With Netflix’s new series The Witcher now available, I fully have the bug again. I am halfway through my viewing of season one and am enjoying the show. During the last ten years, The Witcher franchise has surged to prominence thanks in large part to Polish video game developer CD Projekt Red’s trilogy of games. Andrzej Sapkowski’s novels were relatively unknown in the United States before the first game was released in 2007. A year later, Orbit Books, the science fiction and fantasy imprint of Hachette Book Group, released The Last Wish, a mass market paperback short story collection originally published in Poland in 1993. A cult following developed in the United States following in the footsteps of the existing fandom in Europe and in recent years, has evolved into a popular fan base.
My own experience with The Witcher began some time around 2007-2008 when I was listening to an episode of, I believe, The PC Gamer Podcast. One of the hosts was describing the main character as something akin to a Jedi in a fantasy genre setting. I was strapped for cash at the time but I put the title in my memory banks for future reference. Since then, I have played and loved all three Witcher video games, racking up a total play time of two hundred and eighty eight hours between the three titles. They are really good, you guys. Really, really good. It is such a vibrant world with familiar fantasy themes and imagery but presented in its own way and with Eastern European mythological flavor. Original author Andrzej Sapkowski has written eight novels so if you want to root your experience firmly in the franchise’s original source material and eschew the expanded universe of games and graphic novels, you have plenty of stories to devour.
I have read The Last Wish and have a few of the novels sitting on my bookshelf, patiently awaiting my attention, but today, I read the first graphic novel featuring the Witcher, House of Glass. The graphic novels are not written by Andrzej Sapkowski, but are original stories by Paul Tobin. Produced by comic book publisher Dark Horse Comics in partnership with the game developer CD Projekt Red, they are collections of individual issues of the monthly comic book series that was introduced in 2014. The five issues collected in House of Glass tell the story of the Witcher, Geralt of Rivia meeting a hunter at his riverside campsite. Over a meager meal of scrawny fish and some wine more elegant than the scene required, the hunter tells Geralt the sad tale of the premature demise of his beautiful wife Marta who was taken by bruxae (powerful vampires in Witcher lore) and converted into one of their own. The hunter points to a nearby hill atop which stands a lone silhouette, gown and long hair waving in the breeze. “That’s her, watching us from up the hill,” the hunter says. Though the hunter says Marta is now a bruxa, she does not harm him. She just watches. The next morning, Geralt and the hunter decide to travel together. Safety in numbers and all that. Their journey draws them to a creepy house deep in a dark forest. The hunter sees his deceased wife standing silent on the balcony, watching. Then she is gone. The rest of the story follows Geralt and the hunter as they explore the house, the contents of which are much more than they expected.
This is a spooky story well-suited to the Witcher universe. Being the comic book introduction of the character, writer Paul Tobin inserts explanations of the Witcher’s special powers into the story via dialogue between Geralt and his companion. This allows Tobin to educate readers new to the Witcher universe while crafting an exciting story for veteran fans. Artist Joe Querio’s work is just right for the setting with lots of good shadow work and great facial expressions.
If you are curious about the world of the Witcher and do not have the dozens of hours to spend playing the video games as I have, do not have a subscription to Netflix to watch the new Henry Cavill-led series, and do not have time to read one of the eight novels, this graphic novel will be a great hour-long-ish introduction to the world, the lore, and the character. Having experienced so much of the world as I have, I can tell you that the magic and mystery on display in this graphic novel are just a hint of the expansive, creative, and engaging thrills at the heart of the Witcher’s world, so if you like what you see here, I suspect you will enjoy the other products in the franchise. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to press play on the next episode of the Netflix series while also playing the third video game while also listening to the Audible version of book two and sipping some Temerian Ale. GIVE ME MORE WITCHER!