1 1 Even Miyuki Miyabe’s Brave Story, which I loved inordinately, suffered a flagging of interest when the book’s young protagonist-after two-hundred pages of stupendous-but-mundane earthbound narrative-gets whisked away to a realm of fantasy.įor the first hundred pages of Larson’s adaptation, I was perhaps unreasonably excited by the prospect of there being a whole three hundred more pages to the story-and then four more original prose novels after that. Also: it may be fair to disclose that a book has to be particularly spectacular for me to overlook my weariness of fantasy settings. I was hoping for Completely Wonderful based both on my prior experience of Larson’s work and how much excitement my friends had when I said I’d be reading Wrinkle in Time-perhaps it was those hopes and expectations that dimmed my love for the book. Like Oz, her Wrinkle in Time boasts a number of charms and excellencies, but the whole package fails to be Completely Wonderful. Hope Larson is immensely talented and one of my favourite comics illustrators, but unfortunately her adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time fares no better than Shanower and Young’s Wonderful Wizard of Oz. This lady, who is old enough to know better, is being petty and mean. Jiro Taniguchi’s adaptation of Jack London and Humayoun Ibrahim’s adaptation of Jack Vance are two examples-both do a good job of pacing story for the medium and using storytelling tools unique to comics in order to bring the reader into a special experience of an already existing story. Successful transfers of literature into the comics medium are exceedingly rare. Even works backed by incredible, no-fail talents like Eric Shanower and Skottie Young can falter and produce books that are merely enjoyable. Mediocre creators produce dreadful (though sometimes hilarious) works, like Marvel’s recent attempt to bring Pride & Prejudice to the medium and the recent re-interpretation of Dostoyevsky, The Grand Inquisitor.
It’s not an easy task and the very nature of the transition is positioned as a serious obstacle to the success of any adaptation. Unless an adapter is wildly liberal in the work of adaptation, comics have exactly two things to work with: writing (provided largely by the original author) and art through which to carry forth the dialogical and narrative aspects of the work (respectively). It’s not like with movies where a charismatic star or a sublime musical score can provide lift for a work.
Adaptations from literature into the comics form have it pretty rough.
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