Dragon Ball Multiverse

Fan fics are fairly common on the internet, and for the most part they’re pretty awful. There are good ones, of course, but they’re kind of like sprite comics. I mean this in the sense that they seem easy to do, so people make them without regard to the amount of effort it actually takes to make them enjoyable. Beyond the fanfic we have the fan comic, which sprite comics generally fall into as well, though in my mind they’re their own category. Of awfulness, usually, but I’ve made sprite comics before too, so I think that entitles me to some forgiveness in being dickish about the whole thing. The important thing, though, is that fan comics are pretty rare, especially ones that aren’t porn, and even more rare are non-porn fan comics that are actually good, which brings us to Dragonball Multiverse.

Here’s the crazy thing about DBM; if you had shown me these pages and told me they were drawn by Dragonball author Akira Toriyama as part of some kind of anniversary celebration or something, I wouldn’t doubt it for a second. Not only does the art look exactly like the original Dragonball manga, but the writing is extremely similar as well. This could be a good or bad thing, depending on where you come from. The writing in Dragonball was far from perfect, and the writer for DBM apes every part of it, good and bad. But even if you were just a fan of the series in your preteen years where over the top fights were more important than drama or character relationships, then the series should at least be a fun romp through nostalgia.

This review is going to assume, like the comic itself, that you’re decently familiar with the world of Dragonball. The comic is envisioned as an unofficial sequel to the original comics, not as its own, independent story. The fact that the comic is so uncannily similar to the source material makes this feel like a really great idea. A part of me already considers this the real sequel to Dragonball Z, and ignores Dragonball GT as well (which the authors of this series also do: they even make subtle jabs at the series). The premise is pretty clever as well, and loans itself for a lot of fan service of the “things fans really want to see” as opposed to the usual “sexy girls doing sexy things” fan service. Anyway, those who know the series may remember the character of Future Trunks, who comes from an alternate future where Goku died of a heart disease before the earth was attacked by super-powered androids. He travels back in time in the hopes to change his world by helping the heroes of the past defeat the androids, but when he returns home he finds that his world is still the same, and what he’s really done is cause the past to diverge into its own reality. Toriyama explored this concept a little further when he revealed that the character of Cell came from a third time stream where he killed Trunks and stole his time machine, but after that he didn’t really do anything with the idea. The authors of DBM take this concept of multiple realities and just run with it. A group of largely forgettable aliens from the Dragonball series invent a device that allows them to travel between realities and, since this is Dragonball and all, they naturally use this ability to gather fighters together for a huge tournament. Because that’s what you do when you learn how to butt-fuck physics.

The obvious advantages of this setup is that this is a nice way to justify having characters who would never be able to meet in the original series somehow confront each other. A good example is when Cell fights Dabra, which was basically an impossible setup in the original series since Cell was already dead by the time Dabra appeared. However, in addition to just having alternate (but largely identical) characters from alternate realities meeting up, there are also original characters based on alternate takes on the characters, usually based on one change between their reality and the traditional Dragonball universe. For example, there is a version of Vegeta from a reality where Freeza never took over his home planet, and as such the saiyans never had access to space travel, and because of the lack of conflict no one learned how to turn into a super saiyan. One of the interesting things about this setup is that it also addresses the idea of other changes that could occur because of things like that. With the group of saiyans without space travel, it turns out that Goku died as a child. While young Goku was actually a bad enough dude to star in his own action series, by Saiyan standards he was actually extremely weak, and would easily have died from the elements, or even just training. It’s a fairly minor point in the series and isn’t explored in any significant way, but it helps to make the various realities feel more “real” and well thought out. This idea of a sort of “butterfly effect” to create new characters gives us what equates to a tournament version of Marvel’s “What If?” comic series.

One of the problems with the series, though, is one that also plagued the original Dragonball series, and that’s the simple fact that death is cheap. If a character was killed it was a small problem to bring them back to life. For those who don’t know, the titular Dragonballs are 7 magical artifacts that, when gathered together, allow the user to summon the Eternal Dragon Shenron, who will grant any one wish. That wish can be to bring someone back to life. Throughout the original series Toriyama made up various rules to maintain some level of drama, but for whatever reason he just kept making up loopholes that kind of defeated the purpose of the whole thing. At first the Dragonballs only had enough power to bring one person back to life at a time, but when it was convenient for the plot they were “upgraded” to let it revive people en masse. Additional rules that were just overwritten later were things such as the fact that the body of the revivee must be kept in good condition, since the Dragon would heal the wounds that killed them, but would treat undoing the gradual damage to tissue as a separate wish. Or the idea that a person could only be brought back to life once. The authors of DBM clearly know the original very well, and they actually made the cheapness of death something of a plot point. Considering the fact that the tournament organizers basically have access to an infinite number of magic, wish granting balls, part of the way they entice participants into joining is the promise of being able to fight to the death without having to worry about any long term consequences. This is all well and good, and it makes sense for the series, but it makes things a little weird when a character gets killed and it’s treated like a serious, dramatic event. Granted I know that, even if you know they’ll be just fine in a few hours, it’s probably really hard to watch your daughter get her neck snapped. But as a reader I know that there’s no reason to believe that she won’t be fine by the end of the series. In fact, even grievous, horrible injuries are completely healed within pages, so it’s nothing more than an inconvenience for the most part.

But let’s be honest here: people didn’t read Dragonball for the deep drama and characterization. You read that shit for the action, and this series doesn’t disappoint. It’s very traditional DBZ action, but coming into this series that’s what I wanted. Things really get fun when characters utilize the powers you know they have based on the original series, but in interesting, creative ways. My favorite example goes back to Cell’s fight with Dabra: Dabra has magic spit that can turn people into stone. When hit with it Cell risks being turned completely to stone, so to keep from being killed he tears his own goddamn head off! Holy shit, that’s hardcore squared! And those familiar with the character know he can just regenerate his body, so that actually made self-decapitation a pretty legitimate tactic. Aside from that we have another reality where Goku’s granddaughter, Pan, can turn into a Super Saiyan. She never could in the original series, and this was never really justified outside of Toriyama’s excuse that he didn’t think women looked right with the Super Saiyan hair. Even Vegeta’s daughter Bra can do it. It’s something that, logically, the characters from the main continuity should be able to do, but it just never happened. Another cool idea is there is a character who’s basically known as “The Namek”, whose origin may need some explanation. You see, the Namekian aliens (the race which series regular Piccolo belongs to) have the ability to fuse together in order to increase their power. They also reproduce asexually, so I’m not really sure how that works, exactly… Either way, the important thing is that The Namek is literally what would happen if every Namekian in a single reality fused into one individual. To me this is the most interesting of the original characters, so of course he’s the one character who has hardly done anything as the series progressed. Still, we know he at least defeated the final, strongest villain of the original series (Majin Buu) singlehandedly, so he must be pretty powerful.

While the art and writing in the series are pretty good, what really makes it memorable is the novelty of the concept. If it was just a sequel that introduced a new villain for the heroes to fight and a new flashy powerup the heroes need to… yeah, okay, that’s just Dragonball GT, and that was crap. It was boring because it just took the Dragonball formula and did it again. While this series does lose some points for lack of originality, the chance to see all of these “dream fights” in a way that expands on existing canon in a creative and interesting way is a real delight. If you don’t know Dragonball or don’t know it than this comic will likely be confusing, boring, or irritating. But if you did enjoy the series, I highly recommend it.