Showing posts with label Mike S. Miller. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mike S. Miller. Show all posts

2011/05/01

D&D comics history part 21 - The Legend of Huma (DDP)

Adapted from the novel by Richard A. Knaak, The Legend of Huma (based on D&D's DragonLance settings) released in 6 issues from jan. 2004 to oct. 2005 by Devil's Due Publishing (and compiled in TPB in 2007) depicts the adventures of Huma Dragonbane, young Knight of Solamnia, who will be later known as hero of the Third Dragon War.


The story takes place around 1300 years before the War of the Lance (events depicted in the famous trilogy "The Dragonlance Chronicles").
The comic is not covering the entire novel, ending in midstream and leading the reader to get the book from Knaak to know the denouement.
Interesting way of getting people to reading heh.

A bunch of artists worked on this serie, and uncommon fact (or not ? -> am not comics specialist heh XD) is that even in the same issue pages can be drawn by different pencillers.
Mike S. Miller worked on issues 1 & 2 and the 12 first pages of 3rd issue in collaboration with Rael Lyra (who will also work on the first 8 pages of 4th issue).
Mike Crowell did the pages 14-17 of 3rd issue and Joe Prado p.13 and p.18-22.
Abdul Rashid drew the pages 9 to 15 of issue 4 and Carlos Paul p.16 to 22.
Issue 5 was done entirely by Andrea Di Vito.
6th and last issue by Steve Kurth. (Who will work on the 2 first volumes of the Dragonlance Chronicles).

 Pages from issues 1 & 2 by Miller & Lyra
 
 Issue 3 - by Prado                              Issue 4 - by Paul

Even if the styles of the artists is obviously different from one to another, the reader doesn t suffer a really brutal visual change from a chapter to another, excepting, imo, the last issue which inking is very pastel compared to the rest of the work.

Issue 6 - by Kurth

I believe that the quality of the serie will convince Hasbro to grant DDP the full D&D license who will allow the publisher to start working on other settings as Forgotten Realms, Eberron or even Ravenloft.

Now, I can t stop wondering on the choice of DDP to adapt this D&D novel amongts the hundreds released.
It s an interesting story, no doubt, and very epic in the end... but having read dozens of D&D novels, I would not consider it as a must-to-read compared to the rest. More, only DragonLance fans would have heard of Huma, which is, in term of sales, a risky adventure DDP decided to undertake... The ways of Devil's due are unpredictable heh...

Anyway, the comic itself is a great realization and marks the evolution of D&D comics line.

o_O