Now that we’re solidly into 2019 I’ve started a new list: comics I should’ve been reading in 2018 and am now kicking myself for waiting so long. Some of them are practically finished already (I’m looking at you, The Magic Order) but luckily the first series on my list only started in December, so I don’t feel bad. Well, I don’t feel too bad. Okay, I feel bad: it’s one of my favorite artists, Stephanie Hans, so for that reason alone I should’ve had this one on my radar months ago. Keep reading for a review of Die #2.
(Warning, big spoilers for Die #1, and tiny spoilers for Die #2.)
In Die #1 we met a group of friends playing a D&D game, run by Solomon. Sol promised them the best game ever, “fantasy for grown-ups,” and gave them each their own die (keeping the D-20 for himself.)
To way, way oversimplify it: the game turned real, and they disappeared out of this world for two years, and when they came back they couldn’t tell anyone where they’d been. Literally couldn’t: a mental block kept them from saying anything about it.
Fast forward 25 years.
You know those movies where a serial killer locks people in a room with a trap that’s about to grind them into pâté? This is that meets Narnia, right?
I’d say it’s also a little bit of Stephen King’s It, because we’re catching up with everyone decades later and we still don’t know exactly what’s happened in the meantime, we just know the fallout’s bad: divorces, breakdowns, and god knows what the media did to them when they couldn’t say where they’d been for two years.
But like every story where kids are sucked into a magical place and then come home, you know what the reader really wants: for them to go back. And they do: the D-20 shows up again and opens a portal, and the second issue is where we find out who they really are.
The avatars they picked out all those years ago in the D&D game still fit like gloves when they come back, but they’re not teenagers. As much as they don’t want to be there, they seem comfortable in their bodies, so I wonder if it really was a little like Narnia, where the two years they were gone from Earth were much longer here.
But the characters they became are more than just clerics or fighters or thieves. I don’t want to give everything away (because the details are so very cool) but just the names alone give you an idea: the Fool, the Godbinder, the Grief Knight, Angela the Neo, and the Dictator Ash. Each of them have their own dimension of strength, but it always comes at some kind of cost. (I especially liked the description of the Cyberpunk character; the drawbacks to her ability make so much sense.) They’re amazing and badass and they absolutely do not want to be here because this world is unbelievably dangerous.
In between the bickering and the accusations (who’s fault is it that this happened again and what are they going to do about it) a monster attacks, and they don’t even think about it; they’re a party of adventurers who’ve worked together forever (never mind the 25 years they weren’t really speaking to each other) and the battle is just so flipping cool I can’t stand it.
Did I mention the art yet? There were a few panels of the young kids in the first issue that looked a little rough, not bad, a couple of the faces just looked a little rushed, and I was concerned that maybe Stephanie hadn’t been given enough time to do it right. Then I flipped the page. Never mind. It’s gorgeous. The details are incredible and the paintings are…they’re just…man I just ran out of adjectives for “pretty.” There are some full-page panels that will knock your socks off, but there’s even single panels that blew me away, like when Ash does what she does to the Grief Knight: it’s all greys and reds and it’s so, so, beautiful.
And before I forget, yes, Ash is “she.” Dominic who plays her is het male and happily married, but is definitely female in the game world and that’s just accepted right from the get-go and I love it.
If I say any more I’m going to give away something important (except to say that the ending was a pure, distilled, kick in the teeth, ow) so trust me, you need to check it out. Also, not for nothing, the first issue is now 1.99 on comixology so you really should go buy it.
If you’ve ever played one game of D&D, you’ll love it. If you ever enjoyed one comic by Kieron Gillen or Stephanie Hans, you’ll love it. If you’re coming into comics and D&D completely blind, you’ll love it. Seriously, you need to read it, and then come back here and tell me what you thought. I mean it, right now. It’s okay, I’ll wait.
