REVIEW: The Last Session: Volume 1, Roll for Initiative (graphic novel) written by Jasmine Walls, art by Dozerdraws

The Last Session is a contemporary-set graphic novel. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Lana, Drew, Shen, Walter, and Jay have all been friends since the time they first met at a high school GSA meeting. They started playing Dice & Deathtraps (obviously Dungeons & Dragons) around then. Four years later, they've decided to meet up and finally complete their first campaign, the only one they never finished. It's one last opportunity to get together in person before some big life changes for several of them. It's also an opportunity for them to all meet Cassandra, Jay's girlfriend, in person. Cassandra has heard about their campaigns from Jay and is excited to get to play with them for the first time.

Unfortunately, Cassandra's newbie mistakes rub everyone the wrong way. Her presence changes the group dynamics and makes what was supposed to be a fun final in-person game a frustrating experience. Lana reacts particularly negatively, to the point that Cassandra notices and starts to feel unwelcome. Will their final game end with hurt feelings and strained friendships?

I loved the artwork for this. It was appealing and fun, and I never had any trouble telling characters apart or figuring out what was going on.

The story was a bit heavy-handed, all about friendship jealousy and dealing with changes. At least one of the characters was going off to grad school - at their ages, it seemed a bit odd that they hadn't talked through this kind of stuff before. In fact, Lana had apparently had a similar reaction in high school, when Shen and Walter's queer-platonic relationship began.

Change is especially tough for some folks (like me, hello), so the setup wasn't too difficult for me to accept, and the little peeks readers got into the various characters' backstories and their relationships with each other helped. And I appreciated that the story stuck firmly to friendship jealousy - I realized after finishing the volume that it could very easily have turned into some kind of romantic jealousy thing, and there wasn't even a hint of that.

All in all, I enjoyed this and the way it wrapped the characters' issues into their D&D game, although I'm wondering about the "volume 1" aspect of it since it worked perfectly fine as a standalone read.