Dungeons & Dragons: Fell's Five

[janegray]

The current Humble Bundle has the complete 3 volumes of Dungeons & Dragons' short-lived Fell's Five series (Volume 1: Shadowplague, Volume 2: First Encounters, Volume 3: Down), a really good Dungeons & Dragons ongoing that was cut short due to low sales (probably because, even though the comic was good, nobody knew it existed). A series that would normally cost you over $50 is currently available for $1, for the next 22 hours. It's writer is John Rogers, co-creator of Blue Beetle Jaime Reyes.

Since I really enjoyed Fell's Five, I thought I'd post some of my favourite scenes to share the love. It’s 15 issues, and while it unfortunately does leave several hanging threads due to cancellation, it’s still worth reading.

Comments

[kd_the_movie]

thanks for posting this! someone posted this on SD before and i remember loving it. especially the bits with he Floating Skull Ghost thing.

Andrea De Vito did great work on the art in this series as well.

[kd_the_movie]

Also, do you keep the material if you cancel your Humble Bundle Account? Id rather not have to be bound to another subscription service if i dont have to be

[janegray]

I'm glad you enjoyed the post :D

Those old posts on Scans_Daily are exactly how I heard of this series! I had seen absolutely nothing about it anywhere, no advertising nor word of mouth whatsoever, so I never would have bought it simply because I never would have known it existed. It's a shame the anonymity caused it to be cancelled because the plot was getting really interesting, I wanted to know what the deal was with Tisha's sister. Plus we were robbed of seeing the gang adopt the baby Eldritch Abomination as team pet :/

[janegray]

I have no idea what happens to your account if you cancel it. However, 1)the comics can be downloaded as DRM-free files (you can choose between several formats, including pdf), so whatever happens to the account itself, you can freely keep the files in your computer. And 2)you don't need an account to buy a humble bundle, you can buy it as guest, and they will email a link to your email address that lets you download the files from your own personal purchase page (note: in this case you should take care to either download the files so you can keep them forever in your computer, or conserve the email so you don't lose the link that gives you access to them).

[remial]

this series is glorious. it is like sitting in, or being a part of, a good RPG campaign, only to have your Game Master suddenly move away, just when things really get going.

for similar series, I'd recommend Rat Queens, which I'm sure has been posted before, and Skull Kickers.

(my biggest issue with Rat Queens is there was a time skip or something, and I feel like I missed about 5 issues, and so far we have yet to get a "so this is what happened here" (OTOH, What I _like_ about Rat Queens is when the dwarf gets a magic sword that starts telling her to go on a killing spree, the reaction of her party is to toss the thing into a lake. You don't see common sense like that often enough))

[superboyprime]

Was it cancelled due to sales? I thought it was just because Rogers got too busy with his TV work. I remember a panel where IDW said they’re waiting for him to be free again.

[janegray]

Everything I heard claimed that it was due to low sales, so much so that the already-written issue #16 never got published :(

I could have heard wrong, though. I would certainly be very happy if that's the case!

[janegray]

Thanks for adding to the post with good recommendations :)

[icon_uk]

Another one who remembers this from it's oong ago posting, and picked up the first volume when I saw it on sale at my LCS. Pleased to know the rest is available on Humble Bundle!

[mastermahan]

John Rogers also gave us Leverage and The Jackie Chan Adventures, so if you enjoy those, you'll do well with this series. They have the same sense of fun.

[featheredserpent]

It's thanks to SD that I discovered this one, and made a point of ordering it to raise its numbers...so thanks.

[leoboiko]

You know, I've been in a Tolkien mood recently. I was browsing The History of the Middle-Earth and wanted to learn more about the Shibboleth of Fëanor (the way the Quenya lenition of þ to /s/ spread improbably because the conservative þ became associated with Fëanor’s faction, of which most elves wanted no part—notoriously, Galadriel’s long-standing enmity with him explains why she used the innovative /s/ phoneme in something as classical as the Lament of Galadriel in the LotR plot). I liked this part so much that I wanted to see some technical stuff that wasn’t printed in THoME, so I ordered my first few volumes of the Vinyar Tengwar journal. I also started dabbling in Tengwar calligraphy; with my goal being a) get a good quality edition of the Silmarillion from Folio Books, and b) annotate the margins with etymologies for personal names, place names and other words from Tolkien’s languages, all in Tengwar natürlich.

It feels such a shock to return to the world of common fantasy where “runes” are just random, artless squiggles signifying nothing. As if you were still dazed by a really immersive artificial world, and then were thrown in a knockoff where you can see the zippers in the monster suits.

Tolkien’s languages are really the fundamental matrix of the entire thing. It seems such a shame to me that so many people try to engage in worldbuilding without understanding the central importance of language, because stories are told in words in the first place. It strikes me how D&D began as this unabashed Tolkien mimicry (with the æthereal-type elves and the hairy-footed halflings and whatnot), but even after all these years & commercial success the publishers never bothered to add any depth to the various scenarios with a few proper languages. Meanwhile the game that did engage in this careful work of sub-creation, Empire of the Petal Throne (1974), went basically unnoticed.

[plastefuchs]

To add to your info for anyone else:

The bundles are both mailed as a link to your mail address and added to your library should you create an account. If you have a few link but no account but create an account later, you can claim those to add to your account.
The monthly bundle operates on the same principle. You get unlock links and the games/unlocks are put into your library. They stay there even if you cancel the monthly bundle.

[janegray]

Thanks! :)

[janegray]

I think you might be especially pleased with the way the dwarf defeats a Dryad :P

[janegray]

Thanks for the recommendation :)

[janegray]

<3

[q99]

This really is one of the best D&D comics of all time- and I include unofficial ones in that.

[shadwing]

You kept "I choose Rock" but you left out "The Kiss"? Did that not make it into the top 10?

[shakalooloo]

I think it was because WotC wanted to distance themselves from the perceived failure of 4th edition amongst their core fans. Fell's Five revelled in that, and so were cut loose along with things like the never-published Nentir Vale Gazeteer.

There's a reason all their current D&D comics sit around in the 'safe' Forgotten Realms setting, and it's only toward the end of this year that they'll be publishing a new setting book for 5th edition. Ravnica, of all places!

[janegray]

I felt a tad weird about the kiss tbh. Everybody playfully teases the guy about it, and it does seem to be good natured. But... since we never see anything but 100% straight romances and characters in the series, including the dwarf "courting" a literal plant monster with breasts, I couldn't shake off the slight suspicion that the gross-out factor of the kiss might have been partly "eww, two dudes kissing" >_>

I'm not saying that's the case. I'm likely being paranoid, if I really suspected homophobia I wouldn't have recommended this comic anywhere let alone scans_daily. But just in case, I preferred to go with the rock scene ^^

[sagrada]

Rock scene was well-chosen. Sold the series to me, at any rate. Thanks for letting us know this exists. So much good but workaday stuff never breaks out the way famously bad stuff does.

[sagrada]

It really is a shame. So many people have worked on D&D and its fellow travelers over the years, it's kind of weird nobody tried to add that extra dimension by making the various tongues not either random bits and bobs thieved from other things or else cyphers in a replacement alphabet with identical rules and grammar structure.

It could even justify buying more stuff, if they needed a economic reason to hire a linguist.

And hey, Empire of the Petal Throne might have faded into oblivion, but at least it lives on in breathtakingly plagiarized form in Feist's books.