If you’re unfamiliar with Critical Role, it’s a web series on Geek and Sundry where 9 (now 8) friends get together for a weekly D&D game. They’re all voice actors (and just regular actors, in a few cases) who literally do this for a living, so part of the fun is watching them embody these characters they’ve created. The group first got together in 2013 for a one off game for someone’s birthday, and had so much fun that they made it a regular game. Then Felicia Day approached them about airing their games on Geek and Sundry, and now here we are.
Critical Role: Vox Machina Origins (2018)
Author: Matthew Colville
Art: Olivia Samson
Coloring and lettering: Chris Northrop
Publisher: Dark Horse
Why I chose it:
About three years after I started playing D&D semi-regularly, I met a friend who would not stop talking about Critical Role. Seriously, every time I saw him he’d ask if I’d started watching Critical Role yet. I poked at it once, just to check it out, and found out that by the time I started looking at it, it already had 50 or so 3-5 hour long episodes, and decided that even if it was the best thing ever, I did not have the brain power to consume that much media.
Two years after first hearing about the show, I finished listening to The Adventure Zone, and hungry for more D&D media, finally returned to Critical Role, where I almost stopped before I’d even started because the first episode literally just jumps straight into a campaign already in progress. So there’s a steep learning curve, but it’s starting to feel like it’s worth it.
Now, I’m only ten episodes in. But those ten episodes are thirty hours of listening, and you’d think a lot has happened, but mostly the adventurers have just gone deeper and deeper into a cave. So it’s good that the thing I’m actually pitching to you today is the origin story for the group, Critical Role: Vox Machina Origins, because my pitch for the show at this point would basically be: do you like to listen to people talk about the minutiae of every enemy encounter they’re going to have for three hours at a time? No? What if I tell you they’re also funny and do voices?
Look, I promise it’s worth it. At some point. Probably about six hours in.
Premise:
With over 160 pages of magical storytelling and bonus content, Vox Machina Origins brings together Critical Role: Vox Machina Origins #1–#6 in a single volume, following six would-be heroes as they uncover a plot to destroy the small coastal town of Stilben. The comic series is written by Matthew Colville (Evolve, Priest, Thief) with interior art by Olivia Samson, a member of the Critical Role fan community, and coloring and lettering by Chris Northrop.
Discussion: Back to the comic, which is great and hilarious and really well done. The same friend who first told me about the show got so excited that I finally started watching it that he handed me the limited edition leather bound copy that he preordered, so I very very carefully read it while not eating or drinking anything.
The story begins before the beginning, before the group became Vox Machina, before most of them had met the others. There’s a town, and there’s some trouble in it, and our heroes have been drawn here in pairs to help solve the puzzle of what’s plaguing the town. Nothing is easy, even their trust in each other, but thankfully you know it’s all going to work out in the end, since there’s literally 80 or so episodes of future campaign that they’re going to play.
I enjoyed seeing these characters as they’re meant to be (a gnome and a goliath and not, you know, two humans talking like a gnome and a goliath), and I enjoyed getting to see a lot of the action without the behind-the-scenes conversation that comes with D&D. Plus, bonus, the characters are hilarious. At one point, the only option they have to break apart a magic circle is to pee on it. So they pee on it.
In conclusion: Reading this origin story actually made me even more excited to keep watching web series, to find out where these adventurers are headed off to. Even if you don’t watch the show, it’s still a fun fantasy adventure with a shark, a half-elf that can turn into a dog (or a tiger), a goliath of dubious intelligence that somehow manages to save the day through raging, two half-elf siblings that are bitingly (and hilariously) sarcastic, and a gnome bard that’s just in it for the ladies. Highly recommend.
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