Thank you so much to Macmillan for sending me this advanced copy!
I'm not even sure where to start with reviewing this because I just love it a lot. Even if you've never heard of The Adventure Zone podcast, I still recommend this. If you are a fan of The Adventure Zone already, you need to go in knowing that everyone is going interpret an audio-only podcast differently. Some things are different, obviously, there's not as much room for bants when you're trying to build a shrunk down, linear plot for a graphic novel. But as we know from listening to the podcast, the team worked super closely with the McElroys to make the best possible graphic novel they could. The character designs were super well done too (and they even put some fan art in the back, which I loved! I don't think they could've fully gotten the final designs with out the fan art being around for so long). I laughed out loud so much, there were still bants and jokes, and I recognized stuff from the podcast, even though it's been I while since I've listened to this first arc.
So if you don't already know The Adventure Zone is a Dungeons and Dragons podcast created by the McElroy brothers, featuring their dad. Now, they don't exactly follow the D&D rule book to a T, for entertainment and podcast reasons, but it's super fun! So this is the graphic novel version. I think knowing this will definitely help going into it, when Griffin pops up saying he's the dungeon master, but I think casual people at the bookstore picking this up will catch on pretty quickly.
5/5 stars, can't wait for this to officially come out!