Game of Thrones has now appeared in so many formats, that I’m half expecting to review the musical. George R. R. Martin’s series of books have won deserved success, bolstered by HBO’s small screen adaptation Where Martin’s books have the depth that only text can offer, and the show spectacle, the graphic novel stands somewhere between the two.

A Game of Thrones: A Graphic Novel - Volume Two has hit the shelves. Adapted by Daniel Abraham, with art by Tommy Patterson, this is a series that could run for a very long time. As such it’s probably more cost effective to collect it via the hardback graphic novels than buying the individual comics.

There are a little fewer than two hundred pages of art with an appendix, running to around twenty-five pages, which go through the process of creating the panels which cover the Tourney, with contributions from Anne Groell (series Editor), Tommy Patterson (Artist), Daniel Abraham (Adapter) and Jason Ullmeyer (Dynamite). The whole book covers the comic book series between issue seven to twelve.

The book opens in the part of the story where Tyrion is visiting the Wall and Rob is trying to discover why the last Hand died and ends with Tyrion’s arrest and imprisonment and the Kingslayer openly attacking Robb in an attempt to free him. There is a lot of plot to get through, most of it I won’t mention just in case you’re the only person in the land who hasn’t read the books or seen the show.

In adapting the story the comic has moved away from the character focused story telling of the books and, although slightly less so, the show, to try and construct a more linier narrative, which it has done successfully.

The appreciation of the art is going to be a very personal matter, it’s constructed in a very traditional manner with panels of between three and six per page. There are the occasional full page panels, but these are pretty few. The only serious criticism is to do with some of the text boxes, they are fine when a bright colour is used for the background, but the darker panels make the texts difficult to read.

The world depicted is different to that of the show and no likenesses of the actors are used. It’s a good adaptation and considering the changes made to the order of events it flows quite well. The depth of the appendix is impressive opening the world of comic book adaptation to the reader.

The graphic novel allows you much of the depth of the original books with the added bonus of seeing another iteration of the world of Westeros.

7

Charles Packer