My own self

(Yes, Olaf, I'm doing both. ^^ Am I just the nicest or what?)

For those nil point fourteen of my readers who don't know, The Order of the Stick is a quite excellent webcomic by Rich Burlew. The comic blends traditional roleplaying-game-humour rather seamlessly (and impressively) with the humouristic fantasy story-approach. By that I mean that while the characters will make jokes and comments about saving throws, D20s, monster manuals and gaining levels, they will also have character-, plot- and situation-based humour. As the series has progressed and the characters and the plot has grown, the weight has shifted from the former to the latter, but both are still very much present in the comic. The other - rather ingenious, actually, in all its simplicity - rather unique idea in this comic is that there are no roleplaying-players. It's the characters themselves who talk about their levels, the new rulebooks and the like. In effect, this creates a world that everybody who's a little bit of a geek (and let us face it, those who aren't would never read this) will feel intuitively comfortable with as it plays on literally all the stereotypes used in traditional fantasy RPGs, while being incredibly unique by embracing RPG-mechanisms as actual in-world laws of physics. Levels, stats and dice-throws are, to these characters and this world, real.

Currently at its 550th strip, The Order of the Stick has developed quite the mythos and cast, as well as a plotline that's stereotypical enough to match the general feel of familiarity everything in the comic offers while being just original and mysterious enough to be interesting. The first 300 strips are collected in two volumes (with tons of excellent bonus-materials, extended scenes and author-commentaries) following the first two story-arcs; Dungeon' Crawlin Fools and No Cure for the Paladin Blues, which are both highly recommended, but the archives are still right there on the webpage to read for free.

What's not for free is the prequels, because Burlew has written and drawn two prequel-volumes to the Order of the Stick, one detailing the backstory of the main protagonists, and one the backstory of the main antagonists. I will try to keep this review somewhat spoiler-free, but as you should really read at least the first two regular volumes (or 300 strips) of the comic before reading these backstories, I'm going to go ahead and assume that you know who the characters are and similar basics for the rest of this post. There backstories reveal a lot of things that are supposed to be mysteries for a long while in the main story, and I'd advise anyone to read up on the main story before trying these out.

Oh, and his characters are drawn as stick-figures. Impressively detailed ones at that.

On the Origin of the PCs

On the Origin of the PCs is - as the title suggests rather strongly - the story of what the six (well, four, anyway, Vaarsuvius and Belkar, while obviously appearing, remain somewhat mysterious) main characters did leading up to the first regular strip of the comic. What brought them together, what motivates them to go adventuring in their first place, and what are their goals and wishes in life.

Burlew does this by writing their stories seperately, intercutting between them. Roy is the head main character here as he is in the regular comic, and gets by far the most pages and story to work with. Haley and Durkon get decently mapped out backstories as well, though. Elan doesn't get a lot of pages, but the ones he gets tells you all you really need to know about him. (And I'm eternally grateful as I'm not particularily fond of his character anyway) V and Belkar, as mentioned, are kept somewhat mysterious in this volume as well as in the main story. That's okay, though - it basically lets the stories feel more consistent when the focus is on three plotlines instead of five.

While Roy's is the most interesting for the story-purposes of the main comic, in their own right, I think I preferred Durkon's a little bit to his. Haley's, however, was on the most part rather boring and straightforward, though no less funny than the other ones. This is Burlew's big strength - when his plotlines get boring, his jokes are still funny, and when the plotlines get interesting again, the jokes are still funny, which is impressive. There are also shorter intercuts to, for instance, Belkar, for comedic effect when needed.

If you've read the first 300 strips, this prequel doesn't add that much vital information - as he writes in the commentaries, Burlew wishes to make the world and story richer for those who read the prequels, but understanding the main story will never depend on the reader having read any material not freely available online. Thus, this book gives a nice additional fleshing out to the characters, and a charming retelling of how they met, but it hardly contributes any major insights or grand reveals. The one possible exception to this is Durkon's story, which sheds light on something that's been quite mysterious for a long time and I suspect will get more important to the main story as it progresses.

All in all, I'd really recommend this book, but it's probably a little below the par if you compare it to the main story. Not a lot, but somewhat. Still, if you've read most of the main story, as you really should've done before reading this, and you're anything like me, then you'll enjoy it a lot anyway, if nothing else then because you'll learn how this assortment of very different personalities decided to hang together and fight monsters in dungeons in the first place.

Which I think is really worth knowing.


Start of Darkness

Again, the title leaves nothing a mystery - this is the origin of the two main antagonistic characters, Xykon the lich sorcerer and Redcloak the goblin cleric. On many levels, this is a prequel far superior to the other one, at least as far as I'm concerned. The story is mostly linear, the intercutting is rare and you always know what the main plotline is. This helps with the focus, which helps with the comittment of the reader to the story, which helps the story feel well-crafted. (This is also the only reason why I accept this story not having Nale in it without complaining...)

If you are going to read both you should read the other one first, though. On the Origin of the PCs technically takes place after most of the events in this book, but one or two elements in it will be somewhat spoiled if you've read this when you sit down to read it, mainly in relation to Roy's father's backstory. You can very well read Start of Darkness without it - but if you know you'll read both at some point, you should read Origin first.

Now, this story was really good, if you ask me. Especially the story of Redcloak - in my humble opinion the best character Burlew's universe has so far, even beating out Belkar - is quite engaging and well done. Burlew says in the introduction to the book that he decided to make Xykon completely and utterly unlikeable despite it being an origin-story where you could easily get sympathy for him - but he does the exact opposite for Redcloak, letting us see why the character is evil and why he does as he does, something that's been hinted at pretty heavily throughout the main comic but never explained in this much detail. The book, thus, becomes a wonderful story of the horrible, horrible man Xykon and the wonderful story of the tragic goblin Redcloak as their paths meet, entwine, and join. And somehow, it stays funny throughout. If you've read the main comic and liked it, you should love this. I might even go so far as to say that it might be a notch above the regular volumes so far.

While all the Order of the Stick-books are highly recommended, I think that Start of Darkness might just be a tad more high than the others.

Now, if they only didn't cost so bloody much to order all the way from the US...