Dungeons & Dragons: Shadows of the Vampire #1

by Jim Zub, Nelson Dániel (Artist), Max Dunbar (Artist)

MINSC AND BOO ARE BACK! And things have never looked more dire, as mysterious forces draw the legendary ranger and his crew of adventurers to RAVENLOFT, the Realm of Terror... where they find themselves face to face with undead horrors in the land of eternal night!

Genres: Comics, Dungeons and Dragons

39 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 4, 2016

About the author

Jim Zub is a writer, artist and art instructor based in Toronto, Canada. Over the past fifteen years he’s worked for a diverse array of publishing, movie and video game clients including Disney, Warner Bros., Capcom, Hasbro, Bandai-Namco and Mattel.

He juggles his time between being a freelance comic writer and Program Coordinator for Seneca College‘s award-winning Animation program.

Reviews

[Jon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like the first series Legends of Baldur's Gate, this is a silly comic with over-the-top characters, embarrassing dialogue, and standard D&D adventure tropes. There's nothing to write home about, but it may induce some nostalgia into fans of the Baldur's Gate video games such as myself. Unlike the first series, the artwork is lacking.

Despite overall discontentment with this issue, the ending has a neat little twist that brings the characters into unfamiliar territory. There's certainly potential.

[Solace Winter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This seemed confused in its storytelling and rushed in certain places, which is a shame because it's a slightly longer comic. It was a good story, and I do look forward to the next, though.

[Chris Conley · Rating 4 out of 5]

It felt a little awkward at times, but go to where it needed to go. Boo is great.

[Mega · Rating 3 out of 5]

So one of the party members in this story has a miniature giant space hamster that he can communicate with and send out to do favors for him.......... yeah, that totally makes sense to me. For this kind of franchise, anyway. Also, there is a line in this comic where someone says they are stuck in deep doo doo, and I couldn't agree with that line more. I'm stuck in deep doo doo by deciding to read this.

Issue #1

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first D&D comic I've read. It's probably also the best-made comic I've read. Its pages are glossy and thicker than your average comic book's, and the cover is sturdier than the rest. I liked the art and the plot is interesting. It just didn't grab me and make me want to read more, though I'm not sure why.

Our heroes are a band of mercenaries who get hired to help a death cult protect their religious artifacts from thieves who want to use them for their own nefarious purposes. But not everyone in the temple wants the help of outsiders, and while the debate over whether or not to actually hire them rages on, the thieves break in and steal the relics. The mercenaries join their loudest protester to go after them.

I guess what I didn't like was that most of the comic was filled with battle scenes. The story is told in flashbacks that just kind of felt disjointed. So it opens with battle, then we get a flashback that tells a bit about the death cult, then we jump back into the battle taking place in the present, then we get a flashback to the artifacts being stolen so the heroes take off after them... It wasn't hard to tell what was happening, really, but I feel like the story would have been told better if it had just been chronological. Nothing was gained by utilizing flashback sequences.

At the end of the comic is a bonus story, introduced by the editor as a "never-before-printed tale set in the same world." I didn't like that comic at all. It's told as a narrative and there's no dialogue. It's strictly about dragons and an evil cult trying to gather dragons masks. Except it's pretty dull and didn't make for much of a story.

If I had read issue #1 before buying the rest of the series, I might have stopped here.

[Meredith Katz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fine so far; actually feels a bit like a campaign. As before, everything feels kind of rushed, which is probably due to the chapter limitation, but it would have been better if they'd been given 10 chapters instead of 5, so the intro can be allowed to breathe.

[Merewyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun times :) a "giant miniature hamster" named Boo. Definitely fun. :D