August: The Order of the Stick Volume 1: Dungeon Crawlin' Fools (The Order of the Stick, #1)

[Lu, Rarity Fan]

The month of August, we will be reading The Order of the Stick Volume 1: Dungeon Crawlin' Fools (The Order of the Stick, #1)! Here you can post if you are enjoying it etc.

Remember to use the spoiler tag when talking about major spoilers!

[Mike, The Moderator in the Darkness]

Order of the Stick (readable online here) is a parody comic set in a D&D style game world. What makes the humor unique is that the characters are self aware of the rules governing their existence and reference it frequently in forth wall breaking jokes and comments.

It evolves a lot over time and it's been interesting to go back to the beginning where the parody aspect is stronger. I'm not a pen and paper rpg player, but I was able to pick up enough to enjoy the jokes. As the strip goes along the story gets a lot deeper and it really becomes epic in scale and a real masterpiece in plotting and dramatic balance.

The art style is "fleshed out stick figures." It gets a lot more detailed later on, but even in the early strips it works surprisingly well.

Further general thoughts on the comic in my review of volume 1 here.