Polite Dissent

Tonight’s guilty pleasure is the third in the trifecta of long-forgotten yet excellent comics from Dragon Magazine. Wormy had the best art and the deepest storylines. What’s New (with Phil and Dixie) has a wonderful cartoony style and an exuberant sense of humor, and was one of Phil Foglio’s earlier works. The third comic, and probably my favorite overall, was Yamara.

Yamara, by Barbara Manui and Chris Adams, was illustrated in a simple cartoon style, yet each character is clearly drawn and unique. The humor is funny and topical. Never has Dungeons & Dragons been mined for so many legitimately funny jokes. There are a lot of background gags too, with pun-filled books on the bookshelves and so on. The story was clever and actually had a plot. It never ceases to amaze me that despite being limited to only 4 to 8 panels a month, the strip’s authors still manages to tell a good story that progressed from issue to issue. If only today’s comic authors could learn from them.

The comic features several memorable characters. The title character Yamara Took (later Yamara the Undisciplined) is a halfling fighter/thief. She has a sense of morals, but just barely. Joe Holy is the local cleric. Fea is an elf sorceress who has had her alignment changed to evil, and likes it more than she should. Ralph is her unfortunate familiar. Blag is a dwarf, and probably the unluckiest character ever to be in a comic strip. And then there’s Ogrek (part orc, part ogre, part human, part elf and part pixie), he is rich and eccentric…and the bane of Yamara’s existence.

I’ve reproduced two strips here to give a feel for the comic. The first strip shows when Yamara is being hired to steal the jewelry of Frinn. Ultimately, to obtain the jewelry she has to marry the infamous Ogrek the Undisciplined. She gains the jewelry and it gives her deity-level powers…at least until her unfortunate run-in with Fea’s Flesh to Plush spell.

The second strip showcases Percy. She’s Joe’s wannabe girlfriend/stalker. She’s also a high level evil vampire. Here, she’s sharing dungeon quarters with a mummy and ghoul when Tim the Paladin arrives. General excitement and merriment follow.

Steve Jackson Games published a Yamara collection several years ago, and copies could be obtained until recently on the Yamara.com site (a site which sadly seems pretty defunct now).

click on either strip for a larger (readable) image