WARCRAFT: THE SUNWELL TRILOGY: Volume 1: Dragon Hunt

From the world of the incredibly popular Warcraft online role-playing game comes this first manga of a trilogy. The war-torn world of Azeroth is plagued on all sides by evil dragons, power-hungry elves and the armies of the Undead Scourge. Just as a wary peace seems possible, the Sunwell, a source of unimaginable power previously thought to be lost, resurfaces. Kalec, a blue dragon who takes an appealing human form complete with Farrah Fawcett hair, is on a quest to prevent the Sunwell's destructive power from being realized. He is joined by Anveena, a quaint country girl with a world-changing secret. Together they encounter the stock set of fantasy characters: surly dwarves, stupid orcs, rugged warriors and beautiful maidens. There's betrayal, magic and, of course, pages and pages of sword fights. The backstory for the Warcraft world is so complicated it requires eight pages of prose to explain it in brief, and still much of the comic is spent on exposition. This volume manages to be incomprehensibly complicated and yet at the same time insipidly transparent. The art is attractive and easily digested, but the characters and plot are purely cookie-cutter creations. This work will please only hardcore fans of the game. (Apr.)