It's not the story, it's the storytelling

The thing is, there's nothing really new here. Some might be disinclined to read the comic because it isn't essential to the development of the World of Warcraft. Fortunately, I have always stood by my own motto of "it's not the story, it's the storytelling," which allows me to look at spoilers for movies, books, or comics without actually ruining the story for me. It has also permitted me to enjoy stories that have a familiar plot because I have a deep appreciation for good storytelling.

I've always been of the opinion that there are only so many stories that can be told, with even the most seminal work in literature or cinema using common themes that can be found in other, older stories. Tokyopop's World of Warcraft: Death Knight is an excellent example of storytelling. We know what happens to Thassarian. We know he is a Death Knight who defected to the Alliance. Players who have ventured into Northrend have done quests involving him. Alliance players know that Thassarian has family in the game world. In short, all of the elements for the story are already in the game but Jolley spins it into an engaging tale nonetheless.

There is no suspense in the fact that Thassarian is forced to do dastardly deeds. We already know this. We also know that, ultimately, he'll side with the good guys. Dan Jolley and Rocio Zucchi were tasked with turning that expected, spoiled story into something worth reading. I mean, surely only a handful of people love Thassarian -- really just another cool NPC -- that much to want to read 166 pages worth of him, right? I play Horde almost exclusively and therefore have no great love for the character.

Even then, Jolley and Zucchi manage to make Thassarian solid and sympathetic for me with a combination of crisp writing and impeccable art. Having been weaned on American comic books, my favorite manga or manhua are actually the ones from Hong Kong, which are colored. Although I appreciate them, I've never been overly enamored with the monochromatic sensibilities of traditional manga (some of which are actually printed on colored paper in Japan). That said, I enjoyed World of Warcraft: Death Knight from cover to cover without once thinking about color.

A fair warning to readers: there are minor spoilers ahead. If you wish to read the manga completely free of any spoilers, however small, skip to the segment after the following one in the review.

Some quibbles

As good as the read was, there were several things that didn't feel as perfect as it could have been. Several times throughout the story, encounters felt rushed and a bit contrived. As great as the comic was for people who played the game -- enriching the game world with more characterization and emotion -- it floundered in some parts because of its tight integration with it. That is, readers who don't play the game or who have not gotten to that point in the content would not appreciate the nuances of the situation.

One particularly jarring instance was when Thassarian walks into a ziggurat, recognizable by players who have quested in the Borean Tundra, and espies a lich. He walks away and tells his unique skeletal companion, Lurid, that "in order to fight a lich... certain preparations must be made." Yet he walks right into the ziggurat in the very next panel without any of those aforementioned preparations seemingly having taken place (this is one instance where the absence of a caption stating the passage of time work against the flow of the story) and engages the lich.

He subsequently dispatches his opponent in a slightly confusing (if you're not familiar with liches and their phylacteries) and anti-climactic fashion, which is somewhat ironic considering that there were six pages of furiously drawn combat that preceded the encounter. In some forgivable panels, Jolley and Zucchi lapse into telling instead of showing, such as when Thassarian queries, "who is this human that my servant is so eager to maim?" when neither Lurid nor the human in question are in the frame. It makes total sense if you've actually done the quest line. Otherwise, it's an underwhelming and confusing encounter in the comic.

There are also parts that might have merited a better background, such as when Thassarian raises his unique companion, the skeletal warrior Lurid. It happens all in the span of two panels, with Thassarian naming his undead servant seemingly out of a whim, "I believe I shall call you Lurid." It happens so indistinctly that readers can easily miss it, considering Lurid is distinct in that he isn't a ghoul like a normal Death Knight's companion, it seems like a wasted opportunity. Jolley could've also done more towards explaining the name beyond Thassarian seemingly picking it out of nowhere or show how the skeleton was a demonstration of the Death Knight's exceptional power beyond internal monologue.

These are very minor quibbles, however, and the comic reads smoothly despite these wrinkles. Many readers will probably even gloss over these seeming infractions and enjoy the fact that World of Warcraft: Death Knight does everything by the book, or more appropriately, by the game. The experience here is reversed in comparison to the World of Warcraft comics -- as players, particularly those who play Alliance, will get a real thrill because they'll understand most of what's going on instead of the comic reader understanding how Varian Wrynn got to Stormwind and the rest of the player base wondering.

Jolley makes it worthwhile with small reveals throughout the story, such as the identity of the woman that Thassarian encounters in the first few pages -- a feat helped greatly by the monochromatic nature of manga and because the art style is sometimes homogenizes appearances (it was a bit hard to distinguish Prince Arthas in some panels, for example). The small reveals add weight to the story and make it more emotionally engaging.

It's palpable in some parts that Jolley was writing to conform to the game world, as though the storyline -- including all the quests and NPCs -- were given to him and these defined his boundaries. It makes me wonder how far back this project was in development, considering everything was already in place in Wrath. A part of the comic goes through the events in Light's Hope Chapel at the end of the Death Knight starting experience, and readers are treated to Thassarian's own version of the encounter, lending more weight to his emancipation from the grasp of the Lich King. It makes me curious about whether this was planned concurrent to the development of the event or merely an afterthought.