Having sauntered my way through issue one of the laughable Legend Of Drizzt (this man's an international best-selling author? Really?), I have to ask: who started this stereotype of dwarves as angry Scotsmen?
It seems to have become a go-to staple when people can't be bothered to think of anything original to do with the little buggers. Surely, given their affection for runic writing, they're more 'likely' to be stunted Scandinavians? Mini-Vikings?
Even I made some effort, when launching my initial Tekralh campaign a few years back, to cast dwarves as an Oriental analogue - as I loved the visual possibilities of these stunties performing graceful wuxia-like martial arts moves.
Of course that's not the only groan-worthy part of the Drizzt comic (admittedly I have never read a Drizzt book and this comic is a bridging story between two of them), the central dwarf warrior - who is also a battlerager and a vampire - wears the single most bizarre (and impractical) suit of armour I have seen:
Not only does he look like a cross between DC's Doomsday and Marvel's Rhino, but he has spikes across his arse! How does he even sit down?
The Drizzt comics are quite poor. I ended up with a lot of them as a result of my reviewing position at Comics Bulletin, and after an unsuccessful period of trying to get rid of them, I fobbed them off to Oxfam.
ReplyDeleteI shall stick with this mini-series, just to try and get a handle on why the character is supposedly so popular... if I can stop laughing at the dwarf with his spiky bottom, that is! ;)
ReplyDeleteThe earliest "Scottish" dwarves I know of came from Raymond Feist's Midkemia novels. Though I'm sure there was an earlier precedent out there.
ReplyDeleteI read the original series some time back due to fiction starvation. It was decent, if filled with, as you mentioned, overused tropes.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the guy needs my defense, as it has a pretty loyal following, but since they are so old, I think it might have been before some of those tropes became so overused.
Thanks, guys. That was something I was wondering - are these books/characters so established that they were actually the prototypes that their imitators turned into cliche?
ReplyDeleteBefore DragonLance broke the fantasy market open, Feist's "Riftwar" was one of the better known and better selling fantasy series. I was working for a mainstream bookstore at the time and we sold the heck out of the original trilogy. It was also well known amongst gamers who read things like Dragon or Different Worlds magazines that Feist's world was based on a game setting (more than one, actually).
ReplyDeleteI've, of course, seen his books in stores through the years but never bothered with them... thanks for that, Theron.
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