This may be a step back in time for most people reading this. But for those old bosses who discovered the RPG Dungeons & Dragons via the CBS Saturday morning cartoon – sip, 40 years ago — the series is back in comic form this coming spring.
Billed as a “lost episode” of the original cartoon, IDW’s four-issue miniseries reunites the gang – Bobby the Barbarian, Presto the Magician, Diana the Acrobat and all the rest – for another take on their old Avenge enemy. Sam Maggs, writer for IDW’s Marvel Action: Captain Marvel, writes the series, with David M. Booher and George Kambadais on art.
For those who don’t remember Saturday morning cartoons (or worse, weren’t around in their day), Dungeons & Dragons aired from 1983 to 1985, and told the story of a group of teenagers and a student stuck in a high-fantasy realm after riding a haunted roller coaster. With (limited) help from the mischievous and inscrutable Dungeon Master (aren’t they all?), the adventuring party strives to return to our mundane plane of reality.
For players in the base D&D set at this time (raise your hand) – the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon was our first exposure to player classes like Ranger (Hank) and Cavalier (brat Eric). We only started playing these classes in 1985, when Unearthed Arcana hitting the shelves of Waldenbooks at the mall 45 minutes away. Notably, there were no clerics among this group. The party faced the power-hungry Overlord Venger, as well as recurring foes like the Hydra Tiamat (voiced by the prolific Frank Welker).
Dungeons & Dragons ran for 27 episodes. In 1984, it was part of a two-hour programming block that included the Saturday Supercade (a collection of short films based on arcade games like donkey kong and Q*Bert, and Trap! for the Atari 2600) and a half-hour stand-alone adaptation of Pole positionNamco’s hit racing game at the time.
In other words, it was a great time to be a sixth-grade video game geek, and I’m speaking from personal experience. Dungeons & Dragons: Saturday Morning Adventures will launch in March 2023, with cover art by Kambadais and Brenda Hickey.
