Dungeons & Dragons, Volume 2: First Encounters

Dungeons & Dragons by John Rogers #2

by John Rogers, Andrea Di Vito (Illustrator), Denis Medri (Illustrator)

This second volume of the acclaimed Dungeons & Dragons comic reveals how our favorite band of adventurers first came together But in present day, Fell's Five has found itself stranded in the mystical realm known as the Feywild, with few options for returning home. Join the party as John Rogers and Andrea Di Vito bring us a new chapter in their thrilling adventures of swords and sorcery

Genres: Fantasy, Comics, Graphic Novels, Dungeons and Dragons, Adventure, Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics

152 pages, Hardcover

First published November 22, 2011

About the author

John Rogers is a screenwriter, comedian, film producer, and comic book writer. Although born in Worcester, Massachusetts, he attended McGill University in Montreal and is better known publicly as a Canadian writer.

Reviews

[C.T. Phipps]

DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS: FIRST ENCOUNTERS follows Fell's Five as they get trapped in the Feywild. Given none of them is a magician who knows how to plane shift, this is bad news as it is full of more monsters than, well, the regular forests of Faerun. We get some backstory about Fell but it is hurt by the fact his backstory consists of, "Well, I used to be an adventurer before I was an adventurer."

The art is beautiful and I absolutely love the design of Tisha Swornheart. The Tiefling warlock is meant to be fanservice and she is absolutely fantastic at it. She's also a very intriguing character. I really want her and Adric Fell to hook up but sadly there's not even a hint of that in this book.

[Baal Of]

I liked this one only marginally less than the previous volume, and it may actually be because I read the physical book instead of on the kindle. I have found that as my sight gets progressively worse, I have a hard time distinguishing some detail with dark artwork on printed page, and this book has a lot of dark colors that can blend into each other. I think the fact that the kindle is using direct light instead of reflected light makes it easier for me to see the details. Which of course has nothing to do with the actual content of the book. This book is pretty much what I would expect from a D&D comic: common role-playing tropes, with some minor deviations; some silly but fun dialog; plenty of magical adventure. The characters and story are fun, and provide some relief from the heavier books I've got going.

[Robert]

Does what a second volume should, fills in some of the backstory and expands the universe established in the first.

[Jeff]

About two-thirds of the way through reading this second volume of the Dungeons and Dragons comic, I was thoroughly enjoying myself. I put it down for a bit, but I didn't really know why - after all, if you're enjoying something you're reading, you don't necessarily want to stop.

The story isn't perfect, and it's filled with standard fantasy tropes and the type of lame humor everyone loves at the gaming table and nowhere else. The artwork is also classic, and combine all of it together, and I answer my question: the D&D comic is simply a perfect presentation of material that you almost certainly have a nostalgic feel for if you were actually driven to pick the book up. It's just fun.

Sadly, I believe there are only three volumes of this. I'm hoping John Rogers gets his Arcanum stuff into trade so I can continue having fun with this sort of setting and writing.

[Frans Kempe]

The Fell five are thrown into the feyworld and has to fight for a way out. I enjoyed the story and the flashbacks to how they met each other.

[O'Rety]

If only it was more coherent...Alas, the pace is equally too fast as in the first tome, but now you have the additional headache of authors making you follow an achronological narration (for no good reason). Also, using the now, long since abandoned, 4e DnD "Points of Light" setting was, pardon the obvious pun, rather pointless. And the art, at least that's what I felt, was a notch below the first installment (for sure the first half felt that way).

Still, it's probably the best thing I've yet run into that gets a RPG session experience right. Mostly it's because the story is really a chain of RPG adventure encounters strung up together into a RPG campaign. And secondly, it quite aptly follows the classic DnD class and race tropes. Actually, it does it so well, that you can read the whole adventuring squad as if they had been described in a DnD handbook. Adric is a bad-ass, swashbuckling human fighter (with a soldier/sailor background), Khal - a gruff dwarven paladin (with a poet background!), Varis - a slick elven ranger, Bree - an equally devious and dexterous halfling rogue and Tisha a seductively mystical tiefling warlock.

It's too frenetic and sometimes tries too hard to be too clever for it's own good, but all-in-all amounts to "a not bad" and true DnD experience - hence 4/5 rating.

[Jason Adams]

A bit of silly fun. The humor is the nerdy wit you find around the game table after the second case of Mountain Dew has been expended. As with any good game, adventure hooks and backstory are everywhere. The narrative barely holds together with frequent flashbacks and references to events off page. It is like joining a long running game where everyone knows the back story and you are desperately trying to catch up.

[Gareth]

Another fun read. Get to explore a bit more backstory for the characters, while also exploring the Feywild and seeing the characters get into and out of various bits of trouble. Some nice tying up of loose ends at the end, though a couple still to be resolved. Characters are fun and rounded, and story is engaging.

[The Book Dragon]

An exciting new adventure for our heroes as they get ejected from the portal they jumped through in the last volume.

The only thing is it spends a bit of time in the beginning with a flashback (and I accidentally read this one first because it was called ‘First Encounters’, oops) and it doesn’t make much sense until later.

There’s a big cliffhanger at the end and I wanna know more.

[Bree Hatfield]

This was a solid story. The story picked right where the first left off, but with a few issues of backstory for much of our main cast. Seeing the Feywild was amazing and the plot was so well integrated with Adric’s backstory. This one was slightly less engaging than the first volume, but not enough to detract from my enjoyment in a significant way. Overall, a fantastic second volume!

[Oron]

3.5 stars.
A nice fun read. I actually enjoyed the first volume more, something in this one felt a bit clumsy but still the writing is fun, the art is cool, the charecters are interesting and witty. All in all a fun series, although a bit forgetable.

[Joseph Debarr]

A little hard to follow at times

This graphic no el was a little hard to follow at times but overall a decent story. If you love fantasy an pretty good art, you will enjoy this book.

[Damian Herde]

Thoroughly engaging, while not perfect. The art quality was a little variable, but generally not bad. The characters gained some more development, and the adventure was a fun, portal hopping quest against impossible odds.

[Timothy McNeil]

Not as enjoyable as the first volume, but still solid D&D fun.

[Joana]

Muito bom!!!

[Mouse]

Great artwork in this, but the writing is absolute sh*t!!!!! It tries to be funny when it shouldn’t, it’s unclear at times what’s going on, and the characters are just not very good.

[matt]

This book was a lot of fun. It reads very much like an actual game plays out - with some serious fights and silly banter.

[James Goddard]

Good fun

Good fun. Books one and two can be read together then it's up to you to read more or not. Good plot and story pace. Characters are loveable rogues.

[Peter]

This wasn't nearly as good as the first.

The stupid Marvel quips becomes too much.

The rogue's entire character is a disaster - though I *do* recognise the player character stereotype it emulates.

[Scotty]

Fun book. Well written. Great artwork and lettering.

[Michael]

Not as good as the first one, but still enjoyable.

[Silas]

Like the previous volume, this is a fun Dungeons & Dragons adventure that both comes off as a tad generic and subverts your expectations for the characters. The fighter is the brains of the operation, and the dwarf is a poet. Of course, not everything is against type, so the tiefling is a warlock, and the halfling is a kleptomaniac, and the elf... we don't learn a whole lot about the elf, other than he is a ranger (though he does use axes, which is a tad unusual). Anyhow, the story here continues from the previous volume, with the main characters trapped in the Feywild, with flashback issue that comes first, and which ties in to the story as it progresses. It's surprisingly well done, and if you are already familiar with the baseline setting of fourth edition D&D, it is incorporated seamlessly, even down to some minor details. The art is clear and it is never hard to tell which character is which. This still hasn't gotten on to making itself a distinctive piece of fantasy, but it is another enjoyable story that clearly represents Dungeons & Dragons.

[David(LA,CA)]

I'm still really enjoying this series, but I think this volume is a little weaker than the first one. Part of what I liked about the first volume was the interplay between the main characters. This one spends a third of its time in a flashback where some of the main characters first meet. So they don't know/trust/like each other well enough to do the making jokes at your buddy's expense thing. Plus that same third of the story is one of those game session standards that I would imagine everyone hates: Guard duty for the useless guy that should get his butt kicked.

Once it leaves the past behind, it gets better. But by that point, it's built a hole to dig itself out of.

[Keith Irwin]

I felt like this volume of Dungeons and Dragons did a very good job of following the previous one. It shared the same pattern of characters scrambling to avoid impending doom while cracking wise which made the previous volume so fun. I didn't laugh out loud, but there were bits funny enough that my wife remarked on the big grin on my face. And there was some good filling in of backstory and characterization which gave the story some nice heft so it didn't feel too lightweight. All in all, I enjoyed it quite a bit.

[Deckard Ra]

The second volume picked off from where the first volume ended. The protagonists finds themselves in even more ridiculous adventures. The humor and wit continues in this volume as well. It is truly satisfying when at the end of the book, all the previous adventures are revealed to be connected in a grand scheme. This book hardened my resolve to get another Dungeons and Dragons book. You can never go wrong with Dungeons & Dragons.

[Khairul Hezry]

Tells us how the band got together in the first place and continues where it left off from the first book. The one liners come thick and fast ("I'm being disemboweled...horribly!". A fun read and if it wasn't for the inconsistency in the artwork I would have given this four stars.

[Shannon Appelcline]

An enjoyable volume, though not quite as amazing as its predecessor. It feels more like a fantasy adventure, while the first volume felt more like a fantasy RPG. Still, nice characters, nice backstory, and an occasional moment of humor.

[James Bowman]

(This review covers Vol. 2 and Vol. 3.)

Two more great volumes in a fun series. The highlight is their plan to steal the Guide of Gates in Vol. 2, but the rest is good too. It's such a pity the comic was so short-lived, I would have liked to see more with these characters... (A-)

[Gib Bickel]

Very strong second volume. The story moves at a brisk pace, and the characters are a treat to read about.

[Jdetrick]

The arts a little rougher this time around than the first volume, but it's not bad and the story, dialogue and characters are still great. Highly recommended!