Dungeons & Dragons: Forgotten Realms

Dungeons & Dragons: Forgotten Realms #1-5

by Ed Greenwood, Lee Ferguson (Illustrator), Sal Buscema (Illustrator)

Forgotten Realms creator Ed Greenwood opens the adventures of an unlikely new band of heroes who get into a bit more trouble than usual in the fabled port city of Waterdeep, but soon discover some of the seedier corners of the wider Realms — the hard way! Joined by artist Lee Ferguson and Sal Buscema, this new series kicks off a deadly tale with a kidnapping that is more — and less — than it seems.

Genres: Fantasy, Forgotten Realms, Dungeons and Dragons, Graphic Novels, Comics, Graphic Novels Comics, Gaming

124 pages, Hardcover

First published December 4, 2012

About the author

Ed Greenwood is the creator of the Forgotten Realms fantasy world, which became the setting for his home D&D game in 1975. Play still continues in this long-running campaign, and Ed also keeps busy producing Realmslore for various TSR publications.

Ed has published over two hundred articles in Dragon magazine and Polyhedron newszine, is a lifetime charter member of the Role Playing Game Associaton (RPGA) network, has written over thirty books and modules for TSR, and been Gen Con Game Fair guest of honor several times.

In addition to all these activities, Ed works as a library clerk and has edited over a dozen small press magazines.

Invented the character Elminster from the popular Forgotten Realms RPG series. Currently resides in an old farmhouse in the countryside of Ontario, Canada.

Reviews

[C.T. Phipps · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite how much I love Ed Greenwood's work, I'm going to say this isn't really the best comic to bear the logo of either Dungeons and Dragons or the Forgotten Realms. The characters are thinly sketched with a spoiled noblewoman and a pair of thieves cursed into "rescuing" her plus a vague plot to steal her lands. Mostly, it's a series of random encounters as they ping pong ball from one threatening situation to the next. Only a few of the encounters are memorable with the Ghost King being the standout one.

The art is gorgeous, though.

[Baal Of · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dragon's Lair has a clearance sell on hundreds of their graphic novels, and since my nephews really liked the Dungeons And Dragons comic book they bought a while back, I bought a bunch of these books to give them. And of course, I have to read them before I hand them off. This first one is a bit disappointing. I didn't figure it would be the best comic book ever, but this was kind of lack-luster. The story line was not well plotted, the characters were so thin, that I can't think of a single name one day later. Nothing about this book made it feel like the Forgotten Realms are a place with history, culture, or anything at all. The fight scenes were so poorly framed that it was hard to tell what was happening, and they had no visceral impact. The heroes must be level 1, cause they mostly just ran away from stuff. Oh well, hopefully my nephews will like these books a bit more than I did. I've got a stack of 5 more to get through.

[Andrew · Rating 1 out of 5]

Being a massive fan of Ed Greenwood's work (both his fiction and his gaming material) I was looking forward to his foray into comic books. To say the result was a disaster is an understatement.

The story itself is very disjointed, as if the author did not understand the limitations of the medium. Greenwood's work is noted for his wordiness (oft-times overly so) and a medium that is delivered in 22 page chunks does not really allow for such. The characters simply just "are", they display no motivations or individuality. They are definitely fantasy cliches. The plot here consists of simply hopping from one villain (whose motivations are never once explained) to the next until the very unsatisfying ending. The abrupt ending makes it seem as though IDW pulled the plug on the series before it intending to. Given the way this series started I think that was a wise choice.

[Jdetrick · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm so disappointed with this book. I've loved Ed Greenwood's comics and novels in the past, but this is a mess. The speech patterns of the characters are awkward and distance the readers from them; as a result, none of the characters feel like people. They're just puppets, being put through the motions. The plot is boring, the art doesn't always clearly indicate what is happening, and I found myself not caring at all what happened. Blah.

[Benjamin]

There was a time when I was reading about a book a night from this Humble Bundle of D&D comics--until I ran into this one, which pretty decisively killed my momentum.

Which I don't want to say, because it's written by Ed Greenwood, one of the architects of the Forgotten Realms, my favorite of the grab-bag RPG campaign settings. (As opposed to the focused or thematic campaign settings, like Ravenloft or Planescape.)

(Basically, when I say "grab-bag", I mean that I like FR more than Greyhawk, the other standard-vanilla fantasy setting.)

But this story is hard to get into and requires many narratorial comments to make sense; it tells the story of two rogues who find a kidnapped heiress and how they become an adventuring group, I guess. But the characters are pretty uninspiring and the action feels so oddly generic.

[Frans Kempe · Rating 3 out of 5]

The graphics was ok but the story was a bit hard to get into, a kidnapping and two heroes that are cursed into bringing her home. It left many threads hanging.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was a tad hard to follow at points and the art sometimes made it worse and certainly did not help.

[Marco Bizzarri · Rating 2 out of 5]

Funny things first: I bought this as my first book about Forgotten Realms, without knowing it was a comic book.

I have no problem with comics (read a lot of them and keep reading them), but reading them on an e-book reader was kind of problematic, so for a long time this remained on the virtual shelf.

Recently, after quite a number of books about Forgotten Realms, and a better monitor, I came back to it.

How is it? I kind of liked it, even though the story, especially in the beginning, is quite confused. Nonetheless, there is a lot of action and adventure, so I will give it for the moment two stars.

[Keith Irwin · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the story of a kidnapping gone wrong set in the Dungeons and Dragons world. This story is a mess. There are a whole ton of characters, most of whom I could not begin to keep straight. I wasn't actually clear on what most of them were doing at any given time. There seemed to be a bunch of intrigue going on, but I honestly couldn't make heads or tails of it. The author gives us a reasonable introduction to exactly two of the characters. And then there's running and fighting and scheming. But the scheming is all so vague that I wasn't clear who was scheming to do what with whom. There were so many scenes were I read the scene and said to myself "I don't know who those people or what the plan they're discussing is." And the plans which do get revealed are all so overly convoluted that they're just confusing. And I never did figure out how the wizards factor into things or what the magic gem was supposed to be or why anyone thought that the three protagonists had it or why the parents spent the whole time worrying about their son who disappeared before the comic started instead of their kidnapped daughter or who that woman was or how the schemers found out about the initial fake kidnapping plan or why those people thought that the one house would destroy itself or how.

The art wasn't great either. I mean, the linework was fine, but the layout often served to make the hard-to-understand even harder to understand. For example, the fight scenes were so unclear with unhelpful close-ups that I usually didn't know what was going on in them any more than in the larger plot. And at one point it looks like our three main normal human protagonists managed to jump about 30 feel across a chasm. I'm not sure if that's bad writing or bad art, but it's got to be at least one of those.

And then, after all this confusing stuff, the story suddenly ends with a deus ex machina which doesn't really even resolve anything. I don't get this story at all. It seems highly in need of an editor.

[J. · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is inexcusably bad. The old Forgotten Realms series is good. The new Dungeons and Dragons series is good. But this is a mess. It's just a bunch of indistinguishable characters running around in the dark. I couldn't ever tell who I was looking at or what was going on. The art in each panel looked fine, but there was no sense of storytelling between the panels--it was regularly unclear what actions were happening. And the story was nearly nonexistent. A lot "happened," but in a jumbled, unconnected manner. This is really bad comicbooking. The kind of bad where I'll avoid the writer and artist from now on.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

hmm the art was great, the story well not so much. I don't believe there was a Vol. 2 ... and I can see why it wasn't done. By the end of the story I could see where it was going i.e. Vol. 1 was use to bring all the characters together, and to introduce a lot of plots and sub-plots. Just to much information with no clear line of follow. I would not recommend this at all.

[Justin · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am so disappointed in this book. The story starts out fine but just fizzles and dies. There's very little character development and every bit of dialogue seems forced and fake. Nothing is resolved and it is just confusing. I really hoped for more.

[MR J HUTCHINGS · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a load of rubbish!!!

The dialogue was poor. The characters, I couldn’t really care about.
Compared to the other D&D comics of the same company I’ve read, this one was a hard slog and felt totally meaningless.

Boring to the very end

[Derek · Rating 2 out of 5]

I threw this one at my son after he showed devouring interest in the Minsc and Boo collections, and now understand his lukewarm-to-cold response. Greenwood jam-packs the story with subplot and incidental characters to the point where a reader needs either a diagram or multiple readings to get everything together. And neither the bland character design nor the mouthful-of-syllables names provide aid.

[Damian Herde · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a tough slog to get through, and I nearly bailed on it.
A rogue’s tale of the politicking of a wealthy family crossing paths with two minor criminals who are cursed to keep a noble’s daughter safe.
The background characters blurred together, and the main characters weren’t that interesting.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too choppy

I used to like Ed Greenwood, but his writing started to cleave closely to a romping montage adventure style. This is an example. The art is good, but the story bounces all over, has dozens of characters with almost no depth, and changes scene way too often.

[Joseph Debarr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good graphic novel

This is a good graphic novel that has some twists and turns to keep you entertained. There were a couple times I got a little lost in the story but it seems to rebound nicely. If you like the forgotten realms setting you will enjoy this book.

[Alistair Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

randal was my favorite character I like the art I like the characters snake guy look awesome!it was a awesome story I like the story too.

[Frida Hultgren · Rating 1 out of 5]

1,5

[Jeffrey · Rating 1 out of 5]

Greenwood couldn’t write his way out of a paper bag.

[Tiny Octopus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meeehhhhhh. The language was absolutely ridiculous and it was really hard to follow the muddled story. The art was nice, but the panels were very confusing.

[Brannigan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great story ok art.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good adventure comic

This graphic novel is great for any fan of the Forgotten Realms or D&D in general. But this is only the beginning of the adventure.

[Aaron Lindahl · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a comic, my first actually but leave your expectations at the door.

[RealmsQueen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not as good as I was expecting it to be, and my biggest issue was the story. It jumps around so much from different groups of characters it's difficult to keep track of what's going on, and it's not until you're almost finished that they finally reveal what's going on and even then they leave pieces out.

One of my least favorite Realms titles to date.

[Nathan Triz · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very disappointing...

[M.G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't think I was going to like it at first. I had trouble remembering how to read comics. It felt like I was reading something that I came in on the middle. I kept with it and I got into it.

[Belinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great story set in Waterdeep and the Ghost Holds. The story jumps around quite a bit, but it isn't too hard to follow. The artwork is fantastic.

[José Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Debo decir que Ed Greenwood le falta mucho para escribir comics. Puede que sea su mundo, pero el "pacing" esta mal y la mitad de las veces no se entiende que es lo que esta pasando.