As far as I'm concerned, The Dreamland Chronicles is as good as it gets. This is on the list for what I'll be getting the niece and nephew for Christmas. So, let's break things down and critique this graphic story.
Venues: Online comic, trade paperback collections and Wowio. If you want to get a good idea of what Dreamland Chronicles is like, download some issues of it from Wowio. (What? You've never heard of Wowio??? Oh my, are you in for a pleasant surprise! Wowio is a website with free ebook downloads. You do need to register but their privacy pledge is solid.)
Art: awesome CGI work. Having played with some computer rendering myself, turning out a page per day of this stuff is astounding. Way good art, some of the best on the internet. I've attached a sample page to this post so you can see for yourself.
Age Groups: kids of any age (and as my grandmother was fond of saying, you're only young twice...). Even the high school-aged cynics should like this one.
Publishing Frequency: usually everyday. I have no idea how the author and his crew manage to do this.
Story: The plot is a very well-done adventure-quest theme involving a guy named Alexander and his mythical friends, an elf princess, a fairy and a rock giant. Superficially, it looks like it could be a D&D adventure but do not be fooled. It's not D&D - it's closer to Oz or Tolkien or Treasure Island than it is to fantasy RPG. As a little boy, Alexander used to visit his friends in Dreamland every night until he was 12. After an encounter with a nasty dragon over a sword he found, Alexander stops dreaming altogether until he's in college. He finds a pendant one day and suddenly is back to visiting Dreamland again, where his old friends have also grown up and they are having troubles. The elf princess's parents are missing...so the old friends begin a quest to find them. And that's just the starting premise...
Setting: An unnamed college campus somewhere in North America and Dreamland, the land of dreams populated by elves, fairies, dragons, pirates, etc. Mythical creatures and magic are real in Dreamland but there's no disturbing moral ambivalence here - the Dreamland setting has very sharp standards of right and wrong. Fighting nasty giants, kidnapping pirates and evil dragons is good; lying, arrogance, dishonesty, etc. are bad. If he were alive today, the plot could easily be something that Robert Louise Stevenson wrote but in a fantasy setting. Needless to say, there is no bad language and no unwelcome sexual content. You can read this stuff to your kindergarten-aged kids at bedtime. You'll want to read it yourself too.
Other comments: The Dreamland Chronicles are addictive. The comic is available for free reading at http://www.thedreamlandchronicles.com. There is now an RSS feed which is really convenient. You can download short episodes for free at Wowio, http://www.wowio.com/users/comicshome.asp?cbPublisher=37. The Wowio downloads actually help support the comic in terms of putting food on the table for the artist and his crew so I'd encourage everyone to do this. Efforts this good deserve support. I've seen too many promising online comics die because it's really hard to make a living this way. Besides, Wowio downloads are free! What do you have to lose? The comic is also being released in trade paperback collections. As of this date, there are two volumes of the collected series - and this is the form that the niece and nephew will be getting for Christmas. There are links to buy the trade paperback collections on the comic's website and I would urge you to use them instead of buying from Amazon.com directly. When you use those links, a small amount of revenue from the sale goes back to the author, and you already know why I think that's a good thing.
One thing that I really like about The Dreamland Chronicles are the female characters. The medical researcher studying sleep disorders is smart, sassy and appropriately professional - she reminds me of my late grandmother the doctor. The fairy character is a girly-looking girl but she knows how to take care of herself and her friends. She's solid and brave, someone you can count on in a pinch. The elf princess can be a real stuffed shirt and displays really pompous behavior at times. She can get a bit wound up - but her friends manage to deflate the worst of her behaviors. Despite that, she is brave, loyal, strong, determined, organized, smart, and very moral. She's been raised to be a ruler who will do the right thing for her kingdom. She's a knockout too, but in sensible shoes... The girls in this comic are very good role models. As someone who got really sick and tired of wimpy female superheroes in DC and Marvel comics as a kid, I'm happy to say that The Dreamland Chronicles do their female characters right.
While this is a comic that young kids are going to enjoy, don't make the mistake of thinking that comics are just for kiddies. The rest of the world knows that comics are for everybody - it's about time that Americans figured that out too. You think all those Latin puns in Asterix or Captain Haddock's pursuit by a famous opera singer in Tintin are for little kids?!? Guess again! Seriously, The Dreamland Chronicles have huge appeal to people of all ages. The story is good and the characters are extremely well developed and they grow and change with time. I really do think that comparing it to the sophistication of Oz is justified. Checking it out online or downloading it from Wowio doesn't cost you anything except for a few minutes of your time. What do you have to lose?
Let me just say here and now that I have no connection of commercial interest in anything that I review here. This is a review, not an advertisement. I'm doing this blog because I love comics - and no other reason than that.
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