_A Wizard of Earthsea_ Graphic Novel

[jducoeur]

I confess, I've never really gotten into Ursula LeGuin. Not sure why exactly -- I think her ideas are great, but her writing style has never really clicked for me, so I haven't read the majority of her works yet.

But I'm always a comics nerd, so when I noticed the Wizard of Earthsea graphic novel on the shelves at Comicazi, I figure I should check it out, and I'm glad I did.

I'm not sure I've ever read the original book, so I can't compare and contrast, but taken on its own, this is an absolute work of art.

Summarizing the story briefly: this is basically a coming-of-age story. Set on the world of Earthsea (a world sea with a large archipelago of islands), our protagonist Ged (known to others as Sparrowhawk) is a wizard of remarkable potential but not always the best control. At a young age he (with the best of intentions) unleashes a dark force that continues to haunt him as he is growing up, until he finally has to stop running from it and confront it.

It's adapted by Fred Fordham, and the word that most comes to mind in this adaptation is "confident". I'm sure that it's not at all word-for-word -- just looking at it, surely a lot of the words have been turned into artwork. But the result is quiet and clear, letting that art set the stage and show the action, using captions mainly for the "historical" narrative voice, setting the stage and the passage of time.

The art is downright painterly, in a way that I don't often see in comics -- each page is very much a set of paintings, putting mood first and centering the important bits, not sweating extraneous detail but letting the details in where they matter. (Ged's scars are always visible, clear and consistent.) The book takes its time, letting entire sequences of pages just show artwork with no words, when words would be extraneous.

That "quiet" is consistent throughout, and it's striking: comics are often a loud medium, full of action and words, but this is going for a very different vibe -- subdued, thoughtful and introspective.

Those who are fond of the original can speak to how faithful the adaptation is, but by itself this is a top-notch book, well worth a read. Highly recommended!

Comments

[mneme]

Faithful enough that I had mixed feelings on where to put it in my Hugo rankings, because so much of what made it great was LeGuin!

But great it was.

[danabren]

A graphic novel, you say?

Is Ged, you know, NOT WHITE? Because that was the deal-breaker for me for the show.

[jducoeur]

Yep. The introduction is written by LeGuin's daughter, who commissioned this adaptation -- she specifically calls out that Ged is supposed to be "copper-skinned" and young, and the family has always been a bit annoyed at portrayals of him as an older white dude.

She very specifically likes Fordham for the fact that his process starts with a deep reading of the original, to get the details right. In practice, something like half the characters in this version are non-white, including Ged.

[danabren]

I am very pleased to hear this.