Scales & Scoundrels Volume 1: Into the Dragon's Maw

by Sebastian Girner, Galaad (Artist)

Overview

It's hard to make an honest living in a land brimming with magic and mystery, and treasure hunter Luvander is tired of being a penniless adventurer. Ever in search of gold and glory, she sets off for a fabled dungeon "the Dragon's Maw", an ancient labyrinth, at the bottom of which slumber endless wealth...or certain doom!

A loner by trade, Luvander is forced to team up with a team of scraggly adventurers, each hoping to find a treasure of their own in the forbidden tomb.: there is Prince Aki, of the Scarlet Sands Empire, anxious for first taste of adventure yet blind to the consequences. hHis royal Shadow and bodyguard, Koro, whose very honor hangs in the balance of her prince's success. And Dorma Iron, a stocky young dwarf whose journey will take her deeper into the darkness than she ever wished to tread.

For these scruffy heroes, what starts out as a road to riches becomes the first step on an epic journey to destiny, for Luvander holds a secret in her heart that will shatter the chains of fate, and bring light to a world encroached upon by an ancient darkness.

Writer SEBASTIAN GIRNER (SHIRTLESS BEAR-FIGHTER!) and artist GALAAD are proud to present SCALES & SCOUNDRELS, an exciting new fantasy adventure from Image Comics, for scoundrels of all ages!

Collecting SCALES & SCOUNDRELS #1-5

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781534304826
Publisher:	Image Comics
Publication date:	02/13/2018
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	9 - 12 Years

Editorial Reviews

SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL — If Scales & Scoundrels' alliterative two-word title with an ampersand reminds you of a particular tabletop role-playing game, that's more than likely intentional. Indeed, writer Sebastian Girner and artist Galaad's fantasy series opens with a scene familiar from hundreds of Westerns, wherein a fight breaks out in a bar after one player accuses another of cheating at cards...only here the particular card game is called "Dragon's Hoard," and it sounds like it has more in common with Dungeons & Dragons than poker.

Despite the healthy degree of self-awareness, Scales & Scoundrels isn't arch or cynical, and its characters are engaging ones, each with enough of a personal story to draw a reader in and either transcend the cookie-cutter nature of their character types or reveal potential to do so in future installments (this first trade collects the first five issues of the ongoing series; the second volume should be out as soon as this summer).

Where the book is particularly notable is in its visuals, which seem to draw inspiration for design and storytelling equally from European comics and manga, although it reads like an American comic. Those designs are pretty significant too, because the main characters don't necessarily look like the sort you would have found in illustrations accompanying a D&D handbook a generation ago, and there's both a fair amount of imaginative world-building and some quite striking creature designs. All in all, the first volume of Scales & Scoundrels rolls a natural 20.

From the Publisher