Dark Horse comics II: the adaptations and Ronin
Dark Horse's second Witcher comics programme adapts Sapkowski's short stories directly as short hardcover graphic novels. A Grain of Truth, adapted by Jacek Rembis, 2022, 56 pages, is 9781506726953. The Lesser Evil, also adapted by Rembis, 2023, is 9781506726960. The Edge of the World, adapted by Magdalena Salik, published January 21, 2025, is 9781506726984. All three adapt stories from The Last Wish, and further adaptations are listed for 2025 and 2026 as follow up material.
The format is the point of difference from the original series. Where House of Glass and its successors are trade paperback collections of monthly issues, the adaptations are single story hardcovers, closer to European album format, each a self contained reading of one tale. The Grain of Truth volume, the Nivellen story, is the standard entry point and the most gifted of the Witcher comics.
The Witcher: Ronin, by Rafal Jaki with art by Hataya, is the programme's outlier: an original manga, trade paperback of 120 pages published December 6, 2022, at 9781506733500, which recasts Geralt in an Edo period Japan inspired world of yokai and ronin. It is a Dark Horse Manga publication, in English, and the only Witcher book in this bibliography whose form is manga rather than prose or Western comics.
Ronin is also this Library's natural bridge object: a Polish fantasy hero, in a Japanese storytelling form, published in English by an American comics house, sitting one shelf away from the Hayakawa Japanese editions of the novels. No Japanese edition of Ronin itself is recorded in the census, which is a small irony the record states without embellishment.
Together the adaptations and Ronin complete the Dark Horse count of nine volumes in the census: five original series collections, three story adaptations and one manga. Each carries its own verified ISBN above, and none should be confused with the prose books they adapt, which keep their own identifiers on their own pages.
