Classics Illustrated #1: Great Expectations

Spotlight
Classics Illustrated #1: Great Expectations
By Beth Davies-Stofka
April 3, 2008 - 20:57

Classics Illustrated #1: Great Expectations. Adapted by Rick Geary, Based on the novel by Charles Dickens. 56 pages, color. Published by Papercutz, $9.95 US/ $10.95 CAN

When kid-friendly publisher Papercutz resurrected the Classics Illustrated brand this year, the same old question came to mind. What positive literary merit can be found in comic-book adaptations of great literature? If Great Expectations gives any indication, Classics Illustrated could be enthusiastically received by librarians and teachers alike. And I am wowed by the potential!

Papercutz got off to a terrific start with a beautiful deluxe edition of Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows, adapted by Michel Plessix. This was followed by a reprint of Rick Geary's 1990 adaptation of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. Geary's art is just about synonymous with Victorian subjects in sequential art, and this is a fine specimen.

Geary excels in creating homely faces full of individuality, character, and experience. No one looks like anyone else, and nearly everyone is fully realized, without Geary resorting to realism (a routinely depressing feature of the original Classics Illustrated issues). Biddy is sweet-natured, intelligent, and capable, something you know simply from a panel showing her sweeping a floor. Joe is appealingly simple and kind, established in a single portrait of a genuine smile and kind eyes. Mrs. Joe is calculating and cruel, Miss Havisham angular and tormented, Herbert safe and Magwitch terrifying.

My favorite character was Jaggers, dignified, intelligent, and altogether mundane in his middle-class regularity. Indeed, the only disappointment lies in the portrayals of Pip and Estella. These two principals mature through experience and suffering in typical Dickensian fashion, and Geary doesn't get this into their faces. They don't show the sobriety and humility that is the prize for their struggles and suffering. Their extra-round faces remain childlike to the end.

Geary's plotting is terrific. He might have improved Dickens' novel. I know this is a matter of taste, but I found Great Expectations tedious. Well, I found Pip tedious. Great Expectations is an autobiographical novel, and Pip's brooding reflections just get old. Geary's adaptation of the novel preserves Pip's introspection without bogging down. Geary's is a somewhat drastic abridgement of the plot, but this reduces the novel to a size manageable for a graphic novel. And he does it while preserving the essential conflict between inner worth and social status that defines Pip's coming of age. The pacing is excellent. Geary tells the story in dialogue, with little digression into description, letting his panels do the work.

This makes this adaptation ideal for introducing young readers to Dickens. Geary transports the reader to an alternate world. It is a colorful place, and safe. A lot of the threat and foreboding in Dickens' descriptions has been stripped away. Great Expectations is admired for the way Dickens used settings as symbols for the tensions and conflicts that determined the fates of his characters, but little kids might not have developed patience or appreciation for that, at least not yet. Geary wisely keeps it simple, and if the Classics Illustrated version does its job, it will interest young readers in exploring the novel further, and in so doing, take them on the adventure that is a lifelong appreciation of great works of fiction.

This is the concern about Classics Illustrated, of course. Will it contribute to the cultivation of generations of avid readers, or will it only serve to substitute for the experience of a genuine work of literature? Certainly it is hoped that Classics Illustrated will introduce young readers to the classics, and stimulate them to read the stories of the world's greatest authors. But some things are going to have to change, if Classics Illustrated is to fulfill this noble mission.

Here are my "Great Expectations" for Papercutz' revival of Classics Illustrated. (Okay, I heard you groan!) First, the spelling and grammar must be impeccable. For example, incomplete sentences like the one on the back cover must be corrected before these books are shipped. Second, each edition should include a biography of the author. Great Expectations does not include a biography of Charles Dickens. Third, there should be a short essay, aimed at the young reader that outlines the themes of the novel, along with an historical essay on the novel and its times. Fourth, the original Classics Illustrated had this helpful hint for the young reader: "Now that you have read the Classics Illustrated edition, don’t miss the added enjoyment of reading the original, obtainable at your school or library." This suggestion is missing from Great Expectations, but needs to be included in each and every volume.

Finally, here is my number one hope. Papercutz has preserved the famous square yellow label announcing that you are reading a genuine volume from the Classics Illustrated library. This label promises stories by the "World's Greatest Authors." Let's make that a true statement! Let's see Papercutz go global, moving beyond the preponderance of works by dead white men that characterized the original collection. Let's see them do Richard Wright's Native Son, and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude are on my wish list, along with Beloved (Toni Morrison), To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee), Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie) and the Cairo Trilogy of Naguib Mahfouz.

One might object that those are adult novels with adult themes. Well, no less could be said of Great Expectations. The trick is to continue to hire artists as gifted as Rick Geary to do the kid-friendly adaptations. The potential for Classics Illustrated is off the charts, and if Papercutz aims high and aims well, then something truly special might happen.