Dungeons & Dragons #1 – Review

By John Rogers (writer), Andrea Di Vito (artist), Aburtou and Graphikslava (colors), Chris Mowry (letters)

The Story: A party of adventurers comes together—as all good adventuring parties do—in the local tavern. The party is wrongly arrested, and all the proper tropes for the opening of a good campaign are touched on.

What’s Good: I was more than a little dubious about this series after the ok-but-not-great issue #0. Issue #1 has gone a long way towards alleviating a lot of my fears. We have at least a token sort of ‘assembling the party’ scene, along with a solid and interesting (if not terribly original) quest hook. The absences of these basic and important elements were noticeable in #0, and their presence here elevates both the basic storytelling and the D&D connection.

One thing this comic does do very well is capture the feeling of an actual D&D campaign, while simultaneously giving both the characters and the world they inhabit their own, independent sense of authenticity. This is what I had in mind when I first heard “D&D comic from IDW.”

Dungeons & Dragons #0 – Review

Fell’s Five By: John Rogers (writer), Andrea Di Vito (art), Andrew Dalhouse (colors), Chris Mowry (letters)

Freedom by: Alex Irvine (writer), Peter Bergting (art), Ronda Pattison (colors), Chris Mowry (letters)

The Story: IDW establishes some characters to play with in their newest licensed property: Dungeons & Dragons

What’s Good: This two-part story is a pretty effective appetite wetter for anyone who wants more Dungeons & Dragons in their life.  Like a lot of (mostly) guys between the ages of 30-45 I spent a LOT of time leafing through Monster Manuals and rolling up character sheets.  In fact, I always thought that the weakness of D&D is that they had created such a cool world that was such a pain in the butt to access because you needed 5-6 guys and a lot of time to really do the story telling.

I probably enjoyed the first of these two stories a little better.  It is a quick ~10 page story of getting-the-party-together.  And it is a pretty cliché party if you’ve ever played D&D: human fighter, dwarf fighter, halfling thief, tiefling sorcerer & half-elven ranger.  I guess no one wanted to play the cleric and be restricted to using non-edged weapons and spending all their spells healing the rest of the party??  Still, there is a reason this is a pretty classic party configuration: it works.  The art in this portion is good (not great, but good).  One of the cool things that the creators did in this story (beyond having the party fight gnolls and a black dragon) was that the thief mutters to herself constantly and it serves as a reminder of various gameplay mechanics of the D&D universe.  For example, as the party is descending a staircase, she is muttering (quietly) “trap, trap, trap…” to show the constant “thief is searching for traps” mechanic of D&D and later, during a fight, she mutters (again in an under the breath sort of way) “Sneak around to the flank…Stab them in the back” to highlight some other mechanics of the game.  It is something that could get old, but it does ground this story firmly in the D&D world.  I think that’s important because that appeal to D&D players is the only reason for this comic’s existence and it shows that IDW isn’t just slapping D&D on the cover a generic fantasy comic.