Welcome welcome one and all to the View from the Gutter. This week we have a lost artifact of comics history, brought back from the halls of obscurity in the form of an all new trade paperback: Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

Now, before I talk about the comic itself, I need to ramble on for at least half a page about why this existing as trade is amazing, in and of itself. I need to do this because if I didn't you might enjoy it without appreciating why you should be enjoying it more than you already do, and that would be wrong. So very wrong.

The reasons the release of this comic being amazing are two fold, and the first starts with M, and ends with -ike Mignola. Yes, the artist for this adaptation is none other than Mike Mignola, creator of the indomitable Hellboy (note: if you haven't, READ HELLBOY). This comic predates Hellboy by about 3 years, but Mignola's style is obvious from a mile away, and was just as good then as it is now. The other is that these comics have been totally out of print from their original release in 1990 until 2007, when they were collected in this trade by Dark Horse.

Now that that is out of the way... Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, in its original short story form, was published in a series of collections between 1939 and 1988. The work of SF and Fantasy author Fritz "I molest vowels" Leiber, this series of Sword and Sorcery stories has been hugely influential on the fantasy genre as a whole, both directly and indirectly. The indirect part comes through its role as a major inspiration of the roleplaying game Dungeons and Dragons.

From a modern perspective its far too easy to see these stories through the lens of a hypothetical D&D campaign, and if you're like me you'll be muttering about "stupid botched move silently rolls" by the third page. Fafhrd, a tall warrior from the frozen north, is the prototypical barbarian, far more so than the pre-Ah-nald Conan, who everyone knows was a twinked out multiclass SOB. Stupid Fighter/Rogue/Rangers. The Gray Mouser, a former wizard's apprentice and thief, is far more responsible for the Rogue class than any pipe-smoking halfling.



Together, the two of them form a mighty adventuring party, doing adventuring party things. Like getting drunk in bars. And killings NPCs. And coming up with stupid plans that just end up in a a huge melee because they failed their Bluff check. The list goes on. Most of their adventures are centered in or near Lankhmar, although being adventurers they are at times called on to travel to far off places, like Eevamarensee, Tisilinilit, and Ool Hrusp. Yeah, total D&D names.

That being said, if you read the above with that idea that I'm discussing the negatives of the comic, you couldn't be more wrong. When I say these stories are the essential, undistilled essence of D&D itself, I mean that this is the archetypal D&D campaign that everyone has always wanted to play and never gotten too. These guys run around the world, kicking ass and taking names; drinking, whoring, and adventuring the hell out of every podunk village in their path. If reading these stories don't make you want to go roll up a character, I'll eat my hat.*

The comics themselves are a grab bag of stories from across the catalog, and in no particular order, excepting the first issue, which begins with the first story, Ill Met in Lankhmar. Each one is a self contained bonanza of sword and sorcery action, and typically involves booze, swordplay, magic, and a cool monster, in no particular order.



In regard to the art... It's Mike-frikkin-Mignola! I personal would go so far as to say that I prefer the art here over that found in Hellboy, due in large part to the colors of Sherlyn van Valkenburgh. The muted color palette lends a lot of mood the the stories, and complements the use of light and shadow in the inks.

If you're a fan of Mignola, D&D, or just things that are good, go get that $20 you have hidden in a jar labeled "open in case of awesome comic emergency", and pick yourself up some old school fantasy goodness.

*-For the purposes of this column, the term 'my hat' refers to yummy pie, rather than the article of clothing of the same name.

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Tobiah Panshin was born in the backwoods of Pennsylvania, taught all he knows by the animal companions that raised him. As many fine naturalists will however note, Badgers and Woodchucks are notoriously bad at algebra. His math and science skills doomed from an early age, young Tobiah followed the only path available to him: the Humanities. Today, Liberal Arts degree in hand, he pursues with the dogged determination of a short-tailed shrew the pathetic, poverty bestrewn life of a writer. Armed with the strongest weapons he possesses--the umlaut, the gerund phrase, and the mighty schwa--he battles the English Language in a never-ending struggle for domination.