Written by Greg Erb and Jason Oremland
Art by Wook-Jin Clark
184 pages, black and white
Published by Oni Press
With countless examples ranging from Peter Pan to The Chronicles of Narnia, we all know the story of kids being whisked away to a magical realm to fight some big bad guy. The Return of King Doug begs the question, what if the kid ran away from his “destiny”?
Silly and sarcastic, this story takes us on a wild ride. The story opens in the fantasy world of Valdonia, with newly-crowned, King Doug, being told of his destiny to charge into battle where his friends and he will likely die valiantly on the field of war… And he runs. Fast. The story picks back up with Doug as a divorced, unemployed, deadbeat dad taking his son out to the family summer home. Naturally (for the type of story it is), his son gets mixed up in Valdonia and Doug is once again thrust into his childhood nightmare.
There were a ton of one-liners throughout, sort of like if they had been writing this book as a webcomic and releasing it page by page, and while most of the jokes land, some don’t. What I really found funny was that they even used the timing captions (the “meanwhile” and “in the future” deals) as a running gag. They were sarcastic too, which as an author of a comic, I found quite funny. My other favorite part was that the characters in Valdonia have also fallen into disarray with Doug gone. The once mentor and friend, Feldspar (a mocking depiction, I believe, of Mr. Tumnus from the Narnia series) has become a crazed drunk, the centaur hero is fat and lazy, and so much more. And when they meet Doug again for the first time in 30 years… hilarious.
The bite of the dialogue and story was truly humorous, but what I really liked was the message the story showed. This was a true hero’s journey from selfish cowardice to eventual hero, the redemptive story is always nice to read even if it’s not the best of them.
The artwork is also quite fantastic throughout. Easy to follow and wonderful details made for a thrilling read! Clarks’ use of expressions throughout the book are great and often make a joke sing. One thing I would have liked to see was a bit more variation in the linework, though. Since it was black and white, I wanted to see the characters pop out a bit more from the background. But, like I said, it was still easy to follow along.
Also, since I know I have some parents out there who are awesome and want to give their kids graphic novels to read… The Return of King Doug has some language and adult humor in there, so be wary. It’s really not that bad, but just wanted to give the heads up.
If you’re looking for something with jokes written on it’s bones, and is different from the usual kid sucked into a fantasy world trope, then The Return of King Doug is a book for you!
As an interesting note: While looking up the book on Google, I found that Ben Stiller had actually been attached to a film adaptation of this (he would be perfect for it too) but that was from 2008… I would totally watch this with Ben Stiller as lead. Hollywood, I’m just sayin’.