Serials to Graphic Novels

by Catherine J Golden

  The Nineteenth-Century Graphic Canon

  Graphic novel adaptations of nineteenth-century novels by publishers including Classical Comics, Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Dark Horse, Papercutz (an inheritor of Classics Illustrated), Barron’s, Dynamite, and Campfire have brought new readers to works by canonical nineteenth-century authors. Russ Kick devotes an entire volume of The Graphic Canon, a three-volume anthology, to works published throughout the long nineteenth century.19 Although Kick commissioned talented artists to adapt classics from the western canon ranging from the Bible and The Odyssey to The Stranger to show “a good deal of what comic art and illustration are capable of” (2: xii), his privileging of nineteenth-century literature for graphic novel adaptation is not surprising since literature from this period is richly descriptive and invites visualization. In “Steam Punk and the Visualization of the Victorian,” Christine Ferguson notes that “by consistently calling on readers to see, look, and observe the scene being painted before them, canonical realist writers metaphorically aligned their novels with visual texts” (201).

  Jane Austen’s fiction has been ripe for graphic novel adaptation given her growing fan base, sparked in large part by film adaptations of her novels that have generated a multi-million dollar industry. In addition to graphic novel adaptations, there are kiddie-lit versions, supernatural variations, sequels and prequels, and consumer products ranging from high-end jewelry to dolls, magnets, even Band-Aids.20 Marvel Comics launched the Marvel Illustrated imprint, which includes a line of graphic novel adaptations of Austen’s works. First in the Marvel line came Pride and Prejudice in 2009, followed by Sense and Sensibility (1811) in 2011, Emma in 2012, and Northanger Abbey (1818) later in 2012.21 Nancy Butler, a two-time RITA award winner22 who adapted all four titles for Marvel, explains in her introduction to Pride and Prejudice that graphic artist Hugo Petrus “had a nice feel for historical eras”; for each of the five issues of Pride and Prejudice (later bound as one volume),23 Petrus “would take my rough plot outlines and dash off loose gesture drawings before he sat down to do the pencil art. That way I could vet the artwork and make sure there was enough room in each panel for the oh-so-necessary Austen dialogue. It worked like a charm” (n. pag.).24 In the Butler-Petrus collaboration, we see fluidity in the creation of a graphic novel that recalls how Victorian authors and illustrators worked closely and cooperatively to bring forth monthly installments of a serial novel.

  Pride and Prejudice has the most graphic novel adaptations of all of Austen’s novels.25 Differences emerge among the text and graphics of the Marvel, Campfire, and Udon Entertainment adaptations; for example, Udon’s Pride and Prejudice, scripted by Stacy King with art by Po-Tse, stylizes Regency dress to match shōjo manga romance style.26 All three scriptwriters begin their adaptations by recalling one of the most well-known opening lines in all of English literature: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife” (Austen 1). Austen is really saying the opposite: a dependent woman is in need of a man of fortune. Elizabeth Bennet, the novel’s protagonist, and her four sisters must marry since Longbourn, the family estate, is entailed to Mr. Collins, their cousin. Elizabeth is not in need of a foolish husband, however, and she rightly rejects Mr. Collins’s proposal of marriage.

  In the Marvel version of Pride and Prejudice, artist Hugo Petrus includes details that visualize Mr. Collins’s impossibility as a suitor. When Collins pompously proposes to Elizabeth and lists specific reasons for his offer of marriage, the graphics work additively with the text. Petrus pictures Collins holding up first one, then two fingers to designate each reason why he believes it is time for him to marry and Elizabeth Bennet is his choice. We can almost visualize silly Mr. Collins holding up a third finger to indicate the most important reason why he is proposing: “it is the particular advice and recommendation of the noble lady whom I have the honor of calling patroness” (Butler n. pag.).27 Also noteworthy are three small inset panels within the frame of Elizabeth and Mr. Collins dancing—showing, respectively, Collins’s large foot stepping on Elizabeth’s dainty one, Elizabeth’s look of displeasure, and Collins’s clueless expression (see fig. 47). The caption inserted at the bottom of the panel reads: “Mr. Collins, awkward and solemn, apologized instead of attending and often moved wrong without being aware of it” (Butler n. pag.). In the left inset panel, Petrus zeroes in on Mr. Collins’s large-buckled brown boot stepping firmly on Elizabeth’s delicate slipper, magnifying his poor dancing skills. Unhappiness registers on Elizabeth’s face both in the full panel and in the bottom right inset close-up of her face. Collins, in an inset panel in the top right of the page, looks completely puzzled that Elizabeth is not delighted to be his dance partner.

  Figure 47. “Mr. Collins Dancing Poorly with Elizabeth.” Artwork by Hugo Petrus for Nancy Butler’s adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, 2010. © MARVEL.

  Reader-viewers are not surprised by her reaction. A ball was the prime time that a man and woman in Regency England could be together with a semblance of privacy since each dance lasted a half an hour, and decorum allowed a couple two dances. Stiff-limbed Mr. Collins dances without grace. Moreover, a man’s skill on the dance floor was important to courting and an indicator of his sexual skill. Collins fails dismally in this regard, as the visual details in the frame and its three inset panels independently and cumulatively reveal.

  The Campfire adaptation of Pride and Prejudice scripted by Laurence Sach and illustrated by Rajesh Nagulakonda teases out issues of social class snobbery of consequence to the marriage plot of Elizabeth Bennet and a desirable man of fortune, Mr. Darcy. Class tensions fly when Elizabeth defies Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s threat never to enter into an engagement with Mr. Darcy (see fig. 48). Nagulakonda divides the full page into two vertical panels, one wide and the other narrow. Recalling the predilection of Sixties artists to focus on one or two figures, Nagulakonda uses close-ups of Elizabeth Bennet and Lady Catherine in both panels to intensify Lady Catherine’s arrogance and Elizabeth’s challenge to her conceit. In the larger panel, Lady Catherine de Bourgh (Mr. Collins’s wealthy patroness) is positioned in three-quarter view, looking down her nose at Elizabeth. Lady Catherine wears an imperious looking hat while Elizabeth, out-of-doors without a hat, must angle her head upward to meet Lady Catherine’s gaze.

  Numerous close-ups of Elizabeth’s and Lady Catherine’s faces fill the narrow vertical panel, which takes the form of a verbal duel. In a word balloon on the top of the page, Lady Catherine declares: “Miss Bennet, I am shocked and astonished. I expected to find a more reasonable young woman” (Sach 97). In the next close-up, Lady Catherine adds insultingly in another word balloon, “Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?” (97); this line is a clever allusion to the penultimate paragraph of the source text where Lady Catherine condescends to visit Pemberley despite that “pollution” (Austen 476). As the language grows more heated, so do the faces of Lady Catherine and Elizabeth, who gazes downward at her social better, a gesture that challenges Lady Catherine’s authority. Text and image work interdependently as Elizabeth’s complexion flushes red, signaling anger, and she daringly declares to Lady Catherine: “I believe the world, in general, has too much sense to join in the scorn you speak of” (Sach 97).28 Although the Campfire adaptation concludes in a two-page panel of a double wedding, Jane to Mr. Bingley and Elizabeth to Mr. Darcy, a small panel positioned below this happy wedding scene shows a defeated Lady Catherine entering the grounds of Pemberley. Joyous smiles and wedding bells in the top panel illustrate the limits of social class snobbery and celebrate romance.29

  Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (WH), both published in 1847 without illustrations, appear in graphic novel formats by Barron’s Graphic Classics and Classical Comics. Given Barron’s emphasis on young and reluctant readers, this series, not surprisingly, modernizes and abridges the Brontë sisters’ works to make them more student-friendly.30 The 2009
Barron’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights, retold by Jim Pipe and illustrated by Nick Spender, waters down Emily Brontë’s metaphorical language, although it does include a few of the most memorable lines, such as Catherine’s famous declaration, “I am Heathcliff—he’s always, always on my mind” (Pipe 17). Both Brontë novels in the Classical Comics Original Text version are longer than the Barron’s adaptations and include much more of the original dialogue written by Emily and Charlotte Brontë, respectively.31 Scriptwriters Amy Corzine and Seán Michael Wilson interpret the source texts, using flashbacks and dreams to bring a visual dimension to the psychological and supernatural dimensions of, respectively, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, both illustrated by John Burns.

  Figure 48. “Lady Catherine and Elizabeth Bennet in a Verbal Duel.” Artwork by Rajesh Nagulakonda for Laurence Sach’s adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, 2013. © Campfire 2014.

  The Classical Comics Original Text adaptation of Jane Eyre uses text and graphics interdependently to illustrate Charlotte Brontë’s compelling interest in psychic phenomena that gained force in reaction to the rise of empiricism, skepticism, and scientism in the nineteenth century that challenged religious truths (Dickerson 773–74).32 Dreams for Charlotte Brontë serve both as presentiments and glimpses into the unconscious. Jane famously foresees the burning of Thornfield Hall in her prophetic dreams in chapter 25 of the source text of Jane Eyre, even though she is currently unaware that the arsonist is Rochester’s mysterious mad wife locked in the attic. This dream occurs just before the scene where Jane wakes to find “a woman, tall and large, with thick dark hair” and a “savage face,” ripping Jane’s veil and trampling upon it (C. Brontë 242). Most scenes in the Corzine graphic novel adaptation are in color, which designates the present, but the backgrounds and figures in the dream sequence are bluish-gray, which indicates a dream state.

  The first frame of this two-panel dream sequence (see fig. 49) shows Jane’s dream in a thought bubble looming over her head as she sleeps, so we simultaneously see Jane sleeping and dreaming. In the dream, Jane stands in front of Rochester (who is positioned behind a brick wall) and holds a baby swaddled in blankets. In the adjacent panel (comprised entirely of her dream), Rochester’s mansion, Thornfield Hall, is in ruins; adhering to the source text, Jane drops the baby, and they both tumble down a hill. A gutter, a necessary aspect of graphic storytelling, creates a sense of timing in between these two sequential panels to signal Jane is moving deeper into her dream. A caption that cuts across and connects the two panels reads: “The hurry of preparation for the bridal day, and the anticipation of the great change made me feverish. One night, when Mr. Rochester was absent from home, my anxious excitement continued in dreams” (Corzine 80). Jane’s dreams are a manifestation of her “anxious excitement,” but the wailing child also foretells the destruction of Jane’s psyche. The baby in the second panel of the dream sequence, its mouth open as if to cry, arguably symbolizes Jane’s former self that she fears losing when she becomes Mrs. Rochester.33 The head of the baby approaches the gutter while the figure of Rochester on a horse rides into the moonlit night. Using dreaming and alternating color palettes, Burns also foreshadows Bertha’s burning of Thornfield Hall, which Jane foresees.

  Figure 49. “Jane Eyre’s Prophetic Dream.” Artwork by John M. Burns for Amy Corzine’s Jane Eyre: The Graphic Novel, 2008. © Classical Comics Ltd.

  The most striking scene in the Classical Comics Original Text adaptation of Wuthering Heights also involves a psychic twist. Mr. Lockwood, the novel’s first narrator, journeys from the neighboring Thrushcross Grange to pay a call upon his landlord, the inhospitable Heathcliff, living at Wuthering Heights. Forced to spend the night at Wuthering Heights due to harrowing weather, Lockwood finds himself in the childhood bedroom of Catherine Earnshaw, Heathcliff’s soulmate who marries Edgar Linton, former owner of the Grange. This scene is as notable for its presentation of Catherine’s subversive writing in the margins of her Bible as it is for the supernatural return of Catherine Earnshaw Linton. Catherine’s ghost wakes Lockwood from a dream following his discovery of Catherine’s scribbles on the windowsill of her room and in the margins of her Bible, placements that underscore her marginal place in a gendered world.

  The entire sequence unfolds in twenty-three panels in this adaptation. Wilson and Burns show Lockwood falling asleep after discovering “Catherine Earnshaw, varied to Catherine Heathcliff, and again to Catherine Linton” on the windowsill (S. M. Wilson, WH 17). In the next panel (see fig. 50), the words “CATHERINE CATHERINE CATHERINE” appear in a swirling pattern “vivid as spectres” (18) in a midnight blue light, surrounding Lockwood and waking him from his dream. Three panels later, Lockwood begins to peruse Catherine’s Bible, which contains disconnected sentences and entire diary entries in the margins. Wilson and Burns use a montage effect, so the reader-viewer can see Catherine’s writing within the pages of the Bible, which Emily Brontë describes as “faded hieroglyphics” (WH 38). Catherine’s writing is not “faded” in this interpretation, but it is in a different font, creating a collage effect. The following panels are flashbacks depicting what Catherine writes in the margins of her Bible, such as how she and Heathcliff defy the tyrannical old servant Joseph when he preaches a three-hour sermon in the cold garret of Wuthering Heights.

  Sound effects work additively in the next sequence where Lockwood falls into another dream. The “fire” of Catherine’s spirit returns as a specter and repeatedly cries to be let back into the house: “Let me in! Let me in! … I’m come home … Let me in!” (S. M. Wilson 20–21). Onomatopoeic words “tap tap tap” and “SMASH,” inserted directly into the panels, bring vivid sounds to this dream vision. Lockwood, unable to release the casement window, smashes the glass to seize the tapping branch, which turns into the “fingers of a little ice-cold hand!” (20). Catherine’s “ice-cold hand” becomes covered with blood in the following frames when Lockwood, as the source text dictates, “pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bed-clothes: still it wailed, ‘Let me in!’ and maintained its tenacious gripe” (WH 42). Akin to the prophetic dream sequence of Jane Eyre, swirling letters, flashbacks, dreams, and authentic dialogue work interdependently to make this supernatural visitation as real as the red blood that drips down Catherine’s icy cold hand in a chilling scene that haunts Heathcliff and the entire novel.

  Adaptations of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (CC) even more dramatically use swirling letters, onomatopoeic words, and sound effects to enhance the supernatural element of Scrooge’s ghostly visitations.34 The Classical Comics Original Text version of A Christmas Carol (nominated by the Sunday Times as one of the top best graphic novels of 2008) expands the visual dimension of Dickens’s pure text, which originally appeared with eight illustrations by caricaturist John Leech. This version adapted by Seán Michael Wilson and illustrated by Mike Collins uses a combination of close-ups, long shots, and full-page panels to give chilling resonance to Jacob Marley’s famous line drawn from the source text: “‘I wear the chain I forged in life, … I made it link by link, and yard by yard’” (Dickens, CC 30). Whereas Leech draws the ghost of Scrooge’s former partner, Jacob Marley, wearing a substantial chain in the original illustration, Collins in “Marley’s Ghost” (see fig. 51) expands the white chain that drapes over and over him and literally rises out of the page and surrounds Marley’s figure, rendered in an eerie blue that gives off a supernatural glow. Sound effects—particularly the double repetition of “CLANK” in this panel and other onomatopoeic words such as “RATTLE,” “CHINK,” “OOOOHHHHH!” and “OOAARGH!” (S. M. Wilson, CC 35)—work interdependently with the graphics to illustrate the length and weight of Marley’s fetters. The intensity of Marley’s sufferings awakens greedy Scrooge to stop saying “Humbug,” embrace the visits of three spirits, and change his fate.

  Figure 50. “Catherine Earnshaw’s Bible.” Artwork by John M. Burns for Seán Michael Wilson’s Wuthering He
ights: The Graphic Novel, 2011. © Classical Comics Ltd.

  There are numerous adaptations of fin-de-siècle novels that originally appeared without illustrations. In “The Graphic Novel and the Age of Transition,” Tabachnick surveys, for example, adaptations of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), and H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895). The 2008 Marvel Illustrated adaptation of Dorian Gray, scripted by Roy Thomas with artwork by Sebastian Fiumara, does not even attempt to translate the novel’s lengthy philosophical passages, but in adapting Wilde to this new medium, Fiumara expands the scenes with Sybil Vane, the actress who initially captivates Dorian with her performance of Romeo and Juliet. While the Marvel adaptation of Dorian Gray does not develop the novel’s homosexual subtext, another 2009 adaptation by Graphic Classics, scripted by Alex Burrows with artwork by Lisa K. Weber, develops Lord Henry’s influence over Dorian through the graphic medium, such as in the frames where Lord Henry Wotton and Dorian stand next to a statue of a male nude in Basil Hallward’s garden where they first meet. In one panel, Dorian sits on the base of the nude and leans on his arm as he gazes enthrallingly at the aristocrat, who seduces Dorian with his hedonistic view of life. The caption reads enticingly, “Lord Henry’s languid voice slowly unfolded life’s mysteries to Dorian” (9). Lord Henry’s body language is even more important than the words he speaks in a word balloon—“So remember, the only thing worth pursuing in life is beauty and a fulfillment of the senses!” (9). Lord Henry leans into his cane and extends his right arm and leg toward Dorian, whose eyes lock with his. This plate visualizes how Lord Henry has instantly captivated Dorian Gray, who, under the influence of his decadent friend, will explore every vice and destroy himself and others in the process.