🟠 LEGENDARY DROP
LitRPG Is Getting Its Own Comic Books
Last week we covered the DCC Peacock announcement. This week the genre keeps expanding, and this week it’s comics.
Vault Comics (now majority-owned by LitRPG publisher Aethon Books) is releasing a wave of LitRPG graphic novels adapted from WEBTOON serials. Here's what's coming:
My Best Friend Is an Eldritch Horror Vol. 1 graphic novel releases on April 14. The WEBTOON adaptation (6.1M views, 185k subscribers) is hitting print for the first time. Started as a web serial by Actus on Royal Road, became a bestselling light novel, became a WEBTOON, and now it's a graphic novel.
Dungeon Crawler Carl Vol. 1 (the graphic novel) hits shelves May 19, collecting episodes 1-14 of the WEBTOON adaptation. And if you want a taste early, DCC #0 is a Free Comic Book Day special on May 2. Go to your local comic shop and grab one for free!
Coming later: The Laws of Cultivation Vol. 1 by KrazeKode (xianxia meets science, June 2), and a Primal Hunter graphic novel is in the pipeline too.
With these, the Peacock TV show, the DCC tabletop RPG from Renegade Games (coming this year), and Playmates Toys doing figurines and trading cards (July). I did not have LitRPG trading cards on my 2026 bingo card. But here we are.
🟣 RARE FINDS
Stories we're reading this week.
Brand Bound by Adrian Armbruster. I asked Adrian a few questions about Brand Bound. Here's what he said:
The pitch: "He can fix her (she can make him so much worse)." That's been the tagline all along. Enemies-to-lovers in a LitRPG setting where our hero starts as a guard at a sewer grating where initiates go to fight their first rat. It's a deliberate shout-out to Trails in the Sky, and yes, people have called it a slow-rolling start. Adrian pokes fun at it.
Where it's going: The story is complete at three volumes. Volume 1 is on KU now. Volume 2 hits KU on April 21 and shifts from slow-burn enemies-to-lovers into a battle-couple dynamic, with an elaborate nested backstory arc revealed through ancient gospels and documents. "It's its own prequel, really. That's kind of neat." Volume 3 later this year gets into what Adrian calls a "famine arc" that's "perhaps risky for the LitRPG genre, but allows for some role reversal that I think serves the story well."
Why he wrote it: "It was primarily a lack of romance in LitRPG spaces that influenced me to write. Everyone was frequently talking about the lack of stories with a fleshed-out romance arc." He went into the April 2024 Royal Road Writathon specifically to fill that gap. Two years and a professional edit later, here we are. Sharp-eyed readers will also spot references to Final Fantasy 1, Dungeon Crawler Carl, and Ultima.
ENEMIES TO LOVERS · SYSTEM · ROMANCE · COMPLETE · KU
🟢 PATCH NOTES
Reader submission: Convergence: Eclipse [RoyalRoad] by J.L. Hollinwell. System apocalypse with a memory-wiped MC trying to figure out who he is while learning magic and losing weapons at an alarming rate. First book is complete at 75k words with chapters dropping weekly on Sundays. Early days but the premise grabbed me. Reading.
SYSTEM APOCALYPSE · PROGRESSION · MAGIC · MALE MC
Heretical Fishing 5 [Amazon] by Haylock Jobson. Out April 14. Book 5 in one of the best cozy LitRPG series going. Fischer is finally learning the secrets of the Kallis Realm, his followers are hoarding them, and things on a distant continent are getting significantly less cozy. Audiobook drops same day. COZY · CULTIVATION · COMEDY · MALE MC
Path of Ascension 11 [Audible] is out on Audible. Thanks to reader LunarAlloy for the heads up.
Andy in the Apocalypse by Plum Parrot. Just launched. New apocalyptic LitRPG series from the Victor of Tucson author. If you liked VoT, this is worth a look.
Royal Road Writathon update. Two weeks in. 55,555 words in 5 weeks. If you haven't browsed the Writathon page recently, there are some genuinely interesting new entries. A couple that caught my eye and I’ve added to my reading list:
Humans: Trials for Galactic Integration by SirJoshOfSocks. Humanity gets discovered by a galactic civilisation. Their response? A series of TV shows broadcast to the entire galaxy. Entertainment-deprived super-advanced aliens say they'll give us a chance to join, but we have to earn it. Only 4 chapters so far but the premise is fantastic. SCI-FI · GAMELIT · COMEDY · WRITATHON
The Nameless Engineer by FrankG. She wakes up on a hostile alien planet with no memory, no name, and a body rebuilt by machines. Everyone else got combat classes. She got Engineer, Level 0, locked and designed to fail. Slow-burn progression where nothing is given and everything is earned. If you like survival engineering and female MCs, it’s one to watch. LITRPG · ISEKAI · SURVIVAL · FEMALE MC · PROGRESSION · WRITATHON
(I’m still following The Great Afterlife Bake Off mentioned last week too)
🟡 FAN CRAFT
Our first community submission! Reader Autumn Plunkett sent in this animated fan art of Jellybean, the bouncing blue slime from Slime Sweets & Dungeon Treats:
Drawn in Autodesk Sketchbook and stitched together frame by frame. This is exactly the kind of thing that deserves to live somewhere better than an Imgur link (I’m working on it!)
Autumn also shared her LitRPG and Progression Fantasy spreadsheet, cataloguing over 1,300 KU books. If you've ever wanted a searchable database of the genre, this is the closest thing that exists. Absolute dedication.
Got fan art, theory posts, spreadsheets, or anything else? Hit reply.
THAT'S THE DROP
Thanks to everyone who sent feedback after Issue 1. The response has been incredible, and it's shaping what this becomes. Thank you so much to everyone who sent story tips, fan art, and author intros. Please keep them coming. This newsletter works best when it's a two-way thing!
See you next week.
The Loot Drop, by SpawnHQ