Comic Review: Rick and Morty vs. Dungeons & Dragons #4

The geekiest comic you will ever read reaches its major conclusion.

Overview:

As the Sanchez family continues their D&D campaign as initiated in book three, they are left with the aftermath of accidentally destroying a village of innocent giants.  Guilty of prejudice, the Sanchez group caused a lot of pain for the village, but none worse than causing a baby to be abducted by the true villains.  In a pledge to make things right, the warrior family track down the kidnappers and save this magical world of D&D.  Sacrifices will be made, lessons will be learned, but will they get it all done before Morty has his date of playing D&D with the girl he likes?  And, has he learned enough to hold his own?

Our Take:

The nerdiest of us should be nothing short of grateful for this series.  Crossovers may be the biggest thing in the world of entertainment right now – erhm, Marvel – but, this is one that none of us saw coming.  D&D has been the definition of dorking out for decades, and Rick and Morty is the current pop culture dynamo in the geek department.  Bringing these two worlds together, in the completely nerdy medium of comic books, is kind of unbelievable.  To take things up another notch, the creators went to another geekdom of fantasy novels and snagged up one of the biggest talents in the literature world today, Patrick Rothfuss.  So, needless to say, this 4-issue mini-series is for all of us nerds.  Not the nerds that pretend to be nerds because that’s cool now, but the actual nerds that live in each of these fandoms.

When this mini-series began nobody really knew what to expect, and it easily could have gone anyway.  But, that first issue showed us just how valuable of a series this would be as Morty navigated the world of D&D in much of the same way we all do when we discover something new that we know little about.  But, then issue two came out and it took the narrative in a completely other direction.  While still fun and enjoyable, it was evident that we still had no idea what to expect from this mini-series.  Which leads us to this conclusion issue, which did not end at all the way I thought it would.

Each of the three previous issues featured a theme of introducing Morty to other parts of D&D lore, through the mentoring of different characters.  However, book four was a complete continuation of the third issue and had a minimal connotation to the story that started us on this adventure.  The inconsistency of the story is a bit of a shock, and I think it is pretty clear that these four books were not written in one go but in four different sit-downs.  That’s not to say that each book is excellent on their own, but I do wish there was a stronger thread tying the series together.

In each of the previous reviews on this series, I have had a blast checking out all of our favourite characters take on new personas and costumes.  Each of them have been exciting takes from Morty’s rise through each of the classes to Jerry becoming one the most badass versions of himself that you will ever see.  Unfortunately, we didn’t get anything new in this book.  However, we did finally get to see the party work together completely to conquer a stellar campaign that any of us would be happy to be a part of.  Surprisingly, the character that goes through the most growth and interest in this issue is Summer.  Her plot is a development that I would expect from the expert writers scribing these books, and I don’t think I have liked her this much ever before – did I say the same thing about Jerry in my review of book three?

I am going, to be honest here, as much as I love this series, and as much as I will recommend it to everyone, this conclusion was disappointing.  While my rating for this issue may be lower, I would give the overall series a solid 8 out of ten.  What excited me most about R&M v. D&D, to begin with, was how Morty represented all of us as he tried to learn his way around such a popular and complex game.  It is that storyline that I have been invested in, it is that plot that I have been awaiting the conclusion of.  Unfortunately, somewhere in the books that plot was lost for something completely different.  So much so, that Morty’s story was wrapped up in a couple panels, and only through dialogue.  As lacklustre of an ending this was, it was still nice to see Patrick Rothfuss finish a series – ouch, just kidding, please Mr. Rothfuss don’t banish me from reading your books.