The Lord of the Rings is a three-shot adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's classic work, The Lord of the Rings. Based primarily on the 1978 animated adaptation by Ralph Bakshi, the three books were published between 1979-1981 in many different languages, including Spanish and Italian. Notably, it was never officially published in English.
As in the book and movie, the comics follow Frodo Baggins, an ordinary Hobbit who is approached by the wizard Gandalf to take a quest to destroy the One Ring, the most powerful weapon of the legendary Dark Lord Sauron. Along the way, Frodo makes allies like the true King of Man, Aragorn, the Elf Legolas, and the Dwarf Gimli, alongside Gandalf and fellow Hobbits Sam, Merry, and Pippin. Together, this Fellowship is tasked to both destroy the Ring and fight back the hordes of Orcs gathered by Sauron and the traitorous wizard Saruman.
One Trope list to rule them all...
- Adaptational Context Change: In the book, Bilbo's request to take the Ring is denied primarily because of his advanced age. Here, Gandalf's main concern is that Bilbo is clearly still craving the Ring's power and they can't risk Bilbo taking it back along the way.
- Adaptational Jerkass: Most of Pippin's annoying moments before Moria are cut, so Gandalf's sudden fury towards him specifically comes out of nowhere.
- Adaptation Distillation: Times in the plot where characters stay in one spot for a long time skip over the time they stay there, going from when they arrive to when they leave, to keep the story moving.
- Adaptation Explanation Extrication:
- The comic has the Hobbits eating the lembas bread and making it clear that it's important that it doesn't run out, but it doesn't explain what it is like the book does; in the book, a single crumb of the bread makes everyone full, so rationing the bread over the journey is absolutely crucial.
- Because the comic doesn't get far enough into the story to explain who Aragorn and Boromir actually are, there's no explanation for why these two specifically are picked to be in the Fellowship.
- Big Bad: With Sauron pushed to the background, Saruman takes centerstage as the main antagonist by imprisoning Gandalf, trying to kidnap Frodo and get the Ring to Sauron, and then leading the siege of Rohan in an attempt to wipe out Man's resistance.
- Compressed Adaptation: The comics keep all of the major story beats intact, but most of the dialogue is truncated to cut down the books' runtime.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Sauron, the Dark Lord, is the greater antagonist that Saruman serves and was the one to create the Ring in the first place, but he never appears himself.
- No Ending: The comic ends well before the story does; it ends just after the siege of Helm's Deep, and Frodo and Sam don't even make it to Mordor. The comics just end with the War of the Ring just beginning and nothing resolved whatsoever.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Aragorn fighting the Orcs in Moria is cut out - it simply cuts from Aragorn confronting the Orcs while telling the Fellowship to run to the entire Fellowship outside.
- Redemption Equals Death: Boromir redeems himself for trying to take the Ring from Frodo by protecting the Hobbits from the Orcs at the cost of his own life.
- Remember the New Guy?: Though the story of Gollum is told in the first comic, when he actually appears in the third, Frodo and Sam have already been dealing with him for several days even though the readers are seeing him in the present day for the first time.
