Almost Two-Year-Old Comics: The Top-Shelf May 20 (2020) Edition (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Dungeons & Dragons:  Infernal Tides #3 (May 20):  It seems weird that we're only getting to the "tides" part of a series called "Infernal Tides" in the third issue when it sounds like this series is supposed to end with the next issue.  But hopefully Zub will give enough infernal piracy to compensate!  

As we saw at the end of last issue, the gang arrives in Elturel in time for an infernal invasion.  I use "infernal" instead of "demonic" or "devilish" because, well, it's...complicated.  I'm pretty deep in DnD, and even I admit that I got lost in the hairsplitting that is chaotic demons fighting lawful devils in the eternal Blood War.  Zariel's devilish troops are dragging Elturel into the Nine Hells for reasons that aren't particularly clear to me but, you know, devils.  

The first stop on the Nine Hells tour is Avernus, the Hells' upper tier and the Blood War's primary battle ground (since it's where the River Styx dumps the demons coming from the Abyss).  As far as I can tell, we don't see any demons here, though the devils are giving the gang enough trouble.  A group called the Bloodrovers plan to steal the soul coins that are powering the war machines that Zariel's troops are using to pull Elturel down into Avernus.  (Again, I'm surprised this crowd didn't appear earlier given the mini-series title.)  

In Elturel, the Hell Knight Haruman leads the charge, and we're reminded (told?) that he's the devil who kidnapped (or maybe murdered?) Aubree's father.  I have no real memory of that, but that's probably my fault for allowing so much time to elapse between reading the first issue and the last two issues.  At any rate, a gleeful Minsc engages him, but they wind up tumbling into Avernus with Nerys who tried to help.  Meanwhile, Shandie's instance on following a voice calling for help results in her getting trapped by a group of...demons, I want to say...who demand Kyrdle's soul in exchange for her freedom.

As you can probably tell, I had to re-read this issue a few times to track what the plot, and even then I found it relying almost a little too much on DnD lore, like soul coins and which infernal realms belongs to which devils, etc.  I hope, to quote Minsc, we return to more straight-forward butt-kicking next issue.