Wilfred - The Chalice Review - Chris Rodenhurst's Wordless Dungeon Crawl
Reading time: 2 minutes
Do you fancy a comic that tells you everything and yet says nothing at all? Wilfred - The Chalice is the kind of quiet adventure you look forward to. A small knight, a torch, a hole in a hillside and a chalice. No captions, no speech bubbles. Not a single sound effect either. Just twenty-eight pages of ink doing the talking. And it is beautiful.
Wilfred is written, drawn and self-published by Chris Rodenhurst. This first issue sends the lad into a dungeon after a sacred relic. That's the whole pitch, and it does not need to be any bigger. The world around him is a medieval Britain stuffed with folklore and things that live under hills or in dungeons.
Starting with the art, because in a wordless comic the art is the entire job. Rodenhurst works with a dip pen. It's all in black ink and a cold blue-grey wash, and the contrast carries the story on its own. Light is the real tool. Wilfred's torch cuts a small pocket of white into pages otherwise thick with shading and wash. As he goes deeper, that darkness crowds in until the white is barely there. The darkness or lightness of a page sets the tone throughout. But the key to the story is the characters.
The character work is cartoonish and very funny. Wilfred has a handful of expressions, and every one of them is a delight, usually some version of wide-eyed resignation. The things he meets are scratchier and uglier, all stringy hair, staring eyes and gangly limbs. A loose pen line gives them a wobble that makes them feel unpredictable and slightly more horrorish. Panel layouts shift constantly too, from tall establishing shots down to tiny slivers. The pace moves without a word of help, and it flows nicely.
Story-wise, the setup is handled in a few pages. Wilfred arrives, Wilfred goes in, Wilfred finds out the dungeon is occupied. What follows is paced with real confidence, and the comic trusts you completely to keep up. Wilfred is after a chalice. Why? What makes it so special? What's worth going through all this danger? You'll find out, and it's full of heart, mystery, danger and love.
That trust is the thing I keep coming back to. No narration softens the landings. You read Wilfred's face and the shadow behind him, then work it out for yourself. You'll be left with questions about how much Wilfred knows, but you also don't need to know all the answers. It's a great example of how much a comic can carry on just the art alone. Anyone who enjoyed It Flows Down From The Hill will find plenty to like here.
Wilfred - The Chalice is a charming, properly good-looking debut, and I want the next one immediately. You can pick up a copy for £8 from Chris Rodenhurst's BigCartel store.
Wilfred - The Chalice review: 5/5
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