This week, I took a trip to one of the darker series in the Dungeon universe: Dungeon Twilight (Donjon Crépuscule). As with the other Dungeon volumes, there are two self-contained stories in this volume, both written by Joann Sfar and Lewis Trondheim. The stories have different illustrators, however: “The New Centurions” is illustrated by Kerascoet (Marie Pommepuy and Sébastian Cosset) and “Revolutions” by Obion (an artist born in France in 1977, according to the Lambiek Comiclopedia).

 

Before the start of “Twilight,” Terra Amata (the planet on which Dungeon takes place) has exploded and the various inhabitants are trying to survive on its various pieces. They look like floating islands in the sky and the characters fly on bats to get from one little island to the next. This lack of centralization means that the society is characterized by individual initiative, unlikely alliances and little centers of power competing with each other, sort of like the Wild West or the Warring States period in Japan. Or take out the violence and it’s something like the political system in many European countries in which there are many small parties, no one is dominant, and it’s necessary to form coalitions to get anything done (or in the case of Dungeon, in order to just not get your throat cut, as happens to an unfortunate character on the very first page).

 

Herbert the Duck is the Grand Khan but he’s far from invulnerable, and he’s enlisted the very nasty Marvin the Red (a warrior rabbit) and the cuddlier Marvin the dragon to wage war against the Fayez. They want Herbert’s daughter (who looks like a cat in Renaissance dress) to give them the nitro technology that will allow them to fly without the giant bats. There’s also a lot of interspecies sexual activity, not all of it consensual, and a mean ogre who is both a big bully and a big baby—lots of fun all around.

 

“Revolutions” is more unified in theme. The two Marvins (the rabbit and the dragon) land on a planet where bears walk around on stilts to avoid carnivorous plants, and which is spinning so fast that they are in danger of flying right off if they don’t keep walking at the same speed as it is spinning. And in perhaps the best metaphor yet for the modern industrial economy, most of the local population is engaged in pulling a giant castle housing a dictator called the Takmool in order to stay synchronized with the planet’s rotations. The terms are as follows: pull like a galley slave for eight hours, get eight hours off to eat and rest in the gardens of the Takmool, pull for another eight hours. Lather, rinse, repeat.  Of course the Takmool never does any work and our heroes aren’t eager to get sucked into this treadmill of a lifestyle, but they discover the cost of disobedience to the established order.  

 

The art is noticeably different between the two stories, although the basic character designs are the same. Obion tends to more rounded characters and a lighter palette, giving the second story a lighter tone which is appropriate to the story’s lighter feel. But they both serve the text well and maintain a sense of continuity across the stories, which are proving to be highly addictive (at least to me). The stories are complex and there are lots of characters, but even dropping in to a series in its third volume I had no trouble figuring out what the important relationships were and how it all worked. | Sarah Boslaugh