Critical Role Announces Mighty Nein: Origins Comics

Critical Role is getting a second comic book series. Earlier today, Dark Horse announced Critical Role: The Mighty Nein Origins, which will explore the backstories of the main characters from Critical Role‘s second Dungeons & Dragons campaign. Each comic will have a different creative team, with the first issue (focusing on Laura Bailey’s Jester) written by Sam Maggs and drawn by Severn Bonyin, with colors by Cathy Le. The second issue, focusing on Liam O’Brien’s Caleb Widogast, will be written by Jody Houser with line art by Selina Espiritu and colors by Diana Sousa. Polygon was the first to report on the new comics series.

Critical Role is a popular web series featuring a group of voice actors playing Dungeons & Dragons. The group successfully completed one campaign in 2017 and launched their still-ongoing campaign focused on The Mighty Nein in early 2018. The Mighty Nein campaign has logged 115 episodes, each of which average 3 to 4 hours in length.

This is Dark Horse’s second Critical Role comics series, following the popular Critical Role: Vox Machina Origins series, which focuses on the early adventures of the characters from Critical Role‘s first campaign. While the Vox Machina comics focus on adventures that pre-date Critical Role‘s streaming days (that campaign started as a home game), the new Mighty Nein comics will focus on backstories, as that campaign has played out entire on camera. At this point, we know the backstories of most of the main characters, but the new Dark Horse series should provide some great new insight into the formative events that pushed the heroes into becoming adventurers.

The first issue of Critical Role: The Mighty Nein Origins will be released in June 2021. A third volume of Critical Role: Vox Machina Origins will also be released next year.