Ironwood Books in Order

Ironwood is not a mainstream fantasy comic with a little adult material tucked around the edges. It is an adult fantasy comic, openly built that way from the start. If you are coming to it from Fables or the Bat-books, the first useful thing to know is that the tone, the content, and the reading experience are all aimed at a very different audience.

That said, it is still recognizably Bill Willingham.

The core setup follows Dave Dragavon, a juvenile dragon still stuck in human form, who is hired by Pandora Breedlswight to track down the wizard Gnaric and break a curse. That gives the series a classic sword-and-sorcery spine, a quest, a dangerous employer, a magical target, and a world full of side roads and bad ideas. Around that spine, the comic mixes bawdy humor, erotic material, monsters, feuds, and fantasy travel.

What keeps it from feeling like pure gimmick is the commitment to worldbuilding and character friction. Dave is not just a generic adventurer, and Pandora is not just a quest-giver. Their journey keeps creating complications that are magical, sexual, and practical all at once. The world is full of curses, appetites, and people who want things for reasons that are not noble or neat.

So yes, this is an adult book. But it is also a fantasy comic that likes quests, weird creatures, and a slightly grubby sense of adventure. The storytelling energy comes from watching desire and danger tangle together until the quest itself starts to feel almost secondary.

If you read it, read it knowing what lane it is in. Ironwood is not trying to be polite. It is trying to be bold, strange, and very much for grown-up fantasy readers.