By Simon Furman, Iwan Nazif & Bambos Georgiou (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-076-4
These days, young kids are far more likely to find their formative strip narrative experiences online or between the card-covers of specially tailored graphic novels rather than the comics and periodicals of my long-dead youth.
In times past the commercial comics industry thrived by producing copious amounts of gaudy, flimsy pamphlets subdivided into a range of successful, self-propagating, seamlessly self-perpetuating age-specific publications. Such eye-catching items generated innumerable tales and delights intended to entertain, inform and educate such well-defined target demographics as Toddler/Kindergarten, Younger and Older Juvenile, General, Girls, Boys and even Young Teens, but today the English-speaking world can only afford to maintain a few paltry out-industry, licensed tie-ins and spin-offs for a dwindling younger readership.
Where once cheap and prolific, strip magazines in the 21st century are extremely cost-intensive and manufactured for a highly specific – and dying – niche market, whilst the beguiling and bombastic genres that originally fed and nurtured comics are more immediately disseminated via TV, movies and assorted interactive media.
Happily, in this country old-school prose publishers and the newborn graphic novel industry have a different business model and far more sustainable long-term goals, so the magazine makers’ surrender has been turned into a burgeoning victory, as solid and reassuringly sturdy Comics-in-Books increasingly buck the pamphlet/papers downward spiral.
Moreover, many of those old comics enjoyed a successful affiliation and almost symbiotic relationship with television (and before that, Films and radio shows), and these days when even the ubiquitous goggle-box business is paralysed and endangered by on-demand streaming, too many channels and far too much choice, those connections have been taken up by the graphic novel trade too.
The links between animated features and comicbooks are long established and I suspect, for young consumers, indistinguishable. After all, in the end it’s all just entertaining pictures…
One of the most popular TV cartoons – and certainly the most gripping and entertaining – of recent years is DreamWorks Dragons: Riders of Berk (and its follow-up Defenders of Berk). It’s based on the wonderful movie How to Train Your Dragon – which was itself loosely adapted from Cressida Cowell’s glorious and charming sequence of children’s books.
The show has internationally wowed audiences young and old alike and, in this first full-colour Titan Comics digest-sized collection by Simon Furman, Iwan Nazif & BambosGeorgiou, those amazing adventures continue as brilliant but introverted boy-hero Hiccup and his compatriots of the Dragon Rider Academy gleefully roam the skies with their devoted scaly friends.
When not fighting each other the trusty teens attempt to keep the peace between the rambunctious multiplicity of saurians and the island of Berk’s irascible Viking settlers: protecting the humans’ village from the constant attacks of nastier folk such as Alvin the Treacherous and his fleet of piratical Outcasts or new and unknown monsters…
Following a brace of handy information pages introducing Hiccup and his devoted Night Fury Toothless, as well as tom-boyish Astrid on Deadly Nader Stormfly, obnoxious jock Snotlout and Monstrous Nightmare Hookfang, portly scholar Fishlegs on ponderous Gronckle Meatlug and the terribly dim but merrily violent twins Tuffnut and Ruffnut on double-headed Zippleback Belch & Barf, this initial saga opens as the riders go through their spectacular aerial combat paces over the waters around Berk.
Trouble is never far away where Dragons are concerned, and when Hookfang begins shedding incandescent scales, they soon have half the village putting out the resultant flash-fires…
For the safety of the town and the ailing Wyrm, Hiccup’s father Chief Stoick has no choice but to quarantine Hookfang off-island and ground the rest of the flight. However, when the Monstrous Nightmare goes missing the kids decide to ignore orders and go looking for the poor beast…
Chapter two opens during a massive squall with the Dragon Riders being bawled out by Stoick. Snotlout is heartbroken – but won’t show it – and guilty Hiccup furtively sneaks off to continue the search alone with Toothless.
Hookfang is in real trouble. He’s been cornered by Alvin the Treacherous, who wants to make dragons his war weapons. Now he has bait and only needs a skilled trainer to enslave… and he knows that one will be along soon to rescue the still-shedding Monstrous Nightmare he has trapped in a cave…
The evil scheme works almost perfectly. Hiccup is easily captured by the hulking Outcast warriors, but manages to convince the sleek, speedy Night Fury to abandon him and fetch help…
Valiantly making his way back to Berk, the loyal Toothless rouses the Riders and Stoick’s men who speed to the rescue. Meanwhile, ingenious Hiccup has already engineered his own escape. It would have worked, too, if the islet they were on hadn’t been a not-quite dormant volcano with explosively shedding Hookfang inadvertently stoking the geological fires…
The saga concludes in an astounding sea battle as Stoick’s fleet engages Alvin’s pirates whilst Astrid and Stormfly spring Hiccup. Reunited with Toothless, the leader of the Dragon Riders then shows the Outcasts the dangers of messing with the boys and girls of Berk before deducing a (rather perilous) way to reunite Snotlout and Hookfang before the islet melts down or goes up in flames…
Despite being ostensibly aimed at excitable juniors and TV kids, this sublimely sharp yarn is a smart and engaging fantasy romp no self-indulging fun-fan of any vintage should miss: accessible, entertaining, and wickedly habit-forming.
DreamWorks Dragons: Riders of Berk © 2014 DreamWorks Animation L.L.C.