The Kids Are Back In Dungeons & Dragons: Saturday Morning Adventures
There’s a new movie set in the world of Dungeons & Dragons coming soon, and it’s not the first one. But way before any other type of media existed, way back in the early 80s, when the game itself was young, there was just ONE Hollywood interpretation of D&D. For many, it was their introduction to the notion that the game existed. We’re talking, of course, about the Saturday Morning cartoon.
In 1983, six children boarded a rollercoaster ride themed after Dungeons & Dragons, but something went wrong and they were somehow teleported into the Forgotten Realms itself. Now Hank, Diana, Sheila, Bobby, Eric and Presto (that probably isn’t his name but who knows what it really is) have been assigned the roles of ranger, acrobat, thief, barbarian, cavalier and magician respectively. They each have magical weapons that can aid them with their skills — Sheila, for example, can turn invisible with her cloak.
Their long-term goal is to find a way home, but their more immediate concern is to dodge attacks from the forces of Venger, the evil force who is after their weapons to make himself more powerful. Unlike a lot of softened-up, heavily censored cartoons of this era, Dungeons & Dragons managed to maintain a sense of tension and real danger. Even if no one ever truly got hurt, you got the sense that if Venger ever caught them, they WOULD be.
Now thanks to IDW, they’re back! Dungeons & Dragons: Saturday Morning Adventures resurrects the characters and premise of the 80s cartoon for four enthralling issues, led by writers David M. Booher (Canto), Sam Maggs (Rick and Morty Ever After), and artist George Kambadais (John Carter of Mars).
“As a lifelong D&D fan, it is an absolute dream to get to work reviving a childhood classic,” says Maggs. “It’s been such a blast working with IDW and the fine folks at Wizards of the Coast to home in on what made the Dungeons & Dragons Saturday morning cartoon such a cult favorite. Setting these characters up for a whole new run of stories has truly been a career highlight, and I hope fans will love seeing Uni (well…all our cool kids, but especially Uni) back in action as much as I do!”
IDW’s press release makes no mention of when the first issue of Dungeons & Dragons: Saturday Morning Adventures will show up (weird). Just keep hanging around your comics shop until it appears, we guess.
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