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

[Gez]

So yes, it's Jacob, and for some reason he's returning a letter that had been sent to him, and also Vine Woman's past self was a mage who had been on the same Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath Asinotaph as Snout now is. How lucky!

[Celestia]

So yes, it's Jacob, and for some reason he's returning a letter that had been sent to him, and also Vine Woman's past self was a mage who had been on the same Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath Asinotaph as Snout now is. How lucky!

And her old name also started with a K!

[Gez]

And her old name also started with a K!

They let her choose her new name from a list, so I'm perfectly willing to accept that a name close to her old one would have unconsciously "sounded right" to her.

[Vinyadan]

Well, this looks like an amazingly unbelievable coincidence, unless there was some search-related reason for Snout to enter the vine hut.

So they are called siren vines, uh? Sounds fitting.

Also, I hadn't connected it before, but underground transportation has been Jacob's way of travel since he first revealed himself.

[Neoriceisgood]

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



TWO THIEF OR NOT TWO THIEF

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


Wrapped up and Returned

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

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

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

Class Action

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


SNOWSONG

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Shadow of Siegfried

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway:

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

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

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

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

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


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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

The Mookie Eugh:

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The March Across Maltak

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

I … I think I liked Maltak??? O_O

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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





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


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

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


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

[Celestia]

They let her choose her new name from a list, so I'm perfectly willing to accept that a name close to her old one would have unconsciously "sounded right" to her.

Nope. Kaianda and Kikero are completely different. It is just "coincidence."

[Whoracle]

The March Across Maltak

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

I … I think I liked Maltak??? O_O

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

Having recently binged the whole of DD, too, and remembering how it was in the old days, I'd say: DD works better as a completed work. The grating thing about MaM (apart from some content) was the glacial pace, and being able to read it in one go and not needing to focus on a particularly bad page for a day or weekend while talking about it in a forum thread immensely helps.

That goes for all of DD, IMHO, but MaM (and for me Around the World) show this the most.

The bad I remember from back in the day is all there, but without the "need" to analyze a given train wreck and the ability to just skip over it, it becomes a lot more stomachable.

As for Legacy: I'm more or less out. NOTHING is happening. We get page after page of nothing, and then one page of stuff we, the reader, already know (like today). It's just a big ol' nothingburger, and each day I regret the 10 seconds it takes me to look at it. But I'm here for Neoriceisgoods analysis of old DD.

[Gez]

Nope. Kaianda and Kikero are completely different. It is just "coincidence."

Indeed, Mookie did not miss the opportunity to make something dumber than it could have been.

As for Legacy: I'm more or less out. NOTHING is happening. We get page after page of nothing, and then one page of stuff we, the reader, already know (like today).

I think there's one newly-revealed plot point, though. The thing about visions getting corrupted so Dom went on to intentionally turn them off. I don't think this had been exposited before? If it did, I forgot it.

[Vinyadan]

Rereading Two Thieves to compare it to your review, I was very suprised at how good it felt as its own story. Within the wider DD, I think it's an extraneous body; however, read as its own story, it's actually much more grounded and better written than most of DD. The main characters are being pulled in two directions at the same time or have to face inner turmoil, with comprimaries (Dex and Pam, for example) bringing about the consequences of those choices. The bad guy has believable reasons to believe he will succeed, and his trick with Luna doesn't feel like a gimmick; it makes sense for what we know about the amulet, it's terrifying in its immediate consequences, and forces Stunt to choose a side, here and now. Luna, too, opening up about her doubts, creates a better character than she generally is (although I remember getting tired of her whiplash self-esteem within the wider DD), but also gives Ilario a good reason to think about what he is doing and the sides he is taking.

This relatively normal, grounded story, however, suffers from the wider DD. Ilario offing Luna's sister in a ridicolously over-the-top arc in service of the plot/for coolness points now gets reframed as a terrible act that is haunting his conscience (something that should have been mentioned at the very start of this arc, and possibly in a different way, more concentrated on Bumper: a dream, for example, or him alone staring at his hands). Also, friggin Luna cannot help but make puns about her sister's death while talking to her murderer who just begged her for forgiveness about it?!
Getting back to what this chapter does right which is overall undercut by the comic, here Luna is a mage filled with self-doubt and dealing with a dangerous situation while trying to be kind and being a subordinate to the authorities (Dex and Pam); and that's good. She isn't the messianic bride of the majestic seer who is always right, metes reward and punishment, etc.

The dialogue can be better, facial expressions could be better, but the bedrock is solid. I especially like how there are four sides intersecating: Barthis, Eddie, Bumper, and Stunt, with overlapping loyalties that don't just pull Bumper and Stunt left and right, but also suddenly change the situation and force players to keep moving and adapting.

Also, Spark is handled very well. He is direct, curious, and absolutely unreliable. Even his size gets used when he's held by Stunt.

However, I feel that a plot working so well because the main character isn't there doesn't really promise well for a series (actually, the ending with him narrating made me wonder if Dominic aka Miranda's Boy wouldn't generally have had a better role as some sort of insightful external entity). It isn't just a matter of power levels, it's that Dominic is a sanctimonious man whose victories, defeats, gains, and losses are dictated by fiat (those magic system problems you have pointed out).


Anyway, about Shadow of Siegfried: some of the points you raise do get an answer in the comic. Dominic knows Siegfried loves Jayden and mentions it in the castle (although there was no sign that Jaiden went along with it, something which always struck me as odd).
About why Karnak chose Siegfried, I think it's a matter of conservation of detail, first and foremost. Karnak taking Siegfried at the end of the War in Hell was good for dramatic effect (take that, Dominic!), but it also solved a problem: Karnak was alone the whole arc, he finally won, the demon lords he defeated had servants, so, to show his evil triumph, he must get one, and who just died out of grace? Siegfried, so he gets to be the one.

Karnak doesn't send Siegfried to haunt his friends, it's Siegfried that gets permission to go (it's explained at the end of Shadow of Siegfried https://www.dominic-deegan.com/wp-co...2_20071205.gif ). The mask he's wearing is first shown when Karnak picks up his soul, and it's Karnak's symbol (it is a simplification of Karnak's horned brow https://www.dominic-deegan.com/wp-co...9_20070831.gif ); he is literally covered in such plates, as a way to show that he isn't his own man any more. The mask forces him to do what he is told, an effect that is weakened when Karnak slaps him and chips off a part of it. Again, an infernal object seems to be first and foremost the representation of a mental state and Siggy's servitude will end with the mask's destruction as he severs the link the beast is using to leech power from hell.

As to "why just Siggy? What about every other soul in hell?", it isn't explained. I can headcanon some answers (as King of Hell, Karnak can do things other demon lords couldn't; or he is so strong, that Siegfried is unbanishable, while servants of other demon lords could be banished; or he is just different from other demon lords in what he lets servants do, and maybe they also used to have actual demons as servants, not mortals with reasons to haunt the world; finally, it's possible that these things happen to other people, end badly for them, but they just don't get mentioned). But the idea of there being no safeguards against infernal hauntings other than the willingness of a demon lord surely sounds like a massive problem.

About Wolfland, I felt that Milov's political duties didn't mesh well with the haunting. They were parallele stories, but they only had that tiny intersection of Jayden's infidelity. To tell the truth, the haunting wasn't even solved by the heroes, it was Karnak who stopped it. So a big sum up would be: "Milov is haunted by Siegfried. Siegfried reveals that he banged Milov's girlfriend. Milov breaks up with Jayden and breaks up relations with humans in his domains." And then there are some side stories like "Milov finds out that Siegfried is in hell. He wants to do something about it. He does nothing about it. As he finds out, Siegfried was guilty of crimes against humanity" and "Siggy captures Jayden. Dominic's pupil frees Jayden." I don't think there actually is an overarching plot that works.

[Neoriceisgood]

Having recently binged the whole of DD, too, and remembering how it was in the old days, I'd say: DD works better as a completed work. The grating thing about MaM (apart from some content) was the glacial pace, and being able to read it in one go and not needing to focus on a particularly bad page for a day or weekend while talking about it in a forum thread immensely helps.

That goes for all of DD, IMHO, but MaM (and for me Around the World) show this the most.

The bad I remember from back in the day is all there, but without the "need" to analyze a given train wreck and the ability to just skip over it, it becomes a lot more stomachable.

As for Legacy: I'm more or less out. NOTHING is happening. We get page after page of nothing, and then one page of stuff we, the reader, already know (like today). It's just a big ol' nothingburger, and each day I regret the 10 seconds it takes me to look at it. But I'm here for Neoriceisgoods analysis of old DD.

Glad I got the attention of at least one person with my walls of text!


And yeah, one reason I was curious to binge-read DD is because I've only ever read it day-by-day and never actually did a full reread & I know from other comics that this can drastically change the experience. Ironically a lot of the arcs I have relatively good memories about were already completed when I first discovered DD, if I'm not mistaken. So taking the time to actually read through the entire thing and giving each arc a fair shake is interesting in its own light.

I definitely rememember the Around the World/March Across Maltak part of DD being an absolute slog back in the day. I think a big issue with day-by-day reads is that some pages that may seem absolutely infuriating in isolation, are significantly less offensive once an arc is actually complete.



I still remember the absolute unrelenting outrage over this particular page from the Snowsong story arc, because people interpreted it as a pretty big "shrug" from Mookie regarding why things happen in his comic. Considering the issues with inconsistent power & the flakey magic system very few readers had faith in there being a deeper explanation so there was this big collective groan over this page.

In hindsight ... it was juts Dom being tongue in cheek to prevent Greg from discovering his fun little "plan" for him. Now say about the entire Supergreg thing what you want, this page is honestly quite inoffensive once you know it's actually building up Dom keeping things hidden, rather than just a total dismissal of cause and effect.
As a comic author myself I do find this interesting, there's a number of "low points" in DD that retroactively feel significantly less bad when you look at the story arc as a whole, but people are very unlikely to give Mookie the benefit of doubt here due to the fact that there's plenty of moments where his iffy magic system or morally questionable way of writing heroes doesn't have layers of depth & is exactly what it looks like.


24 Chapters for me to go until I finally reach the Legacy, I'm kinda curious about it as I've not followed it at all (I feel re-reading DD as a whole will include me going over the Legacy).

The pages I've seen of the Legacy do concern me, the more experimental format doesn't exactly feel like it's particularly reader friendly. The fact that the snarker community seems largely uninterested in me makes me feel it might not even be "fun" in a bad way.

[Pax1138]

Glad I got the attention of at least one person with my walls of text!

I don't know about anyone else, but I've been reading them with great interest. I feel like I had a somewhat unique experience with the original DD (at least compared to others around here), in that I heard about it when it was already complete, read the whole thing together and mostly enjoyed it, and then came here to find people basically **** on it.

I can't imagine I wouldn't be more negative on it if I had to read it day to day either, though, but it is nice to see organized thoughts and analysis on something in the webcomics medium beyond discussion and/or *****ing about the most recent page on a given day.

[Gez]

The pages I've seen of the Legacy do concern me, the more experimental format doesn't exactly feel like it's particularly reader friendly. The fact that the snarker community seems largely uninterested in me makes me feel it might not even be "fun" in a bad way.

Legacy does suffer from the same kind of pacing issues that original flavor DD did, but it's worsened by it being 3/week instead of 7/week (like early DD) or 5/week (like later DD where IIRC Mookie started taking the week-ends off.) So on archival reading, it should be less bad.

On the plus side, the art has actually improved. Not to the point where I'd say it's good, let's not get carried away, but it's better. Also on the plus side, err, I'm drawing a blank. The plot (which seems to be basically, "let's find out why magic changed") could be interesting, if this were a better setting.

On the minus side, the gimmicks (deaf and mute protagonist, the occasional full nudity) don't really work due to Mookie handling them with all the grace and subtlety we know him for.

[Anarchic Fox]

Glad I got the attention of at least one person with my walls of text!

I don't have anything to say about them, but I've enjoyed reading them.

[Neoriceisgood]

I don't know about anyone else, but I've been reading them with great interest. I feel like I had a somewhat unique experience with the original DD (at least compared to others around here), in that I heard about it when it was already complete, read the whole thing together and mostly enjoyed it, and then came here to find people basically **** on it.

I can't imagine I wouldn't be more negative on it if I had to read it day to day either, though, but it is nice to see organized thoughts and analysis on something in the webcomics medium beyond discussion and/or *****ing about the most recent page on a given day.

Yep, I do remember a lot of snarkers that posted here being former fans who just got really exhausted of the slow pacing + "MOOKIE WHY"-plot twists and turns that, combined with the high number of people already snarking and pointing out flaws, just kinda became a vicious circle.
Reading through all of it now, a lot of stuff I remember people being genuinely upset about/hating back in the day feels pretty minor & easily glossed over. It's interesting how after-the-fact you can easily read through half a year of content in just a single afternoon.


As I've been pushing daily/near daily comic pages myself for a few years now, I do enjoy actually looking back at DD not just as a reader but also as someone who has a far greater understanding of the actual effort and dedication required to keep something like this going. I'd not actively call DD good or anything, but I've definitely grown a begrudging effect for the sheer determination Mookie has shown in sticking to his schedule.

Legacy does suffer from the same kind of pacing issues that original flavor DD did, but it's worsened by it being 3/week instead of 7/week (like early DD) or 5/week (like later DD where IIRC Mookie started taking the week-ends off.) So on archival reading, it should be less bad.

On the plus side, the art has actually improved. Not to the point where I'd say it's good, let's not get carried away, but it's better. Also on the plus side, err, I'm drawing a blank. The plot (which seems to be basically, "let's find out why magic changed") could be interesting, if this were a better setting.

On the minus side, the gimmicks (deaf and mute protagonist, the occasional full nudity) don't really work due to Mookie handling them with all the grace and subtlety we know him for.

I've seen some of the posts pop by in this thread as I've kept a bit of a side-eye on it even before I started re-reading, and the impression I've gotten from the Legacy is "better art, worse reader experience". But I'll give my proper thoughts on it after I actually fully catch up to regular DD first.

Like a lot of things, I'm actually sort of dreading reading the Legacy based on what I've seen, but perhaps it'll be similar to Maltak & I might find it more enjoyable than anticipated.

I don't have anything to say about them, but I've enjoyed reading them.

Well I'm super happy to hear that!

[Celestia]

On the minus side, the gimmicks (deaf and mute protagonist, the occasional full nudity) don't really work due to Mookie handling them with all the grace and subtlety we know him for.

Don't forget the completely passive protagonist who does nothing of his own volition and has no effect on the plot.

[Neoriceisgood]

Rereading Two Thieves to compare it to your review, I was very suprised at how good it felt as its own story. Within the wider DD, I think it's an extraneous body; however, read as its own story, it's actually much more grounded and better written than most of DD. The main characters are being pulled in two directions at the same time or have to face inner turmoil, with comprimaries (Dex and Pam, for example) bringing about the consequences of those choices. The bad guy has believable reasons to believe he will succeed, and his trick with Luna doesn't feel like a gimmick; it makes sense for what we know about the amulet, it's terrifying in its immediate consequences, and forces Stunt to choose a side, here and now. Luna, too, opening up about her doubts, creates a better character than she generally is (although I remember getting tired of her whiplash self-esteem within the wider DD), but also gives Ilario a good reason to think about what he is doing and the sides he is taking.

Oh you posted just as I replied to other people! Only just noticed your post! Thanks for the elaborate reply! Yep, the stuff you describe here, *within the context of the arc itself* is exactly why I was surprisingly into it!

This relatively normal, grounded story, however, suffers from the wider DD. Ilario offing Luna's sister in a ridicolously over-the-top arc in service of the plot/for coolness points now gets reframed as a terrible act that is haunting his conscience (something that should have been mentioned at the very start of this arc, and possibly in a different way, more concentrated on Bumper: a dream, for example, or him alone staring at his hands). Also, friggin Luna cannot help but make puns about her sister's death while talking to her murderer who just begged her for forgiveness about it?!
Getting back to what this chapter does right which is overall undercut by the comic, here Luna is a mage filled with self-doubt and dealing with a dangerous situation while trying to be kind and being a subordinate to the authorities (Dex and Pam); and that's good. She isn't the messianic bride of the majestic seer who is always right, metes reward and punishment, etc.

Yep, I plan to give my overal thoughts when I'm completely done with DD but I can already state that one of the comic's biggest repeated sins is how the puns frequently completely undercut genuine dramatic moments or tension. There are so many moments in good arcs, bad arcs where actual difficult moments for characters are just plainly undercut by some random person *needing* to make a terrible pun.

The thing you mention about Bumper/Ilario feeling disgusted/upset about actually murdering someone is also another perfect example of what super bothers me in many arcs: Rather than slowly setting this character arc up over a few arcs or at least hinting that it's there, it pops up as relevant only moments before getting addressed. Ilario genuinely struggling with the aftermath of doing that is legitimately an interesting character arc, but ... it's ruined by puns and lack of set up.

The dialogue can be better, facial expressions could be better, but the bedrock is solid. I especially like how there are four sides intersecating: Barthis, Eddie, Bumper, and Stunt, with overlapping loyalties that don't just pull Bumper and Stunt left and right, but also suddenly change the situation and force players to keep moving and adapting.

Yep! Many arcs in DD so far have been very plainly black and white,
DD & friends v.s. the Chosen
Greg and friends v.s. Brett
DD & Friends v.s. Luna's sister

This one definitely added a bit more complexity due to the way Mookie wrote Stunt that feels believable enough. Like any DD arc, the art, expressions etc are just at a pretty low ceiling, but you could honestly take most of this story arc as-is and with some tweaked dialogue and art it'd just be a genuinely good arc. Just needs polish.

Also, Spark is handled very well. He is direct, curious, and absolutely unreliable. Even his size gets used when he's held by Stunt.

However, I feel that a plot working so well because the main character isn't there doesn't really promise well for a series (actually, the ending with him narrating made me wonder if Dominic aka Miranda's Boy wouldn't generally have had a better role as some sort of insightful external entity). It isn't just a matter of power levels, it's that Dominic is a sanctimonious man whose victories, defeats, gains, and losses are dictated by fiat (those magic system problems you have pointed out).

Spark is honestly an interesting character, the fact that he's just this dumb animal who can talk but isn't quite ... there emotionally/in terms of intelligence, actually does make him pretty effective in terms of delivering the type of puns and jokes that Mookie clearly desires.
Because Spark is an animal that's not really capable of complicated feelings and thoughts, it also doesn't make him feel like a horrible person when he makes a weird joke or remark at a time that feels way out of place. If I were to rewrite DD and I was forced to keep the tonedeaf jokes, I'd actively pick some characters like Spark to always be the source, if only to make him a bit of a moral scapegoat.

I definitely agree with you that it's very *telling* that one of the story arcs that feels the best almost has no real true intervention from Dom aside from him narrating the ending, which he just observes. Personally I don't think that Dom's grumpy and somewhat smug personality + power set are impossible to work with, I agree with Mookie that a seer as a protagonist is ... actually an interesting premise.

But the inconsistent powers, Dom's track record being very much decided by seemingly random factors ... it makes everything about him feel just ... narratively unsatisfying.

Anyway, about Shadow of Siegfried: some of the points you raise do get an answer in the comic. Dominic knows Siegfried loves Jayden and mentions it in the castle (although there was no sign that Jaiden went along with it, something which always struck me as odd).
About why Karnak chose Siegfried, I think it's a matter of conservation of detail, first and foremost. Karnak taking Siegfried at the end of the War in Hell was good for dramatic effect (take that, Dominic!), but it also solved a problem: Karnak was alone the whole arc, he finally won, the demon lords he defeated had servants, so, to show his evil triumph, he must get one, and who just died out of grace? Siegfried, so he gets to be the one.

From a writing perspective I totally get *why* it happened, my complaint isn't necessarily in that. What I find harder to understand is the exact mechanics of what is required for a demon lord to just ... seize control of someone the way Karnak did. As much as Siegfried is a violent bully, I can't picture him literally surrendering the a demon's control within seconds without even a little bit of struggle.

From my perspective the whole "TAKE THAT DOM" gut punch is prioritized a bit too much over actual logic.

Karnak doesn't send Siegfried to haunt his friends, it's Siegfried that gets permission to go (it's explained at the end of Shadow of Siegfried https://www.dominic-deegan.com/wp-co...2_20071205.gif ). The mask he's wearing is first shown when Karnak picks up his soul, and it's Karnak's symbol (it is a simplification of Karnak's horned brow https://www.dominic-deegan.com/wp-co...9_20070831.gif ); he is literally covered in such plates, as a way to show that he isn't his own man any more. The mask forces him to do what he is told, an effect that is weakened when Karnak slaps him and chips off a part of it. Again, an infernal object seems to be first and foremost the representation of a mental state and Siggy's servitude will end with the mask's destruction as he severs the link the beast is using to leech power from hell.

Yeah I guess it's just a power Karnak has? Like, he also seemingly manages to put a mask on Jayden ... or Karnak does? I know some of the mechanics behind it are sorta there in the comic:
"Karnak let him go intentionally", "the mask gave him control" I guess if I had to think about how demons work, I guess Karnak's influence as the demon lord of wounds is particularly effective on people who are innately violent or something? Though that wouldn't explain why Jayden also suddenly gets demon masked like that.

It's not story-breaking complaint or anything, but a lot of it felt a bit like ... oh okay Karnak can do this now apparently.

As to "why just Siggy? What about every other soul in hell?", it isn't explained. I can headcanon some answers (as King of Hell, Karnak can do things other demon lords couldn't; or he is so strong, that Siegfried is unbanishable, while servants of other demon lords could be banished; or he is just different from other demon lords in what he lets servants do, and maybe they also used to have actual demons as servants, not mortals with reasons to haunt the world; finally, it's possible that these things happen to other people, end badly for them, but they just don't get mentioned). But the idea of there being no safeguards against infernal hauntings other than the willingness of a demon lord surely sounds like a massive problem.

Yeah like ... for a lot of the villains/bad guys we see, there's a reasonable explanation why it's only "one" of them, we see this e.g. with the Beast. Siegfried's ghost is in this weird realm where I get the feeling Mookie really didn't think about a lot of these questions at all? He just wanted a cool Siegfried's ghost arc.

About Wolfland, I felt that Milov's political duties didn't mesh well with the haunting. They were parallele stories, but they only had that tiny intersection of Jayden's infidelity. To tell the truth, the haunting wasn't even solved by the heroes, it was Karnak who stopped it. So a big sum up would be: "Milov is haunted by Siegfried. Siegfried reveals that he banged Milov's girlfriend. Milov breaks up with Jayden and breaks up relations with humans in his domains." And then there are some side stories like "Milov finds out that Siegfried is in hell. He wants to do something about it. He does nothing about it. As he finds out, Siegfried was guilty of crimes against humanity" and "Siggy captures Jayden. Dominic's pupil frees Jayden." I don't think there actually is an overarching plot that works.

Yep! Like what really bothers me with that story arc is that it's genuinely all over the place, there's a ton of issues with the plot that just don't seem answered within the story itself and the pay-off for all those problems is ... well, a church getting blown up I guess.


Whereas Two thief or not two thief is an arc where I'd "fix" it by just some dialogue tweaks and ... well, better art, Shadow of Siegfried ... oof. I kinda have to keep reading some of the future arcs like Court of Karnak & Nimmel House to remind myself where Mookie takes some of these characters and parts of his world, but I'm not even sure what I'd really want to keep on a rewrite as most of this feels ... not great.


Thanks for the in-depth reply btw! I appreciate it.

[elros]

I started reading DD pretty early on, and some of the early storylines (e.g. storm of souls) worked well in the daily update format. From what you have written, the Maltak storyline may be better read in one sitting, which shows that Mookie was ambitious but held back by the same format. I also suspect that a lot of the words that Mookie introduced (e.g. bitka, rhzagala, etc.) will make more sense a second time around. I am always impressed that Mookie is able to crank out so many DD comics for so many years, and he clearly put a lot of effort into Maltak.

That said, I am not up for reading it again because I really didn't like the ending. Not only Luna being a savior (which only got worse in future comics), but also that Dominic's homeland (I think it is called Callan) was made out to be a villain. I understand that the storyline came out when Mookie was playing a lot of World of Warcraft and he was pro-orc, and it was written after the War in Iraq so Mookie was channeling the anti-imperialism zeitgeist, but it seemed out of place. I can understand why an author would expose the ugly underside of a protagonist's homeland, but Mookie just brought it out of nowhere and, in typical fashion, handled it in a heavy-handed way.

I am curious what you will write about the rest of the storylines, because I stopped reading DD after Maltak and only jumped back to see how it ended. From what I remember, Mookie made the Emperor of Callan to be the Big Bad Villain and he turned Maltak into a paradise, but it may actually be better than I remember.

[Neoriceisgood]

I started reading DD pretty early on, and some of the early storylines (e.g. storm of souls) worked well in the daily update format. From what you have written, the Maltak storyline may be better read in one sitting, which shows that Mookie was ambitious but held back by the same format. I also suspect that a lot of the words that Mookie introduced (e.g. bitka, rhzagala, etc.) will make more sense a second time around. I am always impressed that Mookie is able to crank out so many DD comics for so many years, and he clearly put a lot of effort into Maltak.

That said, I am not up for reading it again because I really didn't like the ending. Not only Luna being a savior (which only got worse in future comics), but also that Dominic's homeland (I think it is called Callan) was made out to be a villain. I understand that the storyline came out when Mookie was playing a lot of World of Warcraft and he was pro-orc, and it was written after the War in Iraq so Mookie was channeling the anti-imperialism zeitgeist, but it seemed out of place. I can understand why an author would expose the ugly underside of a protagonist's homeland, but Mookie just brought it out of nowhere and, in typical fashion, handled it in a heavy-handed way.

I am curious what you will write about the rest of the storylines, because I stopped reading DD after Maltak and only jumped back to see how it ended. From what I remember, Mookie made the Emperor of Callan to be the Big Bad Villain and he turned Maltak into a paradise, but it may actually be better than I remember.

I genuinely don't remember how much of DD was already uploaded when I first started reading it, I do remember getting into it relatively early but considering we're talking nearly 20 years ago (wow) I am having trouble remembering true specifics.

I *want* to say I started somewhere after the Storm of Souls concluded but I might be totally wrong.

Regarding imperialism and Maltak, it never honestly felt fully out of place, it's pretty obvious throughout all of DD that it kinda has what I'd describe as "US-centric liberal values" behind some of the morals that do pop up, but usually with a bit of a caveat (the anti-imperialist arc having a massive white savior figurehead being one, but also stuff like the one prominent gay character having really in-your-face sexual desires mixed with a strange shallowness, e.g. Szark immediately losing his interest in Dominic cause he threw up once. There's a lot of progressive elements that just sorta ... misfire.)
I don't necessarily think the imperialist "Callan was total dog**** and largely responsible for what happened to Maltak"-subplot is inherently bad or even fully out of place, but it kinda falls in the same realm as a lot of subplots and tropes that it sorta gets thrown in there out of nowhere, deals with pretty heavy topics in a somewhat immature way and then just ... goes away (in a lot of cases, at least.)

What strikes me most with the entire Callan subplot is ... when did Mookie actually decide Callan *was* the country the comic took place in?
If we go back to chapter 1:




Isn't Siegfried basically introducing himself in a way that effectively translates to: "I am Lord Siegfried Gunther Aern Damaske OF AMERICAH" while he's in uhh *checks notes* Brooklyn?

If I'm not mistaken, It isn't until around Maltak that "Callan" being a term strictly tied to Siegfried's Knight Order suddenly switches into the actual national identity of most of the main cast. If I have to pinpoint what about the entire Maltak arc feels unnatural it comes down to that subtle change in world building that doesn't necessarily contradict the established narrative, but that doesn't quite flow out of it either.

It kinda feels like I'm splitting hairs here, but to me "Knights of Callan" always sorta felt more like a "Knights of Camelot" type title, where it referred to the name of the castle/palace they adhered to, rather than this big encompassing country. This is one of the reasons a lot of fantasy settings tend to provide, y'know ... maps to at least ground readers a bit.



I am honestly kinda scared for what's coming next, the following chapter I'm gonna have to read is Nimmel House which in my memory was naked werewolves wrestling in the snow & Nimmel being the "Alpha dog". I shudder at how close it is to what I remember.

[Shogo]

Reading these reviews of the DD chapters . . . The Neilen arc mostly reminded me that I just didn't feel any sympathy at all for Runcible. Like, sure, going out of your way to break up a guy's marriage is taking things a bit far . . . And yet I couldn't help but feel the guy kind of had it coming.

He regularly beaned Neilen in the back of the head with fireballs because he thought Neilen's reaction to it was funny, and thought it was acceptable behavior just because it wouldn't kill the guy.

It'd be like if a coworker just repeatedly smacked you in the back of the head because how you reacted to getting smacked made him laugh. Every single day of work. Over a period of years.

Then Neilen goes after Luna for some reason and, after he is dealt with, Runcible is rewarded by being allowed to torture him. Like, come on. That dude should have been fired.

[Neoriceisgood]

Reading these reviews of the DD chapters . . . The Neilen arc mostly reminded me that I just didn't feel any sympathy at all for Runcible. Like, sure, going out of your way to break up a guy's marriage is taking things a bit far . . . And yet I couldn't help but feel the guy kind of had it coming.

He regularly beaned Neilen in the back of the head with fireballs because he thought Neilen's reaction to it was funny, and thought it was acceptable behavior just because it wouldn't kill the guy.

It'd be like if a coworker just repeatedly smacked you in the back of the head because how you reacted to getting smacked made him laugh. Every single day of work. Over a period of years.

Then Neilen goes after Luna for some reason and, after he is dealt with, Runcible is rewarded by being allowed to torture him. Like, come on. That dude should have been fired.

I've not really addressed this in detail, but it kinda falls in that same category of tonal dissonance DD tends to suffer from.
I 100% understand exactly what Mookie was trying to go for with the Spoon v.s. Neilen dynamic, slapstick humor/****ty people getting their comeuppance is undeniably satisfying if done well. But DD kinda exists in this weird realm where it tries to have more realistic relationships and genuine displays of things like PTSD and trauma, whilst simultaneously playing things like random slapstick violence as a 'joke' (also see: Melna).

Over time we do discover Neilen is absolute scum of the earth, much more than we knew, but that doesn't retroactively make the punishment/torment applied to him prior to this reveal feel fitting or enjoyable. It's kinda funny how in DD sometimes we see characters getting arrested or judged for life over their violent actions, and at other times slapstick violence is apparently just a "joke" and nothing else.


I do think there's ways to have this particular cake & eat it as well, but Runcible Spoon, potential headmaster of the school, was definitely not the vehicle for it.

[Vinyadan]

Looking at Snowsong, I found the fight nice. There's a lot of action, at least until Greg appears. Otherwise, too much exposition.

I friggin hated Barnett's arc (Oracle Killer). I can't bring myself to read it, in spite of the fact that it starts out quite well. It's the concentration of some of DD's worst traits. The out-of-place humour makes Dominic's fight against the virus needlessly long, plus he's so over the top, he never feels in serious danger. It ends with his glorification as a serene, larger than life, patronising being that is however also dressed like an '80s comic warrior in this supervague, fiat-operating mindscape setting. The bad girl has nothing special and it's actually pretty hard to believe she could ever be a danger, since she can't/won't one-shot Dominic when he opens the door. What is interesting about it is the autobiographical element -- Mookie went to actor's school, and the arc is interspersed with references to acting. Szark is cool however (except for his Dominic thing), and he's an oddly good pair with Quilt. The "brother" thing is honestly bizzarre. It cuts through the plot while being completely unrelated to it (somewhat similar to the plot problem in Shadow of Siegfried, but way more off trajectory). The panel with the old girlfriend thinking about when she was younger is nice, though. Celesto adds yet another unrelated plot, although he is well-written (then again, he gets repetitive over thousands of strips, and it's hard to see an actual roadmap for him; plus, there's an odd problem about Brakkis: if he was defeated and inoffensive, his death is meaningless; if he was dangerous and rearing his ugly head, his death is a waste of plot potential).

Edit: given Celesto's last line, where he calls himself "Oracle. Hunter." it feels like Mookie actually thought this out, as some implicit comparison: "this is a girl hunting an oracle. Not so effective, uh? But what about an oracle hunting people? Now, that would be a problem!" And I have to say, yes, sure, if he went after the protagonist.

About class action, I think it's a good example of DD problems. Let's consider the election of the new headmaster. As far as I remember, it's meaningless. Nothing really changes. Miranda still gets to be super awesome as an archmage of the circles, and she even gets much stronger, so there is no loss of influence or power from leaving a leadership position. It's also a wasted chance, in many ways. I don't remember any notable change at the university (although I might be wrong). But here's a thing: universities normally don't choose their head that way. Option one is that the university (mostly the teachers, sometimes student representatives too) vote for a new head. There's lots of politics involved, with campaigning and everything else. Option two is that the new head is chosen from someone above the university, like the government. And who would have that power in Callan? The king. It was a great chance to introduce king Dave and to show him above Miranda, both as king and mage. Plus, can you imagine the plot effect of the university being under someone loyal to the king during the crisis? (lol, maybe it will turn out that I remember wrong and lots of things happened there).
There's also an "aiming" problem. If we look at feelings, there are two characters who feel the strongest: Spoon and Melna. Spoon realizes how deeply he was wronged. Melna tries to come to terms with the fact that she loves Stonewater (I won't approach the matter of whether bringing the whole ordeal up again was wise). But these are not the main characters! Melna's problems are just an excuse for Elemental Boy to collect and remix conversations to manufacture drama for Dom & Luna, who however, are, at most, annoyed (as could be expected). Spoon is just a faceless precedent of the sort that is brought up in detective fiction to connect the dots and find the culprit, but we already knew who was the culprit... well, who would have been the culprit, had his plan had any hope to succeed.
The weird thing is that both problems can be brought back to the "caste system". Everything rotates around the calm, safe, powerful figures of Dominic, Miranda, and Luna, but these protagonists should be desperately trying to adapt and survive! The part with Jacob is good exactly because it takes Dom out of his confort zone.

In general, these are the chapters where I more or less lost DD, with Maltak and Around the World being the last meaningful chapters I remember. I read the rest, but the whole Beast arc felt wrong somehow.

[elros]

The weird thing is that both problems can be brought back to the "caste system". Everything rotates around the calm, safe, powerful figures of Dominic, Miranda, and Luna, but these protagonists should be desperately trying to adapt and survive! The part with Jacob is good exactly because it takes Dom out of his comfort zone.

In general, these are the chapters where I more or less lost DD, with Maltak and Around the World being the last meaningful chapters I remember. I read the rest, but the whole Beast arc felt wrong somehow.

Those thoughts capture my experience with DD. Until I read Neoriceisgood's review, I forgot that Snowsong and the Oracle Hunter were different people! Both plots involved a lone woman with terrible motivations coming in to overturn the perfect world, and both were swept away pretty easily by Team Deegan. No real growth or insight. That is part of the reason why the "Callan is a terrible Empire" theme did not work for me- if Team Deegan is so powerful, why have they ignored their genocidal Empire for so long?
On a related note, I thought Miranda was a boring character. She solely existed for the "deux in momina" moments, and that phrase is both an example of a bad pun and Mookie decision to address a flaw by making a joke instead of trying to fix it.
I am curious if the re-read by Neoriceisgood reveals other aspects of her character. From what I remember, Miranda underwent no growth throughout the comic, and the one time she is threatened, by the BBE, she easily neutralizes him and escapes without any consequence.

[Vinyadan]

I've reread Maltak. It was surprisingly good overall (and shorter than I remembered). However, there is a glaring flaw, and it's Maltak itself, which, as a setting, is pretty much featurless and undescribed. This leads to some absurdities, like raiders walking on foot pulling off an ambush on an open plain. More importantly, it means that there is close to no sense of place or distance. The art itself, with the traditional 4x2 tiny talking heads, doesn't give the location room to breathe. (also, what have the Orcs been drinking and eating all this time?)
Another problem is that the Orcs all look the same, as lampooned by Mookie himself, which occasionally makes it difficult to tell who's who at first sight. On the other hand, this is because there are a lot of characters, many of them new, all with their own objectives and philosophies and allegiances, many of them growing as things go on, and ultimately all part of the plot (no Shadow of Siegfried problem).

This, I think, is a chapter where Dom worked out well. He is depowered, but far from useless, and he is definitely out of his comfort zone, with soft (get along Reinholdt) and hard (save Maltak, save Luna) objectives with high, personal stakes and believable dangers.

Isn't Siegfried basically introducing himself in a way that effectively translates to: "I am Lord Siegfried Gunther Aern Damaske OF AMERICAH" while he's in uhh *checks notes* Brooklyn?

Yup. But it could mean a number of things: that he is a royal, or that the knights of Callan have the privilege of adding that to their name. It actually opens up another chance at worldbuilding: his father could have been closely related to the old royal family and the title have been kept after the king was substituted by King Dave.

In one interview Mookie actually explained where the name Callan came from. I believe he said it had something to do with a train or metro station. David instead was the name of a friend of his. The interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTq-P0Oy1qA it's Deegan that was the name of an expressway.

[Neoriceisgood]

Those thoughts capture my experience with DD. Until I read Neoriceisgood's review, I forgot that Snowsong and the Oracle Hunter were different people! Both plots involved a lone woman with terrible motivations coming in to overturn the perfect world, and both were swept away pretty easily by Team Deegan. No real growth or insight. That is part of the reason why the "Callan is a terrible Empire" theme did not work for me- if Team Deegan is so powerful, why have they ignored their genocidal Empire for so long?
On a related note, I thought Miranda was a boring character. She solely existed for the "deux in momina" moments, and that phrase is both an example of a bad pun and Mookie decision to address a flaw by making a joke instead of trying to fix it.
I am curious if the re-read by Neoriceisgood reveals other aspects of her character. From what I remember, Miranda underwent no growth throughout the comic, and the one time she is threatened, by the BBE, she easily neutralizes him and escapes without any consequence.

In my mind "Snowsong" & "Oracle Hunter" are kinda twin arcs in how similar they are, even the motivations are vaguely similar (albeit Barnett was hired to enact someone else's revenge).

Whilst I definitely agree with Vinyadan that Oracle Hunter has a bunch of all-time-low moments that are just plain bad, I do feel that if I had to keep just one of the two arcs and completely erase the other, I'd get rid of Snowsong.

Now I might misremember future use of the character or something, but to me, Snowsong feels completely like a filler arc. Beyond Pam getting really angry at the end and breaking up with Greg, there's no major development of the main cast that isn't just in reaction to things introduced in the arc itself.
For all of its flaws, with Oracle Hunter there's a bunch of underlying concepts that are workable. Serk Brakkis being wealthy enough to weasel his way out of prison & wanting to get rid of "all" local seers to prevent anything like this from happening again is ... fine. Luna's sister being hired by him kinda makes sense, he does have some connections to her family already so would at least be aware of her existing. Heck, even sparing Barnett has some lick of sense to it due to Luna's other "evil" sister already dying & there being this entire point that Celesto raised at the time. Unlike Snowsong where they let her potentially kill people left and right just so Dom can give Greg some adventure, with Barnett there's more personal stakes and some history where I can understand it being difficult for at least Luna to just go for the kill here. I also feel that the entire notion of a villain who is literally equipped to kill seers as effectively as possible works well as an antagonist, much better than Snowsong who genuinely feels like Mookie just plopped a superhero char from some game he played right in there.

If we're talking about execution of the arc ... yeah, no. It's incredibly sloppy. INCREDIBLY sloppy. The combition of Snowsong as a story arc being way too similar & the bad execution do make it feel forgettable and bad. Which is a shame because I do feel it has at least the skeletal structure of an interesting arc.

I've reread Maltak. It was surprisingly good overall (and shorter than I remembered). However, there is a glaring flaw, and it's Maltak itself, which, as a setting, is pretty much featurless and undescribed. This leads to some absurdities, like raiders walking on foot pulling off an ambush on an open plain. More importantly, it means that there is close to no sense of place or distance. The art itself, with the traditional 4x2 tiny talking heads, doesn't give the location room to breathe. (also, what have the Orcs been drinking and eating all this time?)
Another problem is that the Orcs all look the same, as lampooned by Mookie himself, which occasionally makes it difficult to tell who's who at first sight. On the other hand, this is because there are a lot of characters, many of them new, all with their own objectives and philosophies and allegiances, many of them growing as things go on, and ultimately all part of the plot (no Shadow of Siegfried problem).

This, I think, is a chapter where Dom worked out well. He is depowered, but far from useless, and he is definitely out of his comfort zone, with soft (get along Reinholdt) and hard (save Maltak, save Luna) objectives with high, personal stakes and believable dangers.

Oh yeah I was genuinely surprised how short it actually was, I feel the loss of faith in Mookie's writing made readers lose patience at an accelerated rate when Maltak was being posted honestly. It's not even that much longer than the other longest DD arcs from what I could tell.

In my own review I've decided not to let the art & sameface become too much of a guiding principle in how I rank arcs, but I definitely agree with you that Maltak is one of the story arcs where the lack of skill damages the reader experience most. A thing I kinda figured out is that this isn't due to the art itself being worse than in other arcs, but rather that the more ambition Mookie has, the more his limits get in the way.

In Around the world he has trouble portraying the actual beauty of these locations, and in Maltak he has trouble portraying the sheer scale of the plains and the desolation. The weird thing to me is ... this isn't just an art problem? For storylines of this nature something like a minimap to give a sense of relative location or some form of landmark would do wonders.

Yup. But it could mean a number of things: that he is a royal, or that the knights of Callan have the privilege of adding that to their name. It actually opens up another chance at worldbuilding: his father could have been closely related to the old royal family and the title have been kept after the king was substituted by King Dave.

In one interview Mookie actually explained where the name Callan came from. I believe he said it had something to do with a train or metro station. David instead was the name of a friend of his. The interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTq-P0Oy1qA it's Deegan that was the name of an expressway.

Yeah normally I'd not make a very big deal of it, but I've never quite gathered if that is like ... specifically related to his family line, or if any knight of Callan gets "Von Callan" added to their name/title. It doesn't feel really well thought through.




[edit for next part of review]

The Beast part 1

Okay these chapters will be hard to rate because they’re small pieces of foreshadowing/build up to the beast. Huh. Well that’s kinda neat, hope the build up will be worth it.
This first chapter hints at King David & shows Celesto escaping his imprisonment.
It’s … fine.

Nimmel House
Huh this arc is only 29 pages total? I was kinda surprised to discover just how short it actually is. How do I feel about this arc? Hm …
I’ve started to realize that when going over DD arcs there’s kinda three categories:
1. The arc is not actually that bad.
2. The arc isn’t good but it has functional building blocks
3. The arc feels like total filler or has such bad base ideas that it’s not really salvageable.
Nimmel House is a bit of a weird one because the focus is entirely on Nimmel and a bunch of characters that are either new or not that frequently seen, so it’s another one In that category of “Hey what’s this guy up to?”. I guess I appreciate these arcs more than, say, Snowsong, because they at least seem to focus on something genuinely new despite not entirely adding to the “main narrative” as far as DD even has one?
The arc itself Is … okay. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the Spellwolf culture, with them having the whole Alpha, purebred and nudist thing going on. Something about an entire race being tied to a singular culture & the characters within that story basically just being examples of that feels … off to me.

It’s kinda bio-essentialist in a way? With the orcs we at least had like 5 different tribes with very clear distinct cultures, yes they were Orcish cultures but they were, at the base, cultural. The spellwolves have this weird ass mix of culture and instinct that rubs me the wrong way. Might just be a personal pet peeve.

The good:
- I actually think that seeing what Nimmel is up to is kinda fun, I’ve mentioned it earlier on but I do actually like how DD tends to switch heavier stuff with small “hey what’s this guy doing?” chapters & Nimmel’s definitely not one of the worst DD characters.
- Katya is kind of a nice character? Her getting shat on and shunned due to an actual legitimate medical condition is honestly a portrayal of discrimination in DD that feels a bit more nuanced than other examples. It’s not deep or anything, but it works.
The bad:
- Aside from Nimmel and Katya every single other character in this arc is flat as carboard even by DD standards. Olena the Werewolf also literally has the same personality & got “defeated” in the same way as the Semashi dancers in Around the World lol. “shout insults that make people turn against you cause they’re so offensive” is a weirdly specific twist to use twice, Mookie.
- I just want to mention this twice but, even by DD standards a lot of these guys feel flat, man. A big issue here is that Mookie seems to love jokes like “ hey character says they’re level-headed but then they see the boobiez!!” where a character immediately gets seduced. It’s not funny, it just makes me not care for those characters as they’re walking cardboard.
- Lord Danovich praising Nimmel for his motivation kinda makes me scratch my head cause … his motivation seemed pretty weird? Wanting to be the top dog? I don’t know, maybe Danovich liked it because he’s from a weird culture with weird traditions. I wasn’t really convinced by it. Did Danovich even know Nimmel’s real motivation? Like those two scenes seem to outright contradict in my mind.

The Beast part 2

Miranda is the student of some weird octopus monster? I’m … fine with that! It’s actually kinda weird to me how DD has casually dropped other realms/dimensions existing a few times now (e.g. with Klo Tark) but how this is sorta tossed aside as not that big a deal. This chapter is another one that has me wondering exactly how common this is in the world of DD.

Is Miranda one of 5 dimension travelers? 1 of 500? I have no clue.

Anyway the text buble placement in this chapter is incredibly confusing.

BYOB
I … what is this acronym? Be your own best self? Oh, Be your own Bard, there we go.
Ah right, this is the arc where Greg tries to start his own band, his first band of nobodies fails cause it’s soulless & then he teams up with this guy with a tusk and the anarchist guy who is … I think an elf. He has pointy ears.

Together they invent … I want to say death metal or something. I haven’t the foggiest. This does remind me of another Mookie-ism that’s sorta interesting. From what a few people have mentioned/interviews etc. it’s pretty obvious that a significant number of story arcs literally exist just because Mookie wanted to include one of his hobbies or interests into the main narrative.
Snowsong/Supergreg were Superhero stuff (I believe city of heroes?), I saw someone mention Maltak was largely inspired by WoW lore.

BYOB has Greg inventing a music genre Mookie likes.

I find it hard to say how I feel about this habit of his, with Maltak it felt natural enough and I wouldn’t have noticed without it being pointed out, but with both Snowsong & BYOB there’s this underlying vibe of “did Mookie just throw his real world interest into this world randomly”?
This brings me to a very weird attribute of DD: Sometimes the comic’s world reads a lot like a parody/satirical fantasy world that reflects ours, kinda in the same way that The Flintstones or The Jetsons find ways to reinterpret modern day devices or jobs in a way that thematically fits their time period.
I feel in DD this feels off because rather than openly satirical or humorous, these world-building or thematic elements are just sort of tossed in there by Mookie in a way that can feel strange and a bit immersion-breaking.
I don’t think that, if this happened once, it’d be super immersion breaking. But it happens a couple of times in the same sort of “oh okay that just happened” sorta way.
This is another point where I find it hard to judge if I’m just being overly harsh towards DD out of cynicism, because this is definitely not a thing that is exclusive to Mookie. Heck, I’ve done this myself plenty of times, so I find it … hard to pinpoint what makes it feel so unnatural here.Maybe the problem is that DD’s general world building is already quite weak, so when Mookie suddenly throws his most recent hobby or interest in, it genuinely feels tacked onto his world? Like on paper Greg’s nightmares being turned into an inspiration for his songs works fine … except, AGAIN, him having this issue with terrifying nightmares is literally introduced within the chapter itself.

It feels like Mookie once again introduced some character traits/elements simply for the sake of it being a necessary building block for an idea he only recently decided *had* to be included.

The Good:
- I think an arc devoted to Greg finding himself after losing such a big part of his core identity makes total sense, this kid’s powers defined him to such a degree that it must’ve been devastating.
The Bad:
- Yeah I don’t know, Greg literally inventing a real life existing genre of music is kinda … weird. Maybe I’m overthinking this. It feels a bit weird to me.

The Beast Part 3

Miranda talking to ALDURATHIEL the weird many-eyed slug monster + his translator Snert. Kind of just an infodump chapter about the origins of THE BEAST. Is every beast interlude going to be Miranda talking to some tentacle monster or giant eye monster? All these interplanar guys look really similar to me.

WALK THE WILD EDGE

We catch up to Laurie/Stunt at the Wild Edge, once again in letter format. Actually, a lot of these side arcs have that format don’t they? It’s kinda cute actually, I might steal that framing device some time. With around the World it was even sorta well set up how it only revealed at the very end the letter was sent to Garnett.

Anyway, in this arc Stunt receives a message from Bort & the rest of his “crew” at the Wild Edge decide to attempt illegal poaching because mongrels are so incredibly rare and unique. Stunt, wanting to distance himself from his own illegal habits decides to try and stop the poachers because they remind him of his old ways & accidentally kills one of them in the process. Through various betrayals and events, his old boss (short haired lady) is rescued by Stunt after her own subordinate stabs her to take over & Stunt + her bond.

They discover the female mongrelfolk who’s into Bort, lead her to Bort & then have a final confrontation with the remaining poachers.

As almost everyone except for Stunt & his boss ends up dead, Stunt decides to return to drifting together with her. It ends with a sorta melancholic message to Bumper/Ilario about how drifting from place to place is where he belongs.

Another interesting thing is Stunt confessing to murdering his mother.

This story arc was … actually pretty good? I’m not sure if I’d rate it quite as high as Two thief or not two thief, but the emotional beats of this arc do hit decently well, e.g. Stunt’s boss comparing their lifestyle and behavior to many of the wild edge creatures having to be as scary and vicious as possible to survive & Stunt’s dialogue at the end of the chapter. There’s a strange melancholy to Stunt/Laurie now that he’s trying to come to terms with his past crimes and past self and genuinely trying to improve as a person that, in my opinion, works.

I think what I really enjoy about the chapters that focus on Stunt and Bumper is that they have a relatively natural arc that flows naturally out of their backstory & role in the story, very little of it seems like Mookie just pulled it out of his ass 1000 pages into his comic.
When we suddenly discover Siegfried is a megaracist, or we suddenly discover Jayden was cheating or we suddenly discover Dex had drug issues and beat his ex in the past it’s startling because characters are suddenly given brand new flaws that are totally new and often shocking to readers. The effect is that when they succumb to these flaws like Siegfried did, it feels like an established character got “changed and ruined” because they’re suddenly a racist who died a racist death when this wasn’t quite established. Similarly, when they do overcome it, it really doesn’t feel as satisfying because e.g. Dex overcame something we … didn’t even know was an issue of his.

Stunt has been a misogynistic trigger-happy thieving ******* from early on, his flaws have been clear and well established from the start. So any chapter that progresses him actually feels like we’re seeing a flawed character overcome established hurdles we’ve long identified -with- the character.

(tangent)

Spoiler: tangent.

Show

Mind you, villain/”twisted backstory” twists or characters being worse than we expected can work perfectly well. In earlier seasons of Orange is the New Black we knew that every single character shown was in prison. They’re prisoners for a reason, it’s a show about a women’s prison. But for many characters we don’t know their exact reason for being there until they finally got their dedicated episode.
Often the other prisoners don’t know the exact details either, so when we discover the true history behind certain characters, there were definitely a few characters who were very social/friendly where their dedicated episode revealed they were responsible for some crimes that were significantly more screwed up than what you might imagine.

But in that particular example the “twist” reveal works because of two factors: We know 1. for every single character they did *something* to end up in prison, the mystery of their crime is a very active part of the intrigue of the earlier parts of that show.
2. The knowledge of what exactly they did was often not just secret to us, but in many cases not known to key characters.

For a lot of cases in DD, point #1 isn’t there at all. That’s okay, most pieces of fiction don’t have as strong a in-universe device to tell us a character did something skeevy as “THEY ARE LITERALLY IN JAIL”.
Point #2 is just … a wild one for DD though. The total lack of foreshadowing, the total lack of insight in a comic who’s central protagonist is a … seer?

Not only are these sudden “Twist” reveals of character’s dark backstories unsatisfying from the view of character development, their purpose seems to either exclusively be “SHOCK” or “Mookie clearly had an idea he didn’t think through earlier in the comic’s history”.

(/end tangent)

Anyway, yeah. Not that bad an arc. Like Two Thief or not two Thief I forgive the somewhat flat villains because we’re looking at poaching thieves here. It’s a greedy, petty kind of evil that makes sense.


The good:
- I like Stunt/Laurie’s development as the character, it’s nothing deep but the dude has a legitimate character arc that feels natural and gradual, that is kinda rare in DD. Most arcs are confusing or come out of stuff we didn’t even know was a big deal.
- I’ll say this, and it might be controversial. I like the wild edge creatures on a conceptual level? I’m not going to claim they look good, but a lot of their basic ideas are kinda fun and sufficiently strange. It does make me wonder … how many normal animals have we actually seen in all of DD? I remember seeing horses but beyond that I have no idea about the actual fauna of the regular world.

Anyway the wild edge creatures feel sufficiently weird and dangerous. I also like the name of the place, wild edge … like this is just the very rim of some unexplored and messed up place.
- The mongrelfolk are fun. Out of the non-human races that DD introduces they’re probably my favorite.

The Bad:
- Only one real negative but uhm … aren’t the villains also tour guides? With how little some of these guys understood of the fauna of this place it makes me wonder how on earth they survived this far. I don’t super mind the notion that Stunt might have shown more interest in the wildlife than average and used that to his advantage somehow, but I’m a bit confused as to how incredibly naïve and outright stupid some of the villains are.


The Beast Part 4

Naked Celesto in the wild edge thinking back of how he accidentally took the beast along with him.
I don’t know … like this is fine but beyond Celesto’s location I don’t feel this really adds any major new information we didn’t already figure out to some degree?

It’s only 5 pages so it’s whatever, but it’s a bit of a non-chapter.

THE COURT OF KARNAK

So we follow lady Loxo and Bulgak in hell who are … stalking Karnak to find out his weakness or something. The beast makes a little cameo and destroys Siegfried’s mask, actually giving him free will again.

This still makes me wonder how many of those masks Karnak can create, and why he’s only done it to Siegfried? I get the narrative reason, we know Siegfried, but still.
At the start of the chapter both Bulgak and Loxo have visions, we see Bulgak has a vision about his brother, we don’t see Loxo’s … I’m kinda curious what hers was? Probably nothing important. Anyway demon Siegfried and Karnak have a big old fighty-fight, Siegfried seems really REALLY concerned about real/fake demons … since when is he so proud of being a demon? I find it quite confusing how most characters largely kept their personalities in hell whilst Siegfried just turned … into a proud status quo defender of the rules of hell?
Anyway, we get some Karnak and Miranda backstoty where we learn that Karnak’s name means … morning star, huh … Lucifer. That’s … I guess that’s kinda clever?
Anyway, for some reason Siegfried without his mask easily beats up Karnak and attempts to execute him in front of an army of demons. Bulgak who is gathering up more and more memories of his past decides to intervene and rescues Karnak, because once when they were still alive Karnak saves his life.
Karnak in return allows Bulgak to see a couple of visions that are “The source of his torment”, like Maltak flourishing again, Donovan & Stonewater being its heroes etc.
Unlike Karnak though, Bulgak actually decides to look at all these visions and accepting the truth of his actions, resulting in him coming to term with everything that happens.

Once Bulgak accepts the responsibility for the actions he’s taken, the people he’s hurt etc as eluded to earlier, his soul explodes in a majestic bang, which Karnak once again uses as a weapon to eliminate the demons attacking him.

The chapter ends with Karnak bidding one final farewell to Miranda after deciding for himself that he’s going to take on some sort of role as warden of hell? We also see uh … Siegfried eating his own dad, then begging for someone to help him as he’s crying pathetically on the floor. Lady Loxo also shows up … strange, I swear this was the last time we see Siegfried. I guess I misremember that.

The Beast part 5

Miranda talks to some mute big nose mage who is apparently very rude, together they discover that almost all magic is destabilized or altered at this point, including Miranda being far stronger than expected, or, rather, as strong as she should be.
a.k.a. someone has been blocking her magic without her realizing it, and it’s back to normal now.
Y’know what? I like this one, actual new information + something as ominous as magic changing on a large scale has my interest. The entire notion that some force has been sealing off Miranda’s magic for years without her ever noticing also implies there’s strange things going on. DD actually setting up an intriguing mystery? That’s rare and neat, this is the type of writing I enjoy.
Altered States
Huh … I think this might be one of the first chapters I seriously 100% forgot existed at all.
So Luna’s unfertile & we discover that Dom was actually sterile all along, but never properly examined himself. They decide to visit an alterist despite both of them not being big fans, and Dom in particular just finding them legitimately creepy.
This chapter kinda goes into some of the (joking) examples of people using it exactly in the ways Dom & Luna themselves expected, but also have some … pretty okay trans rep with the doctor? Not gonna lie, for all of the misses and obnoxious jokes DD tends to have, nothing about the doctor scene felt too weird or unnatural? Not sure if “Used to be a man” is the phrasing someone would use nowadays, but considering when this comic was made I feel that might be splitting hairs.
I’m honestly shocked Mookie managed to not have some gag-worthy pun to ruin the representation here, the self-restraint that must have taken. But I commend him for that regardless.
Throughout this arc we learn that Luna’s apprehensions mostly come from her mother actually being quite forceful about trying to push Luna through this as a child, and that Dom has had to deal with a severe trauma as a kid due to someone messing with his visions/second sight to make him go through terrible alterism-related nightmares. Hey, once again. Known and well-established character trait explored and developed? Good on you Mookie, that’s how I like to see it.
It’s interesting that Dominic seems to cling pretty strongly to very negative first impressions he’s gotten through his life from various forms of magic, alterism, necromancy etc. It’s a consistent character trait, so understanding what put alterism on the list feels consistent and in-line with how Dom’s been written.
The arc itself is fine, it has a few underlying themes of bodily autonomy, an underlying message that alterism (read: plastic surgery) can be used to help people with legitimate issues, handicaps or effects & that it shouldn’t be judged by the “worst” examples.

The scene at the end of Dom getting into bed, removing his wooden teeth & fake leg actually hits pretty hard. As much as Dom’s trauma is constantly played for laughs during the chapter, you really get the sense that Dom’s trauma is actually keeping him from seeking help for all the damage his life and adventures have caused him. Although it’s only for a short moment, seeing his irrational childhood fear form this emotional “wall” that prevents him from even considering looking into properly fixing his leg and teeth when there are likely options available is heavy hitting.
Additionally, Luna donates all of her magic eggs because they’re useless in her body due to Maltak’s strange ‘poisoned’ magic seeping into her, but apparently her egg cells can conform to the genetics of the parent which is hm …
That kinda has some underlying tones of making it seem like regular egg or sperm donation doesn’t really count as “real” kids, no? The quiet part isn’t said out loud, but there’s some iffy implications to that.

The good:
- Some established character stuff gets dealt with and explored.
- Some bodily autonomy stuff that’s not that badly handled.
The bad:
- Still not sure how I feel about the cosmetic surgery shaming for non-essential stuff. It’s mostly played for laughs but it’s also never expressly countered?
- The egg thing with the genetic modification feels a bit invalidating, not sure if that was the intention.

SYMPHONY OF DESTRUCTION

This is basically the beast part 6 honestly, another very short chapter where Dom goes into the realm of destruction, avoids some blasts, finds the beasts, gets an angry lobster to attack the beast & suffers very short term hearing loss. Greg likes this as song inspiration.

FACE TO FACEBATH
Some character stuff for Greg’s new bandmates, Taz and uhm … Randy. Randy really looks up to Dom & Luna, Taz is uhh … completely disregarding any laws and mooning people & getting drunk.

This chapter’s uhm … not sure how to feel about it honestly. I’ve decided not to put these incredible ini-mini chapters that are 5-15 pages total in my overall ranking cause most of them are so short they feel more like a little intermission. This one … I don’t know, whilst we’re very slowly building up this BEAST we’re suddenly getting this chapter that gives us some character building for Greg’s bandmates, but it’s like … okay one of them wants to tell Luna/Dom how much he loves them & the other gets a warning about where his future will lead. These characters are a bit too minor and secondary for me to really care? I can also understand that for readers who legitimately don’t like either Dom or Luna this chapter must have been completely grating.

Normally I don’t super mind the slice-of-life chapters in DD, and some of them I’ve rated exceptionally high because their central message is surprisingly strong … but this one? Eh. I’ll put it into the ranking cause it’s juust long enough to matter, I guess if you combine it with Symphony of destruction the two together almost form a normal-size small arc.


Revelation
Okay here we go, we discover THE BEAST killed Miranda’s tutor, the other arch mages aren’t too interested in pursuing it as it seems weak enough for even Dom to fend off & throughout this chapter Dom and Miranda discover the beast has an ally: The King of Callan, King David.
We also get some backstory about King David being the first ever archmage of the 5th circle, and that the chair got added specifically for him.

Alright not a bad way to make the villain feel intimidating, particularly with the beast feeling a tad weak so far. The chapter concludes with Dom realizing they need the help of Celesto Morgan, because he’s powerful and has encountered the beast frequently enough to know what exactly they’re dealing with.

Actually not a bad chapter, despite the beast itself seemingly being a villain that could theoretically be overcome, having him be directly tied to a man who is not just powerful in terms of magic, but also THE king & a political force that can’t be understated. I still feel the set up of the king as a character came quite late, like we already know Callan is a pretty ****ty kingdom right? The King himself being a awful is not at all a shocking twist. If the king had been introduced earlier as someone who was seemingly trying to fight the racism and corruption & trying his best to keep his image clean, the twist of him having his own awful plans in secret might’ve worked better.

I don’t know, I don’t hate the chapter at all but I feel this twist could’ve been set up so much better.

The Search for Celesto

Huh another … arc that’s actually pretty … good? I barely remembered this one at all, but it holds up quite alright. It starts with Luna & Quilt scrying to find Celesto using some unconventional means. As far as DD’s magic system goes I actually felt this particular chapter’s use of off-beat magic made internal sense and actually followed logic that felt right. Whereas with the little dolls in the war in Hell I was honestly quite confused, the notion that any reflective surface could in theory be used for scrying & the battle casters being too focused on crystal balls to notice bubble/sword scrying “clicked” for me. It’s not complicated but there’s some simple internal logic here that feels right.

I don’t necessarily think that characters inventing weird new techniques or abilities is inherently bad, but there’s got to be some rhyme or reason that -fits-.

Like usual, we find through this chapter that Celesto is once again planning something pretty screwed up & planning to murder someone who is “guilty” of being horrible … except this time he goes a bridge further and targets the child of an awful couple. Again, I feel this slow degradation of Celesto’s morals is theoretically an interesting way of using the character, if one of his earliest appearances didn’t have him basically try to destroy the world. If that event didn’t take place I feel Celesto’s slow degradation over time would check out more for me personally.

The real core of this chapter is that we meet the Masters family & their son Chance Masters, who seems to be a bully to Heliner, a kid who is significantly worse at swordfighting. Throughout the chapter we get a couple of “not all is as it seems” reveals, showing e.g. that the family’s extremely hostile attitude towards seers is due to Celesto scamming them for a fortune in the past & that Heliner used to bully Chance, so that Chance’s ****ty attitude comes from payback.
The final big backstory reveal we get is that the reason Celesto targeted the masters is because they stole an invention from Celesto’s father and financially ruined their family in the process, so Celesto was actually taking personal revenge against the family for what they had done to him.

Through the arc we also see Szark & Scarlatti being his old ****ty self, taking his own petty grievances as more important than actually figuring out what’s going on.

Through various reveals and clever use of second sight, Dom manages to show Chance the fake-Celesto beast attempting to kill him & helps Chance fight them off. Near the end of the chapter he uses his SEE THE TRUTH ability to reveal these creatures to the masters family, Scarlatti etc. Celesto taking this chance to implicate the king in the process.

This chapter is … honestly plain good? Maybe it’s in part due to Scarlatti, Szark and Celesto being some of my favorite DD characters, but the story had an interesting little arc surrounding Chance Masters, the magic shenanigans actually had some rhyme or reason I could follow for a change & Celesto’s screwed up morally dubious plan was kind of an interesting one that felt more elaborate than just angrily shooting beams at people.
I don’t necessarily it was as emotionally satisfying or as self-contained a story as “Two thief or not two thief” but on the flipside, this arc actually quite beautifully had its own individual story whilst adding onto the grander narrative surrounding the beast.

The fact that it simultaneously felt like its own thing & part of a grander narrative felt right & isn’t something many DD arcs have fully succeeded at.

The good:
- Magic shenanigans that actually made some lick of internal sense.
- The entire Chance masters subplot actually clicked pretty well for me? A lot of DD plots revolve around 2-bit villains and overly flat characters & initially it does appear that Chance is a flat bully and his parents are typical Szerk Brakkis-type wealthy villains, but the way visions are used to slowly add more and more depth and nuance to various characters, including Celesto, works quite well.
Considering how often I’ve complained about sudden reveals of character’s baggage being mishandled or ruining characters in DD, it’s interesting to see a story arc finally utilize this in a way that improves it.
- I like “The Gray” returning at the end of this chapter. I wasn’t entirely sure if this was just connected to people close to Dom, but it seems it just shows up any time he witnesses a big decision. That’s cool.
The bad:
- I … don’t have any substantial complaints about this arc at all? Like there’s some typical groan-worthy puns and the art is the same it’s always been, but nothing that’s out of the ordinary.
The huh:
Wait this is where the freaking thread title comes from?! When I saw that line I audibly gasped LOL. I swear I thought you guys just made that up.

Okay I wrote all that and then discovered I was only halfway … strange, The search for Celesto feels like several full arcs in one!

Ok so part two follows Greg & Luna in smut city, let’s go.
So aside from all the sexy smutty city jokes, the big hook of this arc is that Luna and Greg investigate this art display about a children’s book artist that went completely mad and started creating disturbing paintings using blood, feces and … worse? O: No idea what’s worse. Celesto communicates with Luna through one of the paintings and reveals the battle casters are .. not quite human and just emulating human behavior. Interesting, as we just saw incredibly human behavior from one caster who was a fan of Greg … that’s actually sorta creepy, I like that build up.

As the chapter progresses we do learn that this transformation is forced upon the battle casters & their loss of humanity is gradual, the battle caster Celesto captured was halfway through the process and still largely human, the one with Greg fully human & a few that showed up to fight our heroes are fully transformed and lack all human agency.
The arc ends with Mervin & Niles, the two mostly-human battlecasters helping defend Luna and Greg from the fully corrupted battle casters and Celesto once again fleeing after the corruption is properly ‘exposed’.
The chapter ends with Dom and Luna finally detecting Celesto and, knowing his location, sending Greg in to … beat him up with a guitar? I guess Celesto was physically weakened from all the weird shenanigans he’s been pulling?

The final scenes reveal a few things: Miranda now has Celesto captive, Jayden has completely stopped talking since the whole Siegfried business, Mervin grew a moustache.

All-in-All also pretty good content, didn’t decrease my enjoyment of the chapter so it’ll keep its relatively high rating.

I DO
We get a little backstory of Miranda’s parents being super meddling as … Miranda is being weirdly meddling. Luna and Dom try to comfort her that she’s not all bad, they’re wrong Miranda is creepy. At least Dom seems to have some reservations about spying on people, even though I feel Mookie sometimes makes it a bit ambiguous what Dom’s exact limits there are, Miranda seems to have significantly fewer gripes with that behavior.

The crux of this chapter is that Luna and Dom realize that if they try to have a big public ceremony for their marriage, they’ll likely get massacred right then and there by the king, so instead they opt to keep it small and subtle. Jayden apparently finally speaking again to pronounce them husband and wife … I guess that’d be a bit more powerful if we had learned significantly earlier she’s not been speaking this entire time? I don’t know … Who cares about Jayden, really? It’s not that big a deal.

The signal going out to all their close friends is kinda … cute, I just want to make a small note that Rachel apparently isn’t one of Dominic’s friends (maybe some characters got off-panel’d, I honestly don’t know. But it’s kinda funny to see all the chars who made it when she didn’t. I mean it kinda serves her right, she did rape Dominic after all.).

The chapter ends with a stinger of the Infernomancer returning … I don’t quite know how I feel about that, he’s one of those villains Mookie is clearly in love with who has always been pretty braindead and boring? The best part of his design was probably the lack of eyes, which has been removed now.
Unlike Celesto who at least has a different philosophy from Dom & tends to function quite well as his own special side in a conflict, the Infernomancer is just an evil baddy who goes smashy-smashy. That’s not the worst thing in the world but it doesn’t get me too excited about another Infernomancer encounter.

Just Deserts
Oh Dom wanted to tell Rachel in person, hahahaha. The cut-off points for some of these chapters are kind of in slightly weird spots honestly, but fair enough.

Jayden goes on a pilgrimage and ends up meeting Stunt … huh … have these two met? I guess they haven’t. Jayden recognized Stunt’s pendant & asks about it, he’s abrasive as ever. After she tells him about some mystic treasure he decides to go along on her pilgrimage as her protector.

On the way at a bar, Stunt & Jayden meet Tarvis. A reformed criminal who remembers Stunt & knows about some of the stuff he got up to in his past. He suggests Stunt actually talk to Jayden honestly about his history. Tarvis is apparently an elemental changeling who keeps his identity a secret, he helps Jayden and a sleeping Stunt on their journey. Stunt and Jayden both have trouble opening up about their screwy past which is … hm actually, I kinda like this pairing of characters.
As the chapter progresses and Jayden reveals her past sins, Stunt and her quickly connect the dots they both knew Siegfried & that Sieg’s relationship with Stunt … yeah, not great. As Jayden and Stunt end up arguing, Stunt accidentally injures some bug & the mom attacks Jayden, but her pendant prevents her from dying.
As the day progresses Stunt finally opens up and basically admits that he was from a deeply, deeply conservative household and that he caught his mom cheating on his father with a female bard. Attempting to kill the bard he accidentally killed his mom & injured the bard, after which he ran off without ever looking back (so did he actually kill them …? ) After a bunch of bouncing back and forth and some shenanigans they run into Rillian.
Here we get an … actually interesting development, Rillian wants Stunt to smuggle the treasure of Lunara out because Matsual, the arch mage of the 3rd circle is after it for unclear reasons … Not sure what the pay off for this will be but it intrigues me.
The chapter ends on Jayden and Stunt separating, Stunt looking to find his mother’s surviving girlfriend & his mother’s grave and … not actually finding courage to face her after what he’s done.

This chapter is … once again pretty good? Aside from setting up some more foreboding/interesting conflict, it actually is a nice exploration of both Jayden & Stunt as characters and them finally trying to deal with their various issues. I’ve never been a huge fan of Jayden in other arcs as she’s always been a bit of a non-entity to me, but I have to admit that her pairing with Stunt works exceptionally well if only due to her being one of the only characters open-hearted enough to actually truly help him push through his issues.

And hey: AGAIN! An arc that actually builds on established character problems that have either been around from very early on, or that have at least been established earlier than this arc.
It’s weird to say this considering I didn’t care much for Stunt back in the day, but I’m really enjoying all the chapters around him as they’re building towards an actually decent redemptive arc for a deeply flawed person. Sure, Siegfried showed some signs of redemption back in the day, but they were honestly pretty minimal and often went together with him being a jackass soon after or soon prior.
I’ve avoided leaning on the entire “caste theory” that people use and sticking to my own language and words here, but I feel Siegfried’s issues can sort of be explained as: “He didn’t stop being awful, he just increased the cast of people he found accepted as worthy of niceness”. I’m still not a fan of where Mookie took Sieg as a character, but his redemption never felt as thorough and deep as Stunt’s.

When I look at how I rate arcs, which ones stand out as pretty well put together & which ones really fail, I honestly feel that Mookie never had a true drop in quality that “ruined” Dominic Deegan.
I’m only 9 chapters away from the ending and I’ve both encountered some of Mookie’s best work, and some of his worst work at various spots throughout the comic.

Whilst I don’t think Just Deserts is necessarily god-tier writing or the most amazing story arc imaginable, I do find the notion of a religious pilgrimage and the explorations of the good side & bad side of faith and religions to be handled in a way that doesn’t necessarily feel *too* preachy or unpleasant. A thing I mentioned before is that I personally enjoy it when these sorts of explorations of semi-real concepts/issues are grounded enough in the comic’s lore and world that it doesn’t feel completely out of place (e.g. the weird superhero stuff and Greg’s new music.)

I think that redemptive arcs for flawed characters trying to find their way in the world is something that Mookie handles surprisingly well,


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. Altered States
8. Hello Nurse!
9. Storm of Souls
10. Ecstasy and Evil
11. Around the World
12. Class Action
13. The Court of Karnak
14. The Oracle Hunter
15. War in Hell
16. Be your own Bard
17. Shadow of Siegfried
18. Opening chapters
19. Face to Facebath
20. Snowsong
(as stated, a bunch of the shorter arcs are omitted cause they’re just so small they don’t feel like they really need a spot.)

[Welf]

I guess the ending of the story arc kinda relies on Luna’s sister being totally okay with releasing a raging sociopath onto a crowd just to help herself escape, I do wonder how I’d rewrite that if I had to make this arc good. It’s definitely a pretty intense ending, I Don’t mind Miranda at this point. I don’t think extremely powerful moms are that common in fiction, are they? I thought it was kinda rad to have this badass old lady show up, it also explains how the 3 brothers are all such gifted mages if they were raised by one. Does make me wonder about the politics of the world though, why can someone like Siggy freely beat the **** out of the son of the archmage? A bit confusing.

Oh, I finally can repost an old DD slay of mine:

[Neoriceisgood]

Oh, I finally can repost an old DD slay of mine:

LMAO!!!! I MEAN, IT'S NOT WRONG RIGHT?! With the introduction of Miranda we learn a few things, e.g. her somewhat questionable habit of scrying her kids without permission, her having an incredibly influential position within the Kingdom & her being ridiculously powerful within the world of DD.

After her introduction we usually get some indication as to why she might not know/might be preoccupied and not capable of helping with something, but a lot of the stuff prior is like ... what was stopping her from helping? It's kinda wild to me.

[Gez]

The Beast part 5

Miranda talks to some mute big nose mage who is apparently very rude, together they discover that almost all magic is destabilized or altered at this point, including Miranda being far stronger than expected, or, rather, as strong as she should be.
a.k.a. someone has been blocking her magic without her realizing it, and it’s back to normal now.
Y’know what? I like this one, actual new information + something as ominous as magic changing on a large scale has my interest. The entire notion that some force has been sealing off Miranda’s magic for years without her ever noticing also implies there’s strange things going on. DD actually setting up an intriguing mystery? That’s rare and neat, this is the type of writing I enjoy.

Would be more enjoyable if it didn't make an already-overpowered character even more overpowered, though. Miranda Deegan is probably the character that needed a random magic buff the least. If it had worked the other way around, with her magic weakened because it had been mysteriously bolstered by an unknown source all along and now it's gone, then it would have been more interesting.

The huh:
Wait this is where the freaking thread title comes from?! When I saw that line I audibly gasped LOL. I swear I thought you guys just made that up.

Given how much casual nudity the Legacy has had so far, it just felt appropriate to recycle that line!

[Vinyadan]

I think that, in this final phase, the fact that the story was mostly revolving around the Beast makes the value of the single arcs depend on how they relate to this main plot, and how good the main plot really is. I think that this last part is what drags down the final Dominic overall. The Beast is a bad villain, for three reasons: it's visually uninteresting, inexistent as a character, and keeps being defeated. Seriously, how many times do they defeat the Beast? It's the same scene over, and over, and over. So we are left with a couple of crutch villains, the Infernomancer (who was shred to pieces by Celesto) and the King. We barely see the King do anything particularly notable, even though we keep being told that he is soooo powerful. Add to this that Miranda, already horribly strong (only Karnak as King of Hell managed to wiggle out of her power by letting Siegfried haunt Scarlatti in spite of her wards), got a powerboost that makes it hard to believe she will ever be in any real danger.

With this I don't mean that it's all bad. I really liked the painting exhibition in Erossus (I actually found it much more convincing than the fencing tournament, although that could be a matter of tastes). In general, I think Mookie hit gold with the design and story of the royal battlecasters, but failed to give them enough of an acting role in the overall Beast plot.

About the Court of Karnak, as usual I found the idea of Hell as the place where you are tormented by the man you were in life and grudges and failures a very good interpretation. The one thing I didn't like was Karnak's ending. Karnak finally gets over everything, but in the opposite way of Bulgak: he embraces being in Hell. That was a sudden 180-degree turn, and I don't think it had much to do with Karnak's development as it had been shown. It spawned the fan theory that the mortal Karnak had finally died in the blast, and that this Karnak wasn't him, but a new, purely hellish demon that had taken his place. As fascinating as this theory is, it isn't in the comic.

I also liked the designs of the Wild Edge. The mongrel healing a stomach wound by barfing on it was one of the weirdest, conceptually most disgusting things I have ever read, but also really comical and memorable, and right for the setting. Similarly for the tiny cloud happily raining over a dead body.

I wasn't big on the Eldariat desert arc. The journey had nothing to do with its wider plot function (Rillian and the Treasure), Jayden is a pretty weak character, and I found Stunt's killing of his own gay mother just too over the top. It's a good attempt at something more understated and reflective, but I think it would have needed more tuning.

[Neoriceisgood]

Would be more enjoyable if it didn't make an already-overpowered character even more overpowered, though. Miranda Deegan is probably the character that needed a random magic buff the least. If it had worked the other way around, with her magic weakened because it had been mysteriously bolstered by an unknown source all along and now it's gone, then it would have been more interesting.


Given how much casual nudity the Legacy has had so far, it just felt appropriate to recycle that line!

It's kinda funny because -so far- I've not really noticed the difference in power much. It kinda reminds me of how the increases in graphic fidelity for games become less obvious over time.
That might be part of why it doesn't bug me quite as much, it's openly stated in-text that she's stronger but it sure hasn't affected her in any obvious and visible way yet.

I think that, in this final phase, the fact that the story was mostly revolving around the Beast makes the value of the single arcs depend on how they relate to this main plot, and how good the main plot really is. I think that this last part is what drags down the final Dominic overall. The Beast is a bad villain, for three reasons: it's visually uninteresting, inexistent as a character, and keeps being defeated. Seriously, how many times do they defeat the Beast? It's the same scene over, and over, and over. So we are left with a couple of crutch villains, the Infernomancer (who was shred to pieces by Celesto) and the King. We barely see the King do anything particularly notable, even though we keep being told that he is soooo powerful. Add to this that Miranda, already horribly strong (only Karnak as King of Hell managed to wiggle out of her power by letting Siegfried haunt Scarlatti in spite of her wards), got a powerboost that makes it hard to believe she will ever be in any real danger.

With this I don't mean that it's all bad. I really liked the painting exhibition in Erossus (I actually found it much more convincing than the fencing tournament, although that could be a matter of tastes). In general, I think Mookie hit gold with the design and story of the royal battlecasters, but failed to give them enough of an acting role in the overall Beast plot.

About the Court of Karnak, as usual I found the idea of Hell as the place where you are tormented by the man you were in life and grudges and failures a very good interpretation. The one thing I didn't like was Karnak's ending. Karnak finally gets over everything, but in the opposite way of Bulgak: he embraces being in Hell. That was a sudden 180-degree turn, and I don't think it had much to do with Karnak's development as it had been shown. It spawned the fan theory that the mortal Karnak had finally died in the blast, and that this Karnak wasn't him, but a new, purely hellish demon that had taken his place. As fascinating as this theory is, it isn't in the comic.

I also liked the designs of the Wild Edge. The mongrel healing a stomach wound by barfing on it was one of the weirdest, conceptually most disgusting things I have ever read, but also really comical and memorable, and right for the setting. Similarly for the tiny cloud happily raining over a dead body.

I wasn't big on the Eldariat desert arc. The journey had nothing to do with its wider plot function (Rillian and the Treasure), Jayden is a pretty weak character, and I found Stunt's killing of his own gay mother just too over the top. It's a good attempt at something more understated and reflective, but I think it would have needed more tuning.

I'm trying to judge each chapter/arc as-is, so there's a good chance that once I finally get to the King David/Beast conclusion it might make me re-evaluate the set up. The longer & more elaborate the set up for something, the more painful it is when the conclusion fails miserably. I do remember the conclusion being mediocre but I'll have to reread it properly to judge for myself.

Fully agreed about Karnak, I've never quite known how I feel about this arc honestly. His backstory is mildly interesting but beyond that I've never been a big fan of the character.


Elderiat I feel ... conflicted about. Even my personal highest rated arc (to thief or not two thief) I find flawed & having some cringy/weird moments I don't super like, so any praise I do give is mostly in the realm of "This is surprisingly coherent as far as DD goes". Jayden is certainly a character I hold little love for considering how milquetoast and forgettable she is, but I think that personally I kinda liked how these two characters that we've known from the start & never had in-depth interaction ended up being important for each other's growth and development?

Maybe that's just a me-thing, but I actually really enjoy it when minor characters and side characters who have lived "Alongside" each other, but never "with" each other, end up interacting in a significant way.

From a structural point of view I completely agree that the entire Rillian thing felt very ... out of nowhere? It didn't feel particularly clever or well foreshadowed, but that's kinda standard fair for DD. The more understated and reflective tone of that story did actually largely work for me.

[Kornaki]

I both thought clothe minded was original, and remembered the panel from the comic as soon as you pointed it out.