Review by C.J. Bunce

RuneScape is the fantasy online roleplaying game that began its following at the beginning of the century (at 300 million accounts, the Guinness Book of World Records pegs it as the biggest MMPORG).  It saw an early adaptation outside the game in a series of novels by T.S. Church that was rekindled in Erin M. Evans’ all-new novel RuneScape: The Gift of Guthix earlier his year (reviewed here at borg).  Now fans of the game are getting their first comic book series with RuneScape: Untold Tales of the God Wars.  The first issue is available at comic shops now and the second issue arrives in December.

Continuing the God Wars Dungeon questline, readers will meet the undead Maro, a floating, disembodied skull who only after breaking free of his master’s clutches does he begin a journey of peril as he makes and loses friends in pursuit of reuniting the legendary Godsword with its hilt.  The fun fantasy storytelling by Ryan O’Sullivan and artwork by Sid Kotian and Daniel Bayliss will remind many of Don Bluth’s artwork on Dragon’s Lair, the world’s first movie-quality animated arcade game.  And for gamers, each issue comes with a code for 200 RuneCoins for the digital game.

I love the game tie-ins, the characters and the stories, all great and often the goofy fun fantasy found in Dungeons & Dragons comics.  Take a look inside the first two issues and cover artwork for the series below, courtesy of Titan Comics.

This new window into RuneScape would be ideal as a tie-in to Dungeons & Dragons.  The citizens are primarily human, but the world has dragons and other creatures of the Tolkien variety.  The community is pastoral with royal trappings, feeling like Laketown at times, other times like a fairy tale, with clans like in the several D&D comic books, Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Great Wall, and a unique world as in Warcraft or even Gears of War minus the sci-fi, and–again–with that Don Bluth look of the early adventure video game Dragon’s Lair. 

Here are several covers for the four issues to look forward to.  From Issue #1:

From Issue #2:

From Issue #3:

And from Issue #4:

Here is a look inside the first issue:

And a peek at the second issue:

Look for RuneScape: Untold Tales of the God Wars at Elite Comics or your local comic shop.  And don’t miss the recent tie-in novel RuneScape: The Gift of Guthix (review here) full of betrayal, power politics, and magic and sorcery that mixes the best of medieval and Renaissance-inspired warring factions and tropes–the perfect follow-up for fans of R.A. Salvatore’s Drizzt novels and Avatar: The Last Airbender.