French humour has sometimes been described as “not funny” or “weird”. Lewis Trondheim is both French and funny. He’s so prolific as a cartoonist that it’s tempting to think he runs a sweatshop with tubby little illustrators that are fed with croissants and coffee and can only go to the bathroom twice a day. Instead of doing that, he has ganged up with fine artists and writers such as Joann Sfar and Kerascoet. Together they are like a team of ninjas with pens. Trondheim and friends have even threatened to do at least 300 Dungeon books.
The Dungeon series master the fine art of being dark and silly at the same time. The world of Dungeon is full of dragons and birds, sorcery and weapons. It’s a parody of the fantasy worlds similar to Dungeons and Dragons, without being too nerdy or inaccessible to those who are unfamiliar with D&D. The timeline of the series as a whole is a bit complicated at first. Dungeon is divided into 3 main series: Early Years, Zenith and Twilight and in-between are sub-series and all sorts of nonsense. The series tell the story of the creation, glory days and eventually the demise of the Dungeon world. It seems difficult to sort everything out, but the books are so well written and illustrated that eventually you won’t care about timelines—unless you are anal-retentive—which won’t be a problem either because information about the timelines is plentiful.
There is nothing less disappointing than Dungeon, except maybe other books by Lewis Trondheim.
- Created by: Lewis Trondheim & Joann Sfar
- Art by: Kerascoet et al.
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