The French graphic novelists Joann Sfar and Lewis Trondheim teamed up to create the Dungeon series, a spoof on every Tolkien-inspired wizard's tale with a dollop of economics thrown in for sheer eccentricity's sake. It's not deep, but, man, is it fun. Dungeon 2 is the first to be published in English, but it doesn't suffer from lack of a back-story.

The story starts with a board meeting. Despite the Dungeon Keeper's assurances that the Dungeon is a foolproof economic model - knights come, get killed, and leave all their little magical trinkets - the Dungeon's revenues are declining. The Keeper is a western-style chief executive. A duck named Herbert, who can kill anything green by going Thwip!! with his feathers, proposes that they make up a story that a princess is being held hostage. Herbert reasons that this will bring in all sorts of knights.

It works. The bachelors line up to get slaughtered. But it turns out that the princess Herbert thought he was making up really exists. She's rather wilful, knows enough martial arts to defeat a warrior horde, and has decided to use the news of her kidnapping as an excuse to run off with the prince she really wants to marry. But the poor little guy gets sucked up by a big tentacle, leaving nothing but

his bones.

'Every time I find myself a nice, cultivated guy,' moans Princess Isis, drawn as a leggy, Cossack cat, 'he gets killed.'

As she arrives at the dungeon where she's supposed to be held prisoner, her younger brother shows up with a horde of Kolchak warriors mounted on buffalos. The brother secretly wants to kill Isis so he can inherit the throne. You can see why Isis is the heir. She's a better warrior than he is and quite the diplomat - she fools trolls by telling them she's not eating the baby they've given her 'because I'm saving it for later'.

The plot is easy to follow until the last third, which will only make sense to Monty Python fans. Herbert turns into a chicken-octopus-ninja. Crystal balls serve as cell-phones (a magician sings the trolls a lullaby through one).

A vegetarian dragon-warrior named Marvin runs through his fashion issues. Flying mechanical watches refuse to attack, citing copyright issues. The local police in a magician's town operate on a pyramid scheme.

Princess Isis generally saves the day, but never in an annoying way.