Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Writer: Paul Tobin
Artist: Joe Querio
Release Date: 23rd April 2014

The second issue of Paul Tobin and Joe Querrio’s The Witcher sees our heroes – established so impressively in the first issue – enter the foreboding ‘House of Glass’ in search of answers.  We get to see a lot more of Geralt – ‘The Witcher’ himself – in action here, being treated to a nice little display of his various abilities as well as delving a little deeper into his relationship with his mystical Medallion.  For someone who doesn’t have much background information on this franchise, either through the novels or the video games, this helped me a lot, and – for the most part – these developments were handled without going too far into exposition overload.

As with the first issue, Querio’s art is a little ‘sketchy’ in places, lacking detail in some of the character models and leaving a lot of facial expressions more implied than shown.  However, he more than makes up for it here with his intensely atmospheric depiction of the ‘House of Glass’ itself, which helps immeasurably in establishing the sense of supernatural dread that permeates Paul Tobin’s story.

My main niggle with this issue was simply that it felt like there really wasn’t a huge amount happening here, especially following on from the terrific character work of the first issue. Sure, a new character was introduced and a few details about the house itself were drip-fed, but in terms of actually advancing the more intriguing story of Jakob and his wife, there really didn’t seem to be much development, which I found a little frustrating given how drawn into it I was from the first issue. That said, in these shorter mini-series, it’s always a good idea to have the story ebb and flow, and with this issue definitely falling into the ‘ebb’ category, I get the impression that when it comes to reading the whole arc in a single sitting, the story will pace itself extremely well.  This slight lull is just unfortunate for those of us who are reading the individual issues as they are released.

Overall though, The Witcher is definitely an intriguing series, and while the first two issues have done an admirable job of the ‘set up’, I think it’s about time that we had a little payoff. I’ll definitely be sticking with it to see how things pan out, and I have total faith that Tobin and Querrio can turn things around as the series nears its conclusion.

Rating: 3/5.

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The writer of this piece was: Craig Neilson (aka Ceej)
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