narrative structure and almost wrote most of his early comic as a stream of consciousness of ideas he had or wanted to play around with. I can’t say this resulted in a particularly good story, but it sure meant that wild stuff could just happen out of nowhere on a whim.
Back when I first read DD this sort of almost ‘experimental’ approach to arcs was a big part of the hook that got me interested. Things like him introducing Luna, this tusk-having suicidal girl and deciding on a whim “oh yeah this’ll be the main character’s girlfriend now” is honestly kind of wild considering the massive influence that on-the-spot decision had for literally all of the comic’s future.

If anything, this might be part of why latter DD is in a strange way more boring and less entertaining to read. As Mookie got slightly better at foreshadowing, setting up arcs, planning ahead, he also stepped away from that “zero planning, just go with the flow” writing that made early arcs go into ridiculously wild places out of nowhere.

I was trying to think why late DD didn’t leave much of a lasting impression on me despite, in theory having writing that felt more coherent and, in some ways, better, more foreshadowing, more planning, character arcs that made some sense. And I realize that at its best & at its worst, DD was most memorable when intense or wild choices just popped up out of nowhere.

Like why do I remember Jacob’s introduction? The dude literally wore someone’s skin for days and days, rips it off, throws it at his brother who projectile vomits, slaughters the bad guy and then tries to mutilate greg for fun.

Before that moment DD is kind of just a silly gag comic that sometimes-had gags at slightly inappropriate moments & suddenly it goes from zero to eleven out of absolutely nowhere in the span of a single arc.

I feel that sort of writing that relies on shock, extreme moments & unexpected moments is hard to maintain though, at some point the suddenly intense violence becomes expected, the way arcs just bring new stuff into the fray starts to feel like inconsistent writing & the entire thing starts to feel quite messy.

4. I'm going to be blunt, Hell is pointless and bad.

I'm not going to mince words here but seriously? The only remotely satisfying thing to come out of the entire hell storyline is Bulgak finally finding peace after dying. It's absolutely wild to me, wild beyond words, that this comic decides to introduce something as incredibly high concept as hell literally exisiting and what do we get out of it?
- Karnak blows up a ball of Chosen and becomes the only lord of Hell.
- Spooky Siegfried knight who can attack holy ground for some reason.
- Siegfried eating his own dad because why not. Screw you Siegfried, that's what you get for being racist.
- Infernomancers existing I guess. How did the infernomancer steal Karnak's glove from hell & then return to earth again? I don't remember.

Like to me it basically comes down to: "hell exists and is very, very violent. Oh yeah and Hell ghosts can sometimes attack you."

I had a lot of trouble remembering details of the final 6-7 chapters, but it wasn't until after I finished the comic that it properly hit me but ... did Mookie just abandon that plot line or what?



Please, please correct me if I'm wrong but Siegfried desperately crying for help after eating his dad & Lady Loxo smirking in the background is literally the very last we see of the entire hell storyline, right?

All the metaphysical implications, all the moral implications, all the baggage that comes with actually having a true and existing hell in your world and the pay-off is a bunch of chapters of KArnak being ultra-violent, Siegfried being an angry ghost & him eating his dad. I can honestly say that from a narrative and world building point of view, the entire Hell-aspect of DD is by far my least favorite part of the entire comic. I don't care about Karnak, I don't like the weird stuff with Siegfried in hell, the entire thing is bad. I don't like it. Bulgak's redemption wasn't worth all that noise.



5. The issue isn’t the caste revolving around the Deegan clan, the issue is that the entire solar system does.

Some of my favorite moments in DD are those that explore character’s internal struggles, vulnerabilities, and interpersonal relationships. Two Thief or not two thief is a arc with extremely low stakes. Stunt brings a bunch of thugs into town and has to deal with the moral question of how acceptable it is to have his own petty vengeance scheme ruin his friend’s slim opportunity for a better life.
As this plays out the rather competent wizard, Luna, finds herself nearly choked to death by a small time thug in an ally, shattering all the self-confidence she built up in just a single moment as she feels more weak, hopeless and pathetic than she has since her suicide attempt early on.

It’s emotionally resonant stuff and as far as DD goes pretty good writing. This is just a number of people living their life & dealing with how their behavior affects others, or how no matter how important and competent they might feel, at a moment’s notice months/years of confidence building can be shattered by some small-time ****head with a violent streak.

I simultaneously know a lot about the world of DD & very little. I have a basic idea of the races, a basic idea of the important cities/countries, a basic idea of the magic system and realms beyond the physical.

Almost everything I know about the world directly ties into how it relates to Dom & Luna.
- Dom was the champion of Balance, directly tying him into his rivalry with Celesto, who accepted that role to challenge Dom specifically & became one of the series most major players due to that.
- Karnak, the King of hell, is now King of that place due to a long line of events that directly ties into the actions of Miranda, Donovan & Dominic and his relationship to them.
- Maltak was corrupted but thanks to Luna, the chosen one, restored, which directly impeded King David’s plan.
- King David took the position as archmage originally meant for Miranda, based on his backstory.
- Klo Tark? He knew to find Dom due to some time-travel-vision shenanigans that put him and Dom in connection way in the past.

DD isn’t alone in this as many, many stories tend to have this issue where they want to make the protagonist so important, so crucial to the story, that they design the world to revolve around the hero’s actions. But in DD this is often taken to exceptional levels, heaven earth and hell are moved due to the actions of the Deegan family. We’re not starting the story at the true start of Dom’s adventures, Miranda had her finger in so many pies that many major villains of note somehow connect to her past (Karnak, infernomancer, Helixa, etc.)

I’ve always had a bit of a personal pet peeve when fantasy worlds seem to revolve too significantly around a specific protagonist/chosen one to a point where a world doesn’t feel alive & lived in, but rather a vehicle to make the protagonist shine.

There’s a very strange ironic moment in the final arc, when Dominic finally sees the full extent of the universe, and he realizes the world he resides in is just a small speck in the grand scheme of things, he accepts this & understands how insignificant he truly is. This in contrast to King David, who had an absolute desire to center himself and Callan above all else.

Although I wouldn’t say Dom’s flaw was ever necessarily hubris, many times throughout the story he showed PTSD-like symptoms over all the awful garbage that the plot threw at his face. But … there is something strangely ironic about a character who in some way Is almost always at best one degree of separation away from massive events of influence, is shown all these universes that …

Well y’know, I never did participate in strip slays so let me express my sentiments with one:





Anyway, I had plans to do a quick write up of what I'd try to do to improve DD, I think I'll try to give my general thoughts on the biggest things I'd change to try and make the general narrative workable. After that I'll finally start reading true new content for me ... the Legacy. Can't wait.

Concerning Attack of the Archmagi, the chapter hits a lot less than it could or should. The archmages are handled as mere plot devices. They aren't developed characters and they aren't that dangerous. One ferries Rilian to the King and publicly denounces him, igniting the final confrontation. One traps Nimmel in another dimension, and another gets Nimmel the cloak, ushering the Eld plot. Finally, the big bug serves as a distraction to let the Infernomancer approach. They all are conveniently easy to take out, which also makes the arc repetitive and anticlimactic (the King himself admits that things aren't going well).

Second problem: low or unclear stakes. The King gets the Treasure, and this should be terrible, except the comic doesn't do much to transmit this. Compare The Lord of the Rings: the Ring will spell immediate doom for the good guys, if Sauron gets it. Not just that: Sauron is winning anyway, and the only way to defeat him is to destroy the Ring. Now, those are some clear, high stakes! And then you have a couple of additional hurdles to spice things up: the Ring can only be destroyed in the worst possible place and it tortures and corrupts anyone who carries it.
Mookie never really explains what the Treasure does, or, if he does, it gets lost in the text. Will it make the King immensely strong? Will it make the Beast immensely strong? Is it simply the means for a long-term project to syphon more power from the Heart and create a humanity of wizards? Is it some necessary sauce to make the planet easier on the Beast's digestion?
Also, the King is never in condition to use the Treasure anyway, because of Celesto.
Add to this that the good guys never really put any effort into getting or studying the Treasure, it was just handed to them.

About Ilario's death, that's again just a plot device to justify Quilt and Stunt joining the usual gang into something that is way above their head. This way, Quilt can kill Rillian, who can only be killed by Quilt, something no-one knew anything about, so that's lucky that Ilario died, uh? Also, Ilario hosing the Infernomancer's eyes with blood from his stumps is honestly too weird to be taken seriously. It's like those campy Asian horror movies where people strangle each other with their intestines. At the same time, vengeful Quilt is admittedly a good development. Overall, the death's fallout is handled well on the level of the surviving characters.
(plotwise, Jacob could have told Quilt that Jacob had to take care of the blighted, and so Quilt was the only one in the team that could kill Rilian. A not-dead Ilario could have been among the blighted.)

The deaths of the Battlecasters and the Masters suffer from the opposite problem. Mookie went for parallelism, and showing off the aggressors. Instead, he should have shown the victims dying. Again, a plot contrivance to remove the legal ways to depose the King (which I honestly had forgotten about; I think those deaths would have been more poignant if the victims had been the main characters of their own little arcs). This way, team Miranda is pushed towards a violent resolution.

Also, is Dominic immediately using the bugged crystal ball again after the attack?

I have to say however that this carefully built net of plot devices works for the fight between Miranda and the King. It's something I had first noticed in Snowsong vs Rachel & Co., Mookie can create some good battles by planning them out and working on action, reaction, and available resources. The King and Miranda having a bunch of tricks and expedients made for a nice battle, I think. The problem is when it's just devices without giving drama the means to breathe.

Yep fully agree with all of this. I've actually noticed with DD that the stakes in general feel weird in a lot of arcs, from Bandit Billy, to Snowsong, to the Beast the stakes for story arcs and villains always kinda fall in that realm of being either big, small or anything inbetween from page to page. I think what doesn't help is that Mookie is really, REALLY boring with powers and abilities for enemies.
Most bad guys either scratch, cut or tear with talons or blades, or they shoot massive beams to blow someone up. Aside from Celesto's organ splat chaos attack, very few villains have powers that are deadly in another way than sheer physical damage (say, using magic to deprive an entire room of oxygen and making people choke to death.)

I've actually not commented on the action and battles in DD super much, but I found most battles and action in DD insufferably dull. It's just a bunch of characters blasting beams at each other in many cases.

[Vinyadan]

Reading about the wild way early DD suddenly ramps up the shock, I couldn't help but notice how similar the later parts of The Curse and Visions of Doom are:

• The bad guys try to get innocents to hang themselves, because they stand to gain from it
• Dominic temporarily succeeds against the bad guys, only to find himself facing them again
• The danger subsides when someone Dominic knows but who isn't on his side kills the bad guys in a shockingly sudden way.

Looking at this, visions can be tampered with. A pretty important concept that never comes up again, for a main character that urgently needed limits. Vilrath had both a spell to plant visions and that famous gliph that blocked, identified and located scryers. But it might explain why Jacob occasionally sends visions do Dominic.

About killing children, I have to say that George Lucas took the same road a few years earlier: apparently, he couldn't come up with something better to show that Anakin was evil. It made more sense for Siegfried, a racist knight son of a racist general, possibly following him during the war. It's actually rather realistic. The question is, now that the irky subject has been mentioned, where do we go from here? Siegfried doesn't get a redemption arc, he never stops being racist, but his lack of redemption gets an interesting treatment in Hell.
There, at first he "isn't suffering", as Milov says, and he simply wants to become free again. So he gets to fight the King of Hell, he wins at first, but then he is definitely humiliated.
This ends his "rookie damned" phase: he is forced to accept that he is in HELL, that he doesn't have any hope left. He already knew why he was damned, but he didn't give it any weight, because things didn't look so dim, and he still believed he had meaningful things to do.
Now, there would actually still be one meaningful thing left. But Siegfried, instead of doing like Bulgak (and Derek Vinyard) and rejecting his old self, becomes furious at his father, the "great man" who fostered the acts that damned him. His realisation isn't that racism is wrong, it's that he's being punished for it. So he devours his father's head (an act of rage and impotence that might have been picked up directly from Dante's Ugolino, but that takes an interesting spin when it's a proud nobleman and knight doing it at his own father, the representative of his family and the source of his nobility).
Instead, Rheinholdt gets his redemption. Outrage Chief (aka Mr Shintula) also redeems himself after he was helped by Callanians.
However, this feels very bottom heavy, I think, because, as you say, Seigfried's racist crimes against humanity were added to make it clear that he was evil, so he could go to hell for a nice punch in the guts. There is very little hinted as to how racism develops in normal conditions. Outrage Chief was a violent isolationist with a serious grudge, no big surprise after what had happened to him; but why did Callanians hate the Orcs? I mean that we still lack an equivalent for the part of American History X where Derek Vinyard gives his speech before the assault on the food store, plus the scenes about his father. Stunt tentatively tries to get an origin story, but the parts that made sense (feelings of betrayal and self-hate) get dimmed by the over-the-top drama of him randomly killing his mother (and the local drama of Jayden being mortally wounded by Mommy Bug and then being mortally wounded by falling in Rilian's ruins. And hey, remember that time she was mortally wounded by Bulgak, or when an illusion of her was mortally wounded by Milov? I'm starting to think her personality is "getting killed".).

BTW, I don't think the Hell plotline was abandoned. I think it was closed that way to show that it was never ending, that the backstabbing, violence, hate, machiavellianism, petty attempts to gain status in a place were nothing had meaning were going to be there forever, and that was Siegfried's fate.

[Welf]

EPILOGUE

Well y’know, I never did participate in strip slays so let me express my sentiments with one:

I can't see the image; opening the link directly in a browser tab doesn't help

[Neoriceisgood]

Reading about the wild way early DD suddenly ramps up the shock, I couldn't help but notice how similar the later parts of The Curse and Visions of Doom are:

• The bad guys try to get innocents to hang themselves, because they stand to gain from it
• Dominic temporarily succeeds against the bad guys, only to find himself facing them again
• The danger subsides when someone Dominic knows but who isn't on his side kills the bad guys in a shockingly sudden way.

Looking at this, visions can be tampered with. A pretty important concept that never comes up again, for a main character that urgently needed limits. Vilrath had both a spell to plant visions and that famous gliph that blocked, identified and located scryers. But it might explain why Jacob occasionally sends visions do Dominic.

About killing children, I have to say that George Lucas took the same road a few years earlier: apparently, he couldn't come up with something better to show that Anakin was evil. It made more sense for Siegfried, a racist knight son of a racist general, possibly following him during the war. It's actually rather realistic. The question is, now that the irky subject has been mentioned, where do we go from here? Siegfried doesn't get a redemption arc, he never stops being racist, but his lack of redemption gets an interesting treatment in Hell.
There, at first he "isn't suffering", as Milov says, and he simply wants to become free again. So he gets to fight the King of Hell, he wins at first, but then he is definitely humiliated.
This ends his "rookie damned" phase: he is forced to accept that he is in HELL, that he doesn't have any hope left. He already knew why he was damned, but he didn't give it any weight, because things didn't look so dim, and he still believed he had meaningful things to do.
Now, there would actually still be one meaningful thing left. But Siegfried, instead of doing like Bulgak (and Derek Vinyard) and rejecting his old self, becomes furious at his father, the "great man" who fostered the acts that damned him. His realisation isn't that racism is wrong, it's that he's being punished for it. So he devours his father's head (an act of rage and impotence that might have been picked up directly from Dante's Ugolino, but that takes an interesting spin when it's a proud nobleman and knight doing it at his own father, the representative of his family and the source of his nobility).
Instead, Rheinholdt gets his redemption. Outrage Chief (aka Mr Shintula) also redeems himself after he was helped by Callanians.
However, this feels very bottom heavy, I think, because, as you say, Seigfried's racist crimes against humanity were added to make it clear that he was evil, so he could go to hell for a nice punch in the guts. There is very little hinted as to how racism develops in normal conditions. Outrage Chief was a violent isolationist with a serious grudge, no big surprise after what had happened to him; but why did Callanians hate the Orcs? I mean that we still lack an equivalent for the part of American History X where Derek Vinyard gives his speech before the assault on the food store, plus the scenes about his father. Stunt tentatively tries to get an origin story, but the parts that made sense (feelings of betrayal and self-hate) get dimmed by the over-the-top drama of him randomly killing his mother (and the local drama of Jayden being mortally wounded by Mommy Bug and then being mortally wounded by falling in Rilian's ruins. And hey, remember that time she was mortally wounded by Bulgak, or when an illusion of her was mortally wounded by Milov? I'm starting to think her personality is "getting killed".).

BTW, I don't think the Hell plotline was abandoned. I think it was closed that way to show that it was never ending, that the backstabbing, violence, hate, machiavellianism, petty attempts to gain status in a place were nothing had meaning were going to be there forever, and that was Siegfried's fate.

Oh the fact that the plot point of misleading/manipulated visions was never utilized again is such a damn shame, aside from adding some interesting 4D chess to more manipulative characters, it'd also give characters like Serk Brakkis the legal wiggle room to escape inprisonment based on evidence found in visions (after all they -can- be tampered with).

I agree with basically everything you describe, yeah. With Reinholt & Thuen Gor we at least get some answers as to why they believe the things they do (Reinholt = peer pressure, Thuen Gor = Callanians literally ruined his entire country, messed up his family etc. Righteous indignation.), but for characters like King David, Siegfried & Racist dad? Nada. It really feels like they're made racist literally just to put emphasis on how evil and bad they are.

What really strikes me as weird here is Siegfried in particular. His best friend is a spellwolf? Like what makes the super racist thing feel particularly strange is how incredibly selective it seems as well. There could totally be an interesting point made here about how racism is largely fueled by propaganda & that King David intentionally tried to paint orcs in as bad a light as humanly possible to help justify the war, but it never goes into that direction much.


A thing I do wonder when I look at major elements of the final plot, Maltak, The Beast, King David's final goals but ... does anyone know if Mookie is by any chance a huge fan of Full Metal Alchemist?

It wasn't until I re-read the full ending that I started seeing parallels, the whole " magic door with some truth about magic on the other end of it", "The ultimate bad guy using messed up magic in an attempt to access that door even if it requires massive homocide/war", this got me thinking about Maltak & e.g. The Ishbala war in FMA.

It's different enough that the similarities might just be a coincidence, but there's enough of them that it did get me wondering.

I can't see the image; opening the link directly in a browser tab doesn't help

I just hotlinked dropbox, I guess I'm not supposed to lol. Does the new link work?

[Gez]

I just hotlinked dropbox, I guess I'm not supposed to lol. Does the new link work?

Works for me now.

[Celestia]

...Snout's overcome challenges?

[Gez]

...Snout's overcome challenges?

Snout has had challenges to overcome?

Apparently, "finding a comfortable place" was the challenge. So now whenever I go to bed, I can tell myself I'm overcoming a challenge.

[Vinyadan]

I am somewhat surprised by how few webcomic authors actually consider their publishing format when planning their scripts. The Giant explicitly cares about this stuff, and it's why reading the new page will remind you of what's happened before, even if you haven't reread the comic since the last update. Here I think we are in a phase where the update schedule is really working against the comic. The Christmas break came right as Snout seemed to finally have a vision, and the unexplained back-and-forth between reality and vision with the two realities mixing with memories is just too hard to follow if you simply read the pages the day they come out. The lack of text doesn't help, either. Plus, it isn't clear what happened to Snout as he fell down in the vision reality: did he smash himself, and come back in a flash of light like a character in a videogame?

By the way, according to the blog, Michael is itching to create a new project. He's thought up some new dwarves and characters, and has been considering how to put them into work (a podcast or a new comic, or some other form). Personally, I'd say "go for it... and use speech balloons!".

[MetroAlien]

I want to thank you, Neoriceisgood, for your chapter reviews!

It's been a veritable blast reading through them and actually kinda nostalgic...
I always enjoy literary analysis. It helps that your "in hindsight" type of reasoning about DD feels sort of refreshing.
That is, compared to all the snark that happened in the moment.
It makes me think about how I myself have changed as a person since first reading DD.

One thing that stands out to me throughout all your chapter reviews,
is how much of an impact Mookie's newsposts (the Mookieposts, lol) had at the time.

What really made me notice this, is how in your analysis of the wedding arc, you call it "cute" and just leave it at that.
But what I vividly remember back in the day, are the para-social comments of Mookie fawning over his real fiancé.

like, Mookie, dude, we're not your family?
we don't wish you ill, but we don't actually care either, you know?

also how unbelievable looooong the comic arc dragged out...
It was the end of the year and Mookie went on several hiatuses related to holidays and his own IRL wedding.
If I'm not mistaken, this was also one of the rare occasions when the update schedule actually slowed down.
While it feels like a short side-arc in the archive, it dredged on for literal months in real time!
(or at least that's how I remember it)

---
On a related note, you mention how Snowsong and Facebath feel "off" for some reason, despite similar gimmicks being attempted more successfully in other media.
To that, I want to remind you, that your suspicions were basically flat-out confirmed by Mookie himself.
IIRC with Snowsong specifically, Mookie said almost verbatim:

I got my collector's edition of the original silver surfer in the mail today, which reminded me how awesome silver-age superhero comics are. Too bad modern comics suck.
I'll attempt to revive the silver-age feeling with my next arc of DD. I hope you all enjoy!
Vegan on and Rock out,

So, yeah... these random elements really were his own hobbies that he decided to include literally on a whim, sometimes even acknowledging the thematic whiplash, but actively choosing to ignore it.

The same goes for some of the dramatic moments, I think?
Unless I'm utterly confusing things in my head, Bumper's death was similarly explained in a Mookiepost as him "upping the stakes" for our heroes.
For which we, of course, ridiculed him because, as you point out, Bumper is kinda a non-character by that point in the story. Oh well!

A tangent, but still slightly related, is the issue with Mookie's treatment of the archmages. That's also a point that I remember generating a lot of targeted snark.
He basically uses them for the same narrative purpose as Bumper's death: to "up the stakes".
You mention how out heroes' "low moment" doesn't feel that bad, all things considered. But in Mookie's head, the archmages count towards the heroes' losses, not King David's.
Still, I think your analysis is correct, in the sense that Mookie utterly failed to establish the archmages as sympathetic, or even useful characters to our heroes, so their loss almost feels like a gain of some sort.

More generally, both King David and the archmages feed into the weirdness around the power-dynamics at play on a meta-narrative level...
I also don't subscribe to the "castes" point of view of DD's cast of characters, but I can't deny that certain trends exist.
King David and the archmages are supposed to be these extremely powerful beings, inspiring awe and fear.
The closest comparison we have, as readers, is Miranda, herself an archmage. But the problem is that King David and the other archmages never do anything even comparable to Miranda's feats.
In fact, they almost consistently get trounced by characters and methods, that we expect Miranda could handle while only half paying attention.
Worst of all, most of the time this trouncing is earned by showing undeserved mercy to Dominic or his loved ones.
Adding to insult to injury, we have multiple previous examples when Dominic and co. didn't show said mercy to villains in equivalent situations and won as a result.

As a result, we have a story where the "villains" display both lack of competence and hesitation, while the "heroes" never miss a beat and are ruthless in their punishment.
Intuitively, this feels like the roles are the inverse of "expected" storytelling. Adding to that, the purported heroes display decidedly un-heroic traits, which are even acknowledged by Mookie himself, from time to time, but never really addressed in a conclusive way.
As you already wrote, it's very arbitrary who gets a "redemption", made more infuriating by Mookie's mostly failed attempts to justify it.
The fact that both redemption and punishment seem to happen at the hands of the Deegans, not through karmic "higher forces", only reinforces this interpretation.
We don't know our villains through their place in the literary structure, we know them, because we are told evidence of their villainy. Mookie has to beat us over the head with it, because otherwise we wouldn't be able to tell.

I think that's one of the biggest bouncing-off points for snarkers.
It's easy enough to suspend disbelief and enjoy a mediocre story.
It's much harder to suspend one's moral compass and engage with the text in its own dimension of "green vs purple ethics", especially when presented as clumsily as in DD.
When that hurdle isn't cleared, it sometimes doesn't even get to the point of suspending the disbelief in the first place.

[Neoriceisgood]

Hey MetroAlien! Thank you, I'm glad another reader took the time to go through my readthrough/ "reviews". I definitely agree the entire journey was strangely nostalgic in a weird way.

As charitable as my reread ended up being, I can't exactly say I came to the shocking conclusion DD was good all along or anything as revolutionary, but even flawed/trashy comics like DD can be incredibly nostalgic trips down memory lane when you ended up reading them for many, many of your formative years as a teenager.


I intentionally decided to judge the comic as much by its own merit as possible, though I do know that some of Mookie's blog posts, news posts & some stuff like hiatuses definitely messed with how certain arcs were perceived. I do think this is something the comic greatly benefits from after-the-fact. A lot of the page-by-page pacing is pretty good and snappy. It did make me realise that, as bad and unpleasant as slow update rates can be at times, at the end of the day a binge/re-read can make slow arcs feel absolutely fine when it's no longer bogged down by bad pacing caused by life getting in the way.

I definitely agree that the weird and often "skeevy" morals of DD are definitely where it lost most people, things like the weird Stonewater Melna backstory arguably aged even worse than expected & to this day I don't understand Mookie's motivation for deciding that'd be a good addition to any story.
I think the weird morals mixed with the fact that his protagonist & entourage are clearly voice-of-god-y goody-good guy characters who are meant to have good morals just raises questions. Lots of questions. I'd personally chalk it up to Mookie literally throwing stuff at the wall without stopping and thinking for a moment what the deeper implications are, rather than active malice. But it certainly makes some parts of the comic an unpleasant read when these really questionable morals keep getting mixed with Dominic word-of-god-ing the correct moral to have about these situations.



I actually did make a start on a big post I was still planning where I basically spitball a potential rewrite of DD, what aspects I consider good/interesting enough to salvage, what parts should be removed entirely.

I'll just throw what notes I've had so far in here for those that may find it an interesting mental exercise:

I quickly discovered trying to actually plot out a rewrite of the entire comic is a CHORE, so instead I started out with some basic elements like how I'd tweak/fix the main characters.

FIXING DOMINIC DEEGAN

Okay to end my sprawling review and analysis, I’m going to throw in my two cents on how I’d try to fix this interesting trainwreck of a comic.

MAIN CAST & Opening chapters
DOMINIC
Okay so on paper I love the core concept behind Dominic as this grumpy seer but … truth to be told, within DD he’s not -that- grumpy, his only real grumpy scenes tend to be in reaction to inane stupid lynn’s brook people.
He’s mostly portrayed as a smart and empathetic guy who tries to do good but has little patience for stupidity … a sorta bookish nerdy RELATABLE protagonist.

Rubbish, I feel if he was a legitimate grumpy misanthrope at the start of the story, one who actively chose to socially isolate because he tends to resent people of all shapes and sizes it would immediately fix a whole slew of issues his character has.

1. An actual arc for growth.
When I look at Dominic throughout the entire story, the most interesting aspect is that he shows some PTSD-type signs over his intense adventures, which eventually leads into the whole MindBreak subplot, but beyond that I’m not sure I can really talk of any arc worthy of note for the man.
I feel if Dom’s grumpiness was more openly misanthropic and more frequently significantly worse/more extreme than a situation calls for, it’d allow for him opening up to people to be a more gradual and essential arc.
I think that for a good part his current personality can work -fine- as the note he’d end up on, but right now he’s honestly a bit too nice and “perfect” at the start of the narrataive already.

2. his relationship with his mother and brothers could be made far more interesting.
A big issue with the story as it stands is that his mother is incredibly powerful & her relationship with both Greg and Dom is … great. This kinda makes it confusing when certain arcs have these massive problems that could probably be solved easier through a single call to Miranda.
As we’ve seen though, Miranda does have some interesting character traits, like her very controlling nature & her often using her incredible magic powers/scrying capabilities to pry into business that starts to feel a bit uncomfortable.

If Dom’s relationship with his clown of a dad & privacy-invading mother is significantly worse at the start of the story, it’d make a lot more sense why he’s off in this ****ty little off-the-grid town getting beaten by royal knights without ever bringing up what family he’s part of.
There’s a bunch of hints at unpleasant behavior within the family, Dom’s reaction at Greg talking about Jacob, Miranda’s behavior & her life coming with a lot of baggage that keeps affecting her sons.

Having there be a dilemma with Miranda where relying on her powers simultaneously results in her returning in Dom’s day to day life in a way that turns out a bit too controlling and toxic after too much time could make for an interesting dynamic within the family to overcome.

I’ll elaborate on this further as I get to the Miranda rewrite.
3. His rivalry with Celesto could be more interesting if the two started much closer on the moral spectrum.
So I’ll say immediately: Celesto to me is the most interesting/fun villain in all of DD and conceptually I really love what Mookie -wants- to do with him but … his moral decline happens too fast & gets too extreme so early on that it kinda makes his points fall flat.

I think a good number of the Celesto & Dom conflicts we see within the narrative can almost stay as-is, but I’d feel inversing their trajectories as characters could work wonders. Have Dom be more of a complete antisocial misanthrope who believes most people are fundamentally bad and not capable of redeeming themselves, whereas Celesto is more idealistic, sociable and open-minded.
Then as Dom goes through an arc of moral and social progress, Celesto through various choices and experiences simultaneously follows an arc of moral decay.
4. The self-insert bookish good guy vibe would be lessened if he was less of a bland hero trope.
A lot of the “people annoy Dom” moments feel off because it feels like random strawmen Mookie as a person hates and wants to make fun of. This point is pretty easy to fix by making Dom’s grouchy reactions feel a bit too extreme and harsh even with people who clearly aren’t that bad.
5. his good nature could be a well-kept secret that Dom doesn’t openly share, explaining a lot of the stigma and negative reputation he keeps gathering.
It’s kinda strange how in DD, Dominic is this absolutely massive hero who does amazing good, and outside of Barthis and a select few friends this seems like a pretty well-kept secret to many people, there even being a point to how these terrible rumors spread around him.

I feel that early on, there can be a point made about Dominic having some deeply rooted heroic/good traits, going out of his way to help people/fix bad stuff his visions alert him to, but that his antisocial side and unwillingness to really connect with most people because he doesn’t respect them, results in him never taking any form of credit for all the stuff he does.
There can be a bit of a self-destructive side to his grumpy misanthropic tendencies where he considers people ungrateful, despite the fact that Dom goes out of his way to help them by “fixing things himself” in ways that barely leave any evidence for people to even understand he helped them out.

--

LUNA
So I feel keeping the Luna x Dom relationship as the core of the story is -fine-, I actually love how DD has the main character get into a legitimate relationship early on and builds on that. It’s pretty rare for fiction to do that as they usually love dangling the ‘will they won’t they?’ question in front of audiences for eons.

I do think it might be good to introduce Luna a little bit later into the story so we get a bit of a fuller picture of what Dom on his own is like, and that the actual connection between Dom & Luna requires significantly more growth from both people.

When we first meet Luna she’s about to kill herself because her mother is so incredibly cruel to her & based on what we learn later, her siblings also treated her like dirt. I’ll get to her sisters later, but aside from some self-esteem issues that sometimes shine through, there’s this weird disconnect in Luna where she goes from absolutely suicidal and at her lowest point to mostly okay with a few self doubt issues from time to time when she’s with Dom.

I -get- that Mookie wants to portray a mostly positive relationship, but in all honestly reading through DD, most of the major characters can feel quite stale because they’re “already there” for the most part, the true development they must go through happens relatively quick. If Dom is written to be significantly more misanthropic and grouchier though, that would naturally change his early relationship with Luna.
I think that Dom stepping in and stopping her from committing suicide should stay (cut out the stupid pun though, it feels tasteless), but I think that them connecting early on will go slower.

Luna can definitely stay smart and studious, but she attempted suicide twice, meanwhile Dom is a grumpy hermit who, although, going out of his way to keep Luna alive, has the social finesse of … well, a grumpy hermit. I can imagine that Luna’s first remarks about Dom’s house being shoddy and fitting for a pauper result in them not entirely starting off on the right foot. So the entire “they immediately hit it off talking about theories of magic” takes time.
Luna does actually read and understand Dom’s notes, but they’re not communicating well enough for Dom to realize just how smart she actually is. He tolerates her because he doesn’t want to feel responsible for her dying if she’s left unsupervised.

Spark
Spark I wouldn’t change much! However, here’s an important part:
-> all the insensitive and out-of-place puns and jokes? Throw as many of them onto spark as possible.
He’s an absolutely idiotic animal with no social antennae, a lot of jokes in DD feel cruel and callous because people who supposedly have empathy keep making them at awful times, but for spark this works.

It’s repeatedly established throughout DD that talking animals might be able to converse, but they don’t quite have the people skills to grasp complex emotions. Spark being this joking, jolly emotional support animal that literally cannot comprehend that there’s no bad time for a joke fits.
There’s 1-2 other characters I feel can be the resident jokesters, but for early DD all those puns should go to the cat.

More importantly: By making Dom extra grumpy and maladjusted & making Luna’s self-doubt put her far more in her shell, also makes Spark the perfect glue to help break the ice. As cold and grouchy as Dom might appear, he’s keeping this cat around who always makes the most inappropriate remarks, why? Spark can basically function as the first “hint” that whilst Dom acts cold and secludes himself, he does actually crave conversation & company, even if it’s annoying.
Spark works because no matter how grumpy Dom reacts, Spark will always love his boss based on the food he gets. Meanwhile Dom enjoys the simple social interactions that come from this animal who will always be happy to share weird jokes and remarks and never gets offended if Dom’s reactions are earnest and grouchy. For a person who has a difficult time showing his good side, who tends to scare people off with his rather unpleasant grouchy demeanor, someone as unbothered by it as spark is a perfect companion.

I can imagine that early on when Luna and Dom are sort of frigidly living in the same house, that whenever Luna feels she upset him, or that the only person who wants her alive also resents/hates her, Spark can be a source of simple yet unintended wisdom; e.g. “I don’t think he hates you! He gets mad at me every day and he absolutely loves me!” “how can you tell?” “well he feeds me, why would he do that if he doesn’t love me?”.

Right now Spark is mostly a source of alliterations and puns, but he kinda lacks greater narrative purpose. Considering almost everyone makes puns in DD it makes him a bit of a wasted character.
I feel keeping the pun/joke focus more fundamentally on him, and making him the key piece to the Dom/Luna relationship actually evolving from the frigid standstill it starts out at makes him a far more key character.

THE TRAVORIA CLAN
Okay so here’s a small thing I want to change:
Luna has a couple of sisters: Barnet, the lawyer sis & szark’s girlfriend. I don’t feel like recalling their names. (Amalia was the Szark one I think?)
and their mother Croona.

So as it stands I find luna’s original story a bit … weak, like I feel that her mother pushing her to suicide to get a whole load of money from the Callanian knights is a decent enough scheme and can largely stay, but here’s my big question: why *now*?

So next to Luna’s tusks I want to add another little thing to her history: Luna actually helped Barnet escape their terrible household not too long ago in the current story, and when Barnet left she secretly took a ton of family jewels and riches with her.
As a result not only was Luna the “ugly” child, but she’s also seen as partly responsible for bringing the family this massive financial damage that her mother & the other two sisters hold Luna largely responsible for.
DD currently has a bit of a problem where many of the protagonists have such incredibly vile and evil plans that come out of nowhere that it becomes laughable, having Luna help Barnet without realizing that Barnet would
a] leave luna behind
b] would take off with an incredible amount of family diamonds and wealth
perfectly sets Luna up as the loser child who was tolerated because she was family, who has now also done something so “Harmful” to the family that even keeping her around seems like a mistake.
In addition to self-esteem issues about her appearance, this would also give more room for general trust issues & the feeling like she deserved to die for a lot more than -just- being ugly.
SIEGFRIED
So Siegfried’s role in this arc is mostly just fine as-is. But knowing his long-term arc I feel that his racism could already be implied/foreshadowed here. When the mother is doing her monologue about her plan, she could blurt out that Luna with her orc-looking face having a crush on the most racist knight in the entire kingdom gave the perfect set up to completely crush her self-esteem, assuming Siegfried wouldn’t just kill her on sight out of shock. (heavily implying the compensation could’ve come simply due to Siegfried apparently having a reputation for killing orcs on sight). I can imagine Siegfried slightly bemoaning his honor and stating for clarity that whilst Luna’s tusks might be disgusting, he’d never stoop so low as to kill an innocent human for being cursed with looking hideous.

Croona knowing a lot about Siegfried’s history and trying to leverage that against a daughter who -looks- a bit orcish would make total sense and could easily add some foreshadowing to Siegfried’s character with only one additional page or a couple of additional lines. This’d also fix one of my biggest issues with Siegfried’s general arc, namely that some terrible traits just seem to come out of left field.

STUNT & BUMPER
They’re … fine honestly. With Stunt I kinda feel if his misogyny comes from religion, perhaps he’d still be obviously/openly religious somehow? I don’t fully mind the idea that he’s kinda in that sexist “women are inferior” camp and grows out of it, but the reasons he feel that way feel a bit wishy-washy right now. Blaming religion when he’s clearly not a religious character at all feels a bit … off.
Later in Just Deserts it’s implied he -knows- his dad was ****ty, but he still held his beliefs anyway?

I feel him simply being completely absorbed in extremely toxic ideas regarding masculinity and clinging to those because it’s the only thing of “Value” he has in his own mind & him lashing out as women/treating them as inferior to secure his own masculinity makes more sense than some weird religious stuff that feels barely relevant to his character.

I also feel that making Bumper a bit younger, like we’re talking stunt 22-25 and bumper around 18, might also fit their dynamic. Stunt doesn’t just see Bumper as a friend, but he’s kind of trying to protect/help this lost kid who he recognizes himself in, and in a weird way making sue that Bumper never has to do the “dirty/bad’ stuff that Stunt had to do to survive at that age.

If there’s anything in particular I’d do with Stunt’s arc that was honestly already kinda there, is have his entire self-identity, his misogyny, his lashing out all be violent protection against the notion that he absolutely hates himself in extreme ways. He’s so desperately clinging on to notions of toxic masculinity and violence, because if he admitted even for a second any of that was bad, he’d have to accept he’s one of the worst most disgusting people out there. Ironically his almost obsessive desire with keeping Bumper’s morals “clean” could be rooted in this.

[MetroAlien]

Looking forward to reading your "fixing DD" essay


I'll reply to it later when it had time to stew in my head...

For now, I feel I should say some positive things after ragging on DD for so long.

All in all, I'd say I definitely enjoyed my time with DD.
Despite it's flaws, I don't feel like my time was "wasted", unlike other entertainment media that are "just bad".
It's been mentioned several times before, but Mookie himself has a certain charm and infectious enthusiasm that makes it very hard to hold the flaws of DD's story against him.
This alone sets him apart unmistakably in a good way, especially when there are plenty examples of the opposite, particularly in the arena web-comics.
Props to Mookie where props are due!

Here, I'd wager the following bold statement: "Dominic Deagan is not bad"
Sorry, that was a clickbait title that slipped into my comment...
Obviously, DD has many significant flaws.
What I mean is, DD isn't bad in the same way other entertainment media are bad.
I'll list some examples:

1.
I wouldn't even say DD has a bad/unsatisfying story.
There are aspects to it that are problematic, as discussed.
But, on a macroscopic level, imho the plot of DD compares favourably to "final season of Game of Thrones TV show" or "Netflix' Death Note".

2.
While the presentation (i.e. the art, among other things) is often criticised, it's not a "make-or-break" situation as with other entertainment media, where the way the narrative is presented undeniably precludes any enjoyment of the material itself.
(I'm thinking of M. Shyamalan's Avatar: TLA)

3.
For better or worse, the characters are memorable and instantly recognisable in concept (not visually, lol).
I.e. you'd know even without any context that the phrase "smug divination wizard with prosthetic limbs" refers to Dominic

In my mind, DD occupies a similar space to Harry Potter.
I'm aware that I'm an "odd one out" here, given HP's popularity, but I never get tired of analysing its plot holes and world-building quirks.


If I had to say DD has one flaw, I'd say it's framing.
That's narrative framing, although the graphic framing of the comic's panels has also been criticised.
Protagonists are framed as orthodox "heroes", while being written as anti-heroes.
The narrative flow is framed like a sitcom, while the content is a fantasy epic.
Dialogue is framed dramatically, while the literal written text is comedic.
The comedy itself is framed like slice-of-life, while in actuality containing slapstick.
The world-building and magic system are framed as set dressing (e.g. Flintstones) while being integral to the story's development. This, by itself, wouldn't be a problem... in a deconstruction, but DD doesn't even pretend to be one.
(I'm talking about a "real" deconstruction, not the TVTropes-kind *shudder*)

Probably because Stunt's un-misogyn-ation is relatively fresh in my mind (due to coming later in the story) I find his heel-face turn particularly jarring.
The religion "excuse" especially felt like... well, an excuse not to write something deeper.
In addition, all the fluff that tries to justify the "religion" retcon just feels hack-ish and clumsy, probably also due to the speed at which it's delivered.
I think there's a concise way to deal with several issues in Stunt's arc all at once.
Namely: make the bad guys from "to thief or not to thief" use Stunt's father as leverage over him.
For example, they could be goading Stunt by insulting his father.
This would: A) set up and show the deep respect that Stunt has for his father. B) allow for an avenue for that respect to go away when "to thief or not to thief" resolves

[Kantaki]

New comic

I seriously don't know what is going on anymore.
All I got is that Dominic was terrible at naming stuff.

Like seriously dude, it's nice you love your wife, but did you have to use her name for everything you came across?

[Celestia]

I seriously don't know what is going on anymore.

Neither do I. It's all just nonsense now, and I lost the story months ago.

[Neoriceisgood]

Looking forward to reading your "fixing DD" essay


I'll reply to it later when it had time to stew in my head...

For now, I feel I should say some positive things after ragging on DD for so long.

All in all, I'd say I definitely enjoyed my time with DD.
Despite it's flaws, I don't feel like my time was "wasted", unlike other entertainment media that are "just bad".
It's been mentioned several times before, but Mookie himself has a certain charm and infectious enthusiasm that makes it very hard to hold the flaws of DD's story against him.
This alone sets him apart unmistakably in a good way, especially when there are plenty examples of the opposite, particularly in the arena web-comics.
Props to Mookie where props are due!

Here, I'd wager the following bold statement: "Dominic Deagan is not bad"
Sorry, that was a clickbait title that slipped into my comment...
Obviously, DD has many significant flaws.
What I mean is, DD isn't bad in the same way other entertainment media are bad.
I'll list some examples:

1.
I wouldn't even say DD has a bad/unsatisfying story.
There are aspects to it that are problematic, as discussed.
But, on a macroscopic level, imho the plot of DD compares favourably to "final season of Game of Thrones TV show" or "Netflix' Death Note".

2.
While the presentation (i.e. the art, among other things) is often criticised, it's not a "make-or-break" situation as with other entertainment media, where the way the narrative is presented undeniably precludes any enjoyment of the material itself.
(I'm thinking of M. Shyamalan's Avatar: TLA)

3.
For better or worse, the characters are memorable and instantly recognisable in concept (not visually, lol).
I.e. you'd know even without any context that the phrase "smug divination wizard with prosthetic limbs" refers to Dominic

In my mind, DD occupies a similar space to Harry Potter.
I'm aware that I'm an "odd one out" here, given HP's popularity, but I never get tired of analysing its plot holes and world-building quirks.


If I had to say DD has one flaw, I'd say it's framing.
That's narrative framing, although the graphic framing of the comic's panels has also been criticised.
Protagonists are framed as orthodox "heroes", while being written as anti-heroes.
The narrative flow is framed like a sitcom, while the content is a fantasy epic.
Dialogue is framed dramatically, while the literal written text is comedic.
The comedy itself is framed like slice-of-life, while in actuality containing slapstick.
The world-building and magic system are framed as set dressing (e.g. Flintstones) while being integral to the story's development. This, by itself, wouldn't be a problem... in a deconstruction, but DD doesn't even pretend to be one.
(I'm talking about a "real" deconstruction, not the TVTropes-kind *shudder*)

Another thing I noticed whilst discussing DD with a friend who never read it before that I dragged into my re-read of both DD & Kid Radd is that DD's general pacing is actually quite good when you binge it?

I know people disliked the pacing when DD was uploading 1 page at a time, and ... honestly this is a problem a lot of webcomics run into, getting a story told to you 1 page a day is a pretty slow format. But when you actually look at how DD's storylines are set up and resolve the story's pacing feels pretty solid, arcs resolve pretty quickly without feeling unsatisfactory.

Even relatively long arcs like Maltak honestly don't drag that much when you can binge it.

I definitely agree with your "framing" critique, I kinda described it myself as "narrative dissonance", a lot of DD's individual elements can totally work in the right context, but DD keeps smacking things together that should not go together. Horrible deaths followed up by silly puns etc.

I do agree that at a concept level, DD has a large cast that doesn't feel difficult to differentiate and remember. Stunt and Bumper, Scarlanti, Jacob etc all tend to leave a pretty strong impression that makes them easy to remember, even if the designs are sometimes a bit samey.

Considering with a lot of webcomics that run long & have large casts I sometimes struggle a bit to remember each character, I'll admit I never found myself running into this problem with DD.

[Gez]

So apparently, Snout can learn and take initiatives, such as "oh no the ink witch is driving again, run for shelter". This is huge character growth.

[Vinyadan]

In DD news, on the 20th of February Mookie will launch the Kickstarter reprint campaign for the second volume of the DD Omnibus. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...bus-2-reprint/

[Kantaki]

New comic(s)

Okay, that broken finger was entirely deserved.
Rude. The other guy didn't even do anything. Yet. This time.

And now Argonaut is about to get beaten up. Well done, Snout.

[Vinyadan]

6 days left for the Kickstarter, 96% complete. https://www.dominic-deegan.com/so-close/ If someone wants to pitch in, now's a good time

I'm somewhat enjoying the current scene: at least, something is happening! Snout is oddly good at dodging, but we have seen him fight the Wild Edge tree before. Still, it's pretty odd to see him go from dog/child/puppy to action hero like that.

[Vinyadan]

Cowabunga! Although the Necromancing Deegan is there, and could probably kill that guy with a thought.

[Celestia]

I want to be mad that Snout has spontaneously acquired super fighting powers for no reason, but I just don't care. I've lost so much interest in this comic that the only reason I still read it is habit.

[Pax1138]

I'm pretty sure Astral Plane guy is possessing him and doing the asskicking for him.

[Celestia]

Wow. Sounds like there was a lot of story and character development that we missed.

[Vinyadan]

A couple interesting posts about the comic's story and direction.

https://www.dominic-deegan.com/endin...egacy-sort-of/

https://www.dominic-deegan.com/how-t...ed-the-legacy/

So when the comic started, it was supposed to be about Snout looking for clues about Dominic, having zany adventures like the one against the tree and, at the same time, showing how different the world has become from the original run of DD. However, Snout ended up getting a different direction, entering the dreamworld, in part because of the character's story taking that direction, in part because the epidemic was extremely heavy on Mookie and dreamscape panoramas helped him push through it. Now he plans to end Snout's story (this is the beginning of the end) and get a different, more apt character as a tourguide to this world.

[Neoriceisgood]

A couple interesting posts about the comic's story and direction.

https://www.dominic-deegan.com/endin...egacy-sort-of/

https://www.dominic-deegan.com/how-t...ed-the-legacy/

So when the comic started, it was supposed to be about Snout looking for clues about Dominic, having zany adventures like the one against the tree and, at the same time, showing how different the world has become from the original run of DD. However, Snout ended up getting a different direction, entering the dreamworld, in part because of the character's story taking that direction, in part because the epidemic was extremely heavy on Mookie and dreamscape panoramas helped him push through it. Now he plans to end Snout's story (this is the beginning of the end) and get a different, more apt character as a tourguide to this world.

Interesting, I guess I'll do my readthrough of the Legacy once it concludes! I'm sort of curious about it, but could tell I'd not enjoy reading it day-by-day.

[MetroAlien]

the elephant in the room being that Mookie can't meaningfully show us what "changed" in the world of DD

because we have (at best) minimal and (at worst) contradictory clues about what it was originally like...

Unless he hammers us over the head with "this thing is new and different" we can't really be sure

...

wait... hammering us over the head is Mookie's preferred writing style... dang it...

oh well, I guess Mookie wins after all
forget I said anything...

[lord_khaine]

Despite the usual dumb/unfair comments from in here i gave the story another go and binged the last 3-4 months.
Read like that it was actually an interesting enough story. The pacing became good.

I liked the fight. I liked the motivation we got from the villains.
Its slightly annoying that of course, the main villain had to be racist. But its a minor quibble.