Sunday, May 25, 2008

Warcraft The Sunwell Trilogy – Ultimate Edition...

A review of the TokyoPop Manga Graphic Novel…

Having picked up the initial first volume of Tokyopop’s “Warcraft: The Sunwell Trilogy – volume one - DRAGON HUNT” when it first came out, I immediately bought the Ultimate Edition when I saw it in Borders.

I had not managed to pick up the remaining volumes of the series in its original format, but loved the black and white artwork. The book is based on Blizzard Entertainment’s hugely successful online video game, “Warcraft”.

The format for this ultimate volume version is wonderful. The size is much larger than the original small Manga format and shows off the fine detailing of the artwork.

Accompanying the book is a full colour trading card and a poster of the cover art for this ultimate edition.

This version also comes with a full colour introductory Prologue, not included in the original volumes, along with the prose section from volume one. There is an afterword by Vice President of Creative Development at Blizzard Entertainment, Chris Metzen and a little piece about the creative duo of Knaak and Kim. It also has a black and white sketchbook section showing the development of the comic book versions of the characters. There is also a large full page, full colour illustration of the Role Playing game card, and a double page spread of the Poster, and Point of Sale/Purchase display art for the Trilogy.

The book’s credits look like this:

Written by Richard A. Knaak
Illustrated by Jae-Hwan Kim
Lettering and Layout by Rob Steen
Edited by Rob Tokar
Cover Art by Jae-Hwan Kim

I’ll not spoil the story for those who will go out and buy it, but are reading this before they do, but I will say the story is great especially if you are into Dragons, Elves, Orcs, Goblins, Dwarves Zombies, Sorcerers and all the character types associated with Heroic Fantasy and if you are a fan of the games or toys then this is also one for your collection. There’s lots of intrigue, emotion and action aplenty

The artwork is very finely rendered, excellently drawn and is well paced. As a massive fan of Jack Kirby and using splash pages and double page spreads myself in my work I can also tell you there are lots of big pictures all throughout the book.

This stunning oversized and very thick hard backed version now adorns my bookshelves in my studio and is a very impressive tome. I for one salute Tokyopop for producing this excellent book despite a prevalence in comic books today of uniformity in size and format.

I highly recommend this book and say to all the creative team involved, I am looking forward to the forth coming second Trilogy – “Warcraft: Dragons of Outland”.

Until next time have fun!

Tim Perkins…

May 25th 2008

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