Great Expectations: The Graphic Novel Text adapted from Charles Dickens

My Signet Classic paperback copy of the full text of Great Expectations runs to a little over 500 pages. While I am not a great Dickens fan, I do have my favorites, and I have read this one a couple of times. So, imagine my surprise when I sat down Sunday afternoon to read the graphic version published by “Classical Comics” and finished in time to cook dinner. There is no way I could possibly read this great story in a couple hours.

Now, this may seem a benefit to some people who see reading as a waste of time. True, the illustrations have a lot of creativity, and they match, to a small degree, my idea of what the characters look like, but any serious reader will agree that the pleasure of assembling this cast of characters from the imagination is far more rewarding than adopting some other person’s ideas.

Wait, it gets better. Inside the back cover, Classical Comics is now issuing books in three formats: full text, “plain text” (wherein all the language has been modernized), and “quick text” for, as the ad says, “a fast-paced read.”

How much faster could anyone possibly want to skim through a great novel than an afternoon? What’s next, novels on Twitter? Oh, sorry, I forgot about the article I read a couple of weeks ago about “twitterature” – novels and plays reduced to 140 characters.

We are going backwards. Soon we will have novels only in pictures -- all that will be missing will be the cave wall. Graphic novels are comic books for adults without the patience or the attention span to sit down and read words. When I was a kid, I loved “Classic Comics.” I had dozens of them, but I also read many, many books. Fortunately, my curiosity about what lay “between the panels” drove me to read the texts of the stories. I doubt graphic novels will do that to today’s non-reading young people.

One star for the great drawings.

--Chiron, 7/26/09

Jane Eyre: The Graphic Novel by Charlotte Bronte

I really detest the idea of graphic novels. True, I read the “Classic Comics” series when I was younger, but even at that age I sensed something was missing. They inevitably led me to seek out the full text version of those great works – Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, Huckleberry Finn, and so forth. So, I guess I owe a debt of gratitude to those forerunners of the graphic novel, but I know many students who read only these watered-down, thin, and poor excuses for great literature.

One important example will suffice. In chapter eleven, Jane arrives at the inn of Millcote, a few miles from Thornfield Hall on the first leg of her adventure. Imagine a 16-year old girl – alone and away from all and everyone she knew for the first time. She was terrified. At the inn, no one met her, and she sat alone bearing the leers and sneers of men and women as they saw her sitting alone. She questioned the wisdom of leaving Lowood, and she feared for her future. This chapter examines in depth, Jane’s mental state after the terrible years spent at Lowood.

This graphic novel treats this important moment like this: “I was collected from the George Inn at Millcote by a plain servant in a plain carriage. Thornfield was a short six miles away” (39). I will admit that this passage has a few more words than the treatment rendered by the Cliff’s Notes version. Not for me!

The mediocre illustrations frequently do not match the emotions conveyed by the text. For example, Bessie, the kindly servant who tried to help Jane at Gateshead Hall, looks like a raving maniac in some of the panels. Never again! 1 star for sometimes mildly interesting artwork

--Chiron, 3/6/09