So Sedarine got me hooked on reading Homeland, the first Drizzt book. I'm about half way through....good stuff so far. Anyway, I was at one of the local Nerdatoriums today looking for some japanese metal CDs, and I came across a graphic novel of Homeland. I was quite excited until I opened it. The art was less than worthy of the subject. I've seen the Drizzt novels at book stores, they have nice cover art. Why cant they find a decent artist to make the graphic novel? In fact, I notice when glanceing at many forgotten realms books that the art is bad. What's the deal?

Here's a link: Homeland

Cover looks decent but the inside is garbage. Apparently there is a second one as well. Now that I think about it a lot of the comics I browsed today were garbage. I know a lot of talented artists, both first hand and through the interweb, with crappy day jobs that can draw better by peeing in the snow. What has the nerd world come to? By my count there are 19 of these Drizzt books eh? Damn you Sedarine! Not unlike pokemon, I will now have to catch em all

Editor's note: I cant sleep.

The thing probably is, that those crappy artists that get their work published are better advertising themselves, and have connections, and quite possibly also sell their work cheap. >_>

The first two books are quite good if you're interested in learning how to portray Drow.

I have all three of the drizzit back history books (homeland exile and sojourn) to be quite good as well as the icewind dale trilogy where drizzit plays a large part. I would in fact go so far as to say that salvatore is the best D@D writter working today. I spend most of my time reading non D@D literature however. Some people, especially those that play druids, love to hate him however.

As for the art I can't really say much except that the only roleplaying books I would say that had good art were put out by white-wolf.

Zaldar I would in fact go so far as to say that salvatore is the best D@D writter working today.

If you need a good fix, the Wikipedia entry has a good list of the books that feature Drizzt as well as some info.

The list they have is this: * The Dark Elf Trilogy * The Icewind Dale Trilogy * Legacy of the Drow * Paths of Darkness * The Hunter's Blades Trilogy * The Dowry

And further, the is the possibilty of this...

Some messed up link that Howland fixed

I can't disagree with the choice of lead role strongly enough [sigh]. [comic book store guy voice] Worst choice -evar-. ;)

This is something I've kind of wondered about. Why has no one used any Forgotten Realms books to make a real movie like LOTR? (That post is ancient BTW, 2001) I would wager there's a real market for it, especially involving Drow. Mabye some might be afraid it would be interprated as racist by those not familiar with the genre? Or perhaps it's the old classic "Satan worship" issue.

Of course given that even I couldn't bring myself to look into the "Dungeons and Dragons" movie they made, mabye it's for the best if they'd just butcher it.

I assume it is money. It is cheaper for them to pay someone to come up with poorly written crap than to pay salvatore for his works..

As for giving people heart attacks..*shrugs* debate is always good and if you know someone who is better please let me know so I can read his stuff! (again though I mostly read LeGuin, Jordan, and such as opposed to D@D novels)

Snipes! :shock: I pray to Lolth that they dont make that movie. I would love to see a Drow movie done well. Snipes does not suggest "done well". It would probably be better off as a CG movie like FInal Fantasy....Snipes...hell thats disgusting. Angry. If that post is old lets hope they've forgotten it. SNipes, for the love of....

It comes down to personal tastes. The Drizzt graphic novels have decent art when you consider the fact that it's a relative unknown in the comic world. That means less chances taken and big time writers/artists are used on the money making books.

Cover art will be considerably better than interior art 99% of the time. The cover is your first impression, and possibly your selling vehicle. Quite a few times I have picked up something based on cover art alone. Often the best artists in the business end up doing covers more than anything else.

When you factor in your boss, your deadlines, and whatever other projects, doing a bi-monthly comic (or whatever the schedule might be) can be pretty tough.

The art for the Drizzt graphic novels is about as good as you can expect. It's not even carried by that many comics stores in truth, so that makes it even harder to justify putting a big time artist on the book.

Jesse the Thief This is something I've kind of wondered about. Why has no one used any Forgotten Realms books to make a real movie like LOTR?

Zaldar As for giving people heart attacks..*shrugs* debate is always good and if you know someone who is better please let me know so I can read his stuff! (again though I mostly read LeGuin, Jordan, and such as opposed to D@D novels)

For something different among the FR novels, I'd recommend the Avatar series ("Shadowdale", "Tantras", "Waterdeep", "Prince of Lies", "Crucible: Trial of Cyric the Mad"). Especially the fourth and fifth books, written by James Lowder and Troy Denning respectively, are excellent in their portrayal of divine affairs. The way they portray Cyric, in particular, left a lasting impression on me -- Cyric has been my favorite FR deity since. The previous books are necessary to understand how it got to that point, though.

Lisa Smedman's "House of Serpents" -trilogy was alright too, likewise for Richard Baker's "The Last Mythal". Both are among the authors of the War of the Spider Queen -series, which is also worth reading, particularly because the setting's relevance to an EfU player.

I haven't been reading FR novels much lately but I did finish "Mistress of the Night" a short time ago. It's among a loose 'series' called "The Priests", where every book revolves around the worshippers of one or two Faerûnian deities. I found that at least this one gave some invaluable ideas were I to play a Sharran or a Selûnite, and it was a pretty enjoyable read too. I'm hoping the other books are similarly insightful.

Edit: Goddammit, Sedarine, shorten that link! :x

I might be the only one, but I couldn't take The Lord of the Rings. After 100 pages of hobbits eating, thinking about eating, discussing eating, and bitching because they aren't eating more I threw the book out of a plane in rage.

Salvatore's books aren't anything special, but the setting would make an amazing film if not just mutilated. (Honestly I agree his writing is a bit cheesy and riddled with cliches.) The avatar series would work too, but you need more background to follow so it might get confusing for the casual viewer.

Sedarine

And further, the is the possibilty of this...

Some messed up link that Howland fixed

Seeing as how that was posted in 2001, and the movie was two years away, I dont think that bucket holds much water. :roll:

Jesse the Thief I might be the only one, but I couldn't take The Lord of the Rings. After 100 pages of hobbits eating, thinking about eating, discussing eating, and bitching because they aren't eating more I threw the book out of a plane in rage.

I find this interesting.

It has been said that today, no one would publish LoTR for exactly the reason that annoyed Jesse (to much prose in LoTR) yet it is regarded as probably one of the greatest works of fiction in the english language and can be directly seen as the inspiration for DnD.

It appears that many of todays readers have limited attention spans and are not interested in prose or florid description but want instant action/gratification. I wonder why this is? Is it due to TV and movies? Or is it something more systematic with modern life that indicates a move towards a style of literature that is like what Bob Salvatore and the other hacks at WoTC pump out to be swallowed up like noxious junk food? BTW, I liked the Drow stories but I'm siding with Anthee here in that Bob Salvatore is a -very- mediocre writer. I've read most of the DnD novels and I have to say the are ok in imagination but many of the writers are simply god awful. It's a true mystery to me that WoTC can't employ some decent writers to churn out their stuff. Having said that, there have been some fairly decent DnD novels, the Dragonlance series [first two trilogies] were good and I thought the Daughter of the Drow trilogy by Elaine Cunningham was ok.

So then, if Jesse was part of a test group of "readers" for a publishing company that Mr Tolkien had submitted his manuscript to, we'd have never seen LoTR and thus DnD would probably not exist as a result.

Consider that folks :twisted:

Werd Tally. Werd.

Another good example, C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. Same thing as LoTR, though written in a more childish tone. Don't let that fool you of course, C.S. Lewis, in my oh so objective opinion, is one of the greatest authors of the century, and most assuredly my personal favorite for non-fiction.

I think you're reading too much into it. It's not about the pace, it's about HALFLINGS/HOBBITS. I HATE Halflings. Always have, always will. In most portrayals they're carefree, incompetent, mindless little creatures which, in a perfect fantasy world, would all have long ago have been devoured by various hungry critters. Combined with the "after school special" implication that A BIG HEART will overcome the limitation of being 35 pounds and border-line retarded, the entire racial concept is rediculous.

It doesn't help that in NWN halflings seem to be the race of choice for 13 year olds with ADD.

Eh, a simple click would make the link much much shorter and save us from viewing a messed up page.

Could you please edit the links to point to this much shorter link? http://www.gamingreport.com/article.php?sid=857

Fixed.

Howland Fixed.

Thanks for the link fix...for some reason I was having a hell of a time getting that link to work at all...and then it messed up tha page XD