New Comics! (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Dungeons & Dragons:  Forgotten Realms #1:  Anyone who has read this blog for a while knows that I think "Dungeons and Dragons" is one of the best titles on the market.  John Rogers consistently delivers entertaining and intriguing stories that allow us to explore a dangerous and fascinating world through the eyes of a rag-tag band of so-called heroes led by a quick-witted charmer who's a little more serious than his banter implies.  It's an excellent book, from pacing to art, from plotting to characterization.  This new series, unfortunately, is not.  Greenwood seems to suffer from having been too ambitious in his opener.  He spent so much time trying to take us on a sprinting tour of Waterdeep that I'm not entirely sure what happened in this issue.  For example, when we first encountered our main characters, I though they were bumbling bodyguards, only to learn that they were rookie smugglers.  Then, they suddenly decide to become professional kidnappers, conveniently in time to hear of a kidnapping attempt imminently happening near their current location.  The rest of the book is blur of crosses and double-crosses, a problem exacerbated by the fact that Greenwood sprinkles his attention on no fewer than seven other characters, making it extremely difficult to say who was doing what to whom.  I'm perfectly fine with a book filled with sub-plots (just look at my love for "X-Factor") but Greenwood does WAY too much WAY too quickly here.  We never get a chance to figure out the personal motivations of our main characters before we're elbow deep in the kidnapping plot.  Whereas Rogers instills even his least likable characters with a easy personal charm and troubled back story that makes you incapable of disliking them, Greenwood makes exactly no one in this issue even remotely likable.  The main characters seem to be thieves whose only positive character trait is their incompetence, the kidnapping "victim" is a privileged girl who was willing to risk the lives of her dedicated bodyguards for a little excitement, and everyone else other than the girl's parents are either directly and potentially involved in the kidnapping itself.  I'm not saying everyone has to be a hero, but, if it's going to be a story about villains, you want to understand their motivations.  Otherwise, you just get bad people doing bad things to one another, which is as interesting as good people doing good things to one another.  Just like I don't want to watch a 12-hour "Highway to Heaven" marathon, I don't want to read an issue where no one manages to express any emotion other than greed.  Given the upcoming cut to my comic budget, I'm going to cut off this series right now, because I doubt it's going to get any better.  Hopefully this series isn't meant to displace "Dungeons and Dragons" and we'll see Fell's Five return shortly.