Title: Pride and Prejudice (Marvel Adapatation)
Author: Jane Austen (adapted by Nancy Butler & Hugo Petrus)
Illustrator: Hugo Petrus
Publisher: Marvel
Copyright: 2009
Price: $19.99
ISBN: 978-0-7851-3915-7
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Summary and Quick Thoughts: Marvel has adapted this perennial classic about two people who dislike each other on sight and develop their own ideas of the other. Elizabeth Bennet wants nothing to do with Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, but it seems friends, family, and fate has something else planned for them. They banter, they talk, but she really wants nothing to do with him. Instead, she wants to secure her sister’s happiness with Mr. Bingley and maybe find herself a proper fitted suitor. But what is Elizabeth to do when Mr. Darcy has found that he is in love with Elizabeth?
Frankly, I’m not going to go much into the plot of this one. Many know the story of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy from the constant adaptations and from discovering the book on their own. In an attempt to bring girls into the comic shops, Marvel has published a graphic novel with fantastic covers, poor artwork, and plot holes in the adaptation. Read on for more details.
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Will Teens Like It? I don’t know…
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Things to be aware of: …
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Further Thoughts: I wasn’t originally going to pick this up after previewing this on the Marvel site ages ago, but for some reason, I was lured in by the cover (again). The cover of Pride and Prejudice is a play on popular girl teen magazine covers with hints and tips from family to advice to “celebrities.” In the back of this graphic novel, like many other works of collected issues, are the covers of the individual issues. Personally, I would have bought them for the covers alone. The cover artwork is light, fitting to the story and more able to draw the female readers than the art inside the book. The last cover featured brings the infamous first line around Lizzy and Darcy and continues the light artwork and bring a fitting cover to the last issue.
Now, the artwork. This is not the greatest work of art, nor is it the worst, yet I have a serious problem with it. Maybe it is because I’m comparing it to Ruse (long lost CrossGen Victorian period/detective/fantasy book), but the art style really doesn’t fit the story. The art style is a semi-realistic, superhero, Marvel style you’d expect to see in Ultimate Spiderman or some modern day story. It’d work there. It doesn’t work here. More often than not, hair color is messed up (there is one page where Jane’s hair is black “for shading”, to black with blonde spots, to blonde as the panels progress). All the faces fall “flat,” where the eyes aren’t full of life and it is hard to tell what expression is really being conveyed. The Philosopher Musician says it best: “Are they smiling or crying? That is one creepy smile.” Eye contact is often missed to where I think you should be able to see that the character is looking the other in the eye instead of off above a head. In other areas, characters don’t resemble themselves throughout the story. For example, at one point, I was confused. Who was I looking at, Lizzy or another of the female characters? The only way I could tell was context (but I think this would be difficult for anyone who doesn’t know the story).
The text is actually not terrible. I think the writer took as much of the original text as she could and inserted it into the story, which was fantastic and worked wonderfully, but I started to find plot holes. Obviously, points are missing in adaptations, but I cannot believe that one glaring point was omitted and then commented on by characters later. The big error I found was when Lizzy made a comment about how a particular woman would make a fitting wife for a specific husband. I looked back to make sure I hadn’t missed the reference earlier, because if you haven’t read the book, you have NO idea which guy she’s talking about. It wasn’t there during Mr. Collins’s visit. A pity because then I looked at this book with an even more critical view.
Nancy Butler is a romance novelist and was lucky enough to adapt this work. Unfortunately, I find this work is not worthy of a library purchase unless you are a bigger library looking to add titles. It is a wonderful attempt to get girls into comic shops (as she says in the introduction), but it falls flat. If the artwork was “lighter” in style and more like one of the covers, or more in the style of Ruse this would be a fantastic adaptation. I think this will just “fall away” into the comic abyss of titles that were a good faith effort, but just didn’t have it.
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Source: Library copy.
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