In conjunction with Wizards of the Coast, Dark Horse creates and publishes a number of Dungeons & Dragons comic book series, such as The Fallbacks and Ravenloft. With the creative writing duo of Collin Kelly & Jackson Lanzing (BATMAN BEYOND: NEO-YEAR, ONE BAD DAY: CLAYFACE), Penciller Ibrahim Roberson (THOR, STAR WARS) Inker Arabson Oliveira, Colorist Dan Brown (STAR WARS LEGENDS, HOUSE OF SLAUGHTER), and Letterer Haley Rose-Lyon (DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: RAVENLOFT, BI VISIBILITY), the publisher will be releasing its next series in the world of the Forgotten Realms, Dungeons & Dragons. The first issue will drop on Wednesday, November 4th, which you can pre-order at your local comic store.

Special thanks to Dark Horse, I had a chance to read an advanced copy of Issue 1 as well as interview the writers to talk more about how this series came to life and what we can expect to see in this series. You can watch the full interview on YouTube (embedded at the bottom of this post) or listen to the episode on Spotify or Apple Podcast.

SPOILER WARNING: We do talk about the first two issues of the series in the interview. This post, however, will still remain spoiler free.

Why You Should Check Out This Series

Before going into what’s in the series, I want to share why this writing team is excellent for being the force behind it. Kelly & Lanzing were avid fans and players of the hobby as kids, way before they started their careers in writing comics. Kelly grew up reading the R.A. Salvatore Drizz’t novels as a kid and soon after started playing 3.5 edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Lanzing has always been a rules systems enthusiast and loved building his own worlds (he made one as young as sixth grade). He also created a game that had a live play stream for a short while on Geek & Sundry, called “VAST”. So it goes without saying that these two are some of the best people in the industry that can work on this project and make it exciting for the fans. (In fact, during the interview we realized that we all had a hard time stop because we all had different D&D games we had to play afterwards!)

As someone who have loved comics growing up and have been an avid gamer of D&D for the last few years, I can’t tell you how much I loved issue 1. I knew I was going to be excited for this series when I read the Free Comic Book Day prologue issue, Magefall (if you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, you can download and read it for free on D&D Beyond). Following the battle between Mordenkainen and the Avatar of Bahamut, issue #1 picks up right where it left off.

One of the things that I loved about issue 1 is how much of the story felt like the game and a natural story at the same time. In the interview, Kelly & Lanzing talked about how Wizards of the Coast specifically asked the team to make sure that it respects the game in the story, which meant using existing spells, features, etc. that already existed in the game and not to try to bypass it. This whole issue felt like what a D&D game would look like if it were told as a story rather than played as a game. They did a phenomenal job in taking the characters in the story (some of which D&D fans will absolutely recognize) and captured the essence and personalities of these characters as well as how these characters might interact with one another. With the amount of epic characters and legendary moments issue 1 had, none of it felt like they were shoehorned in because it all felt very natural, as though you were to say “Of course, that is what would happen!”

In recent years, many comic book creators have experimented with the medium of the comic book. Kelly & Lanzing have done the same by cleverly including stat blocks and roll tables into the book that reflects what is happening in the story. They wanted this to feel like not only a comic book story, but that it was essentially a D&D source book that someone could use the tools and the stories in it to play at their table. I personally love it when creators look at ways to do things more immersive and interesting with comics, and this duo nailed it, in my opinion.

Lastly – the COVERS. The artwork for the covers are absolutely stunning, and they capture the spirit of D&D so well. I’m always a sucker for fun covers on any book, and really it’s hard for me to decide which one I’m going to get because they are all just that good.

Interview With The Writers

As promised, here is an interview I did with Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing, talking about the comic book series.

SPOILER WARNING: We do talk about the first two issues of the series in the interview.

What Say You?

Hopefully this will get you excited to pre-order the series. What do you think? Does this excite you? Do you have concerns or questions? Let me know what you think!

About The Writers Of Dungeons & Dragons

JACKSON LANZING & COLLIN KELLY are a classic rivals-turned-brothers story – and a partnership with work that spans across television, comics, novels, podcasts, and feature films. Raised by single mothers and vagabond fathers in hippie enclaves (Kauai and Santa Cruz, respectively), they met in college and have since built a lifelong creative hivemind. Collin & Jackson recently wrote the feature film SYNTHETIC, starring Charlie Cox and Haley Bennett, staffed on TWILIGHT OF THE GODS at Netflix for Eric Carrasco and Zack Snyder, developed an animated adaptation of KILL SIX BILLIONS DEMONS for CBS Studios as showrunners, and are currently writing the original podcast PRODIGAL for iHeartMedia. Additionally, Collin & Jackson are NYT-Bestselling comic book creators with three Eisner nominations under their belt, utilizing their deep love of worldbuilding and character-centric story on critically-acclaimed titles such as JOYRIDE (Boom!), CAPTAIN AMERICA: SENTINEL OF LIBERTY (Marvel), GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY (Marvel), BATMAN BEYOND: NEO-YEAR and NEO-GOTHIC (DC), ONE BAD DAY: CLAYFACE (DC Comics), THE PRINCIPLES OF NECROMANCY (Magma), and STAR TREK (IDW). Their current series, the critically-acclaimed THE LAST STARSHIP, is the highest-selling Star Trek comic of all time – and they are soon to re-launch DUNGEONS & DRAGONS for Dark Horse. They also serve as head writers and universe architects for Ubisoft’s upcoming AAA video game MARCH OF GIANTS. They previously served as lead writers and executive producers of KINGS OF ATLANTIS, the first-ever animated kids series from YouTube Originals, and published their middle grade novel series, Thor Quest, through Disney Press.