The young girl in Second Quest will seem familiar to most video game lovers. Azalea explores ruins, collects artifacts and tries to uncover the mysterious hidden history of her floating fantasy homeland. But, halfway through the story, she throws away the ocarina, boomerang and slingshot sheās found. She needs to save her world but gets told that it needs to happen without the adventuring her souls calls out for. Itās heartbreaking.
Successfully crowdfunded in 2012, Second Quest is a new graphic novel out from games critic Tevis Thompson and artist David Hellman. Its existence comes, in part, from a dissatisfaction with the way that The Legend of Zelda series has changed but the hardcover carves out its own niche away from the famous NIntendo series while invoking familiar Zelda elements.
However, those visions contradict the glorious history that sheās being taught about, which paints her people as celestially chosen defenders of a virtuous way of life.
The actual past is much darker, though, and Azaleaās big crisis is choosing to follow her heart or suppressing her desires and playing along for the greater good.
Thereās a quiet irony in the scenes where sheās watching boys train to be pretend warriors when sheās already proven herself to be braver than most anyone in her social circle. The tension between propaganda and suppressed truths changes the relationship between Azalea and her best friend Cale in a poignant way, as he seizes a chance to go from mocked outsider to āone of the guysā.
Second Quest uses the familiarity of the Legend of Zelda series as a springboard for a leap into a world that feels more nuanced and mature, complicating matters by folding in xenophobia, sexism and the big-lie compromises that society tells itself it has to swallow. Azaleaās hunger for adventure is presented as tied to a thirst for meaning in a broken world whose intolerance, ethnic cleansing and jingoistic state rituals gets sold as the Age of Harmony. She knows somethingās wrong deep down inside but is scared off by the idea that digging deeper may unravel the only world sheās ever known. Itās weighty stuff, a contemplation on how the sadness of, say, Majoraās Mask is made manifest in the real world by stereotypes, bullying and harassment.
Hellmanās artāfamiliar to anyone whoās played Braidāis rendered in thick wavy lines that reminded me of medieval illumination drawings and 15th Century woodcuts. He also makes great use of contrast, splashing neon colors and jewel tones over inky panels to invoke a sort of video game aesthetic. The odd-sized, off-grid panels and unconventional balloon placement in Second Quest force readers to work a little harder than they should when it comes to finding its way across the page, but something about this idiosyncrasy gives Second Quest a rough-hewn charm. It feels like your eyes are going on an adventure. The settingās familiar but the exact path to get to the next page is unknown. It ends on a beautiful double-page spread where Azalea reckons with the gap between what sheās been told and what she can feel. Hellman and Thompsonās work in Second Quest comes across as a smart allegory on where gaming culture has been and where it is now.
