Review: Sense and Sensibility (Comic Book)

Monday, December 20, 2010

Hey everyone! I'm back and doing reviews again! Finals are finally over and I turned in everything that needed to be turned in. So, it's back to weekly reviews! I apologize for the week that I missed.

Also, for this review, I took pictures with my camera of some parts of the pages in this comic book. The pictures may look a little dark since flash whited out the area where the flash was directed. Also, since the pictures are very big, there are small thumbnails throughout the review. You may want to click on the pictures to get a better look at some of the artwork/dialogue. Now, on with the dialogue.

After getting Pride and Prejudice the comic book for Christmas one year, I was wondering if there was going to be another Jane Austen comic book, and one day I found out that Sense and Sensibility was going to be made into a comic book. I was very excited. One day after it came out, I was at Borders looking among the shelves of books and it occurred to me: would Borders have Sense and Sensbility the comic book on the shelves? So, off I went to the graphic novel section and within a minute I saw it displayed on the shelf; needless to say, I bought it that night and began reading it.

Synopsis

Cover Art

Taken from an earlier review I did of Sense and Sensibility (1995)

Sense and Sensibility follows the story of two sisters: sensible Elinor Dashwood and passionate Marianne Dashwood . When their father Mr. Henry Dashwood dies, his property, Norland, is passed to his son from his first marriage, John Dashwood . Before he died, Henry Dashwood made John promise to take care of his current wife and three daughters (Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret). John promises to take care of them and wants to give them some money, but he is persuaded by his wife, Fanny, not to. Meanwhile, the Dashwood women prepare to receive John and Fanny, and when they arrive, Fanny announces that her brother Edward Ferrars will be joining them. Edward arrives and him and Elinor form an attachment, which is broken off by Fanny.

This Marvel comic was written by Nancy Butler, and the illustrations were done by Sonny Liew.

The Dashwoods move into Barton
Cottage; notice Elinor's thought
bubble.

Characters

The characters are well expressed. You get a real sense of Marianne's sensibility through some of her scenes (for example. when she leaves Norland, she goes on in a lament over leaving it); although, it seemed that when she was supposed to be weeping, it would only last for a few frames and then you would just get a sad look on her face.

Elinor's thoughts were well presented in the comic. In the movie, you don't get to hear what she is thinking because obviously thoughts are never spoken out loud. Thanks to the thought bubbles, you get to know what Elinor is thinking, like in the novel where there are a couple of pages worth of Elinor thinking things through. This was quite well done.

Artwork

Lucy Steele and Elinor walking:
notice Elinor's bonnet.

The artwork isn't the best, but it's not the worst that I've seen. There is more of a cartoon feel to the artwork: there aren't as many colors to make images appear more 3D: shadow lines are sharper instead of gradual, so there is a big difference between lightly colored areas and darker colored areas.

What bothered me was whenever Elinor wore a bonnet, she looked practically bald! She is drawn with a far-back hairline, but it would have helped if there was more of a hint of her hair underneath the bonnet. Sometimes, there would be a slight bit of hair poking out through the side, but most of the time, it appears that she is bald. This could have been easily fixed.

The Dashwoods ask
Edward Ferrars how Mrs. Ferrars
is doing; here is an example of the
"cutesy style"

Something else was also a little unusual at certain frames of the comic book: Mrs. Jennings's double-head. I suppose it was to illustrate her personality as a busybody, but meanwhile there were a couple of frames where she has this double-head which looked a little odd. So, this double-head only appears a couple of times, but it does look a little odd.

The artwork goes back and forth between more cutesy drawings and more realistic drawings. For example, in one frame, everyone could look more cartoon with small bodies and big heads; then in the frames below that one, everyone will go back to their realistic proportions. I personally preferred the more realistic drawings to the cartoon ones, but overall, the artwork is okay.

Dialogue

The dialogue was not modernized: I like that. Most of the time, I don't really like it when people remake a classic work of literature, they feel that they have to modernize the language even if the language is not that hard to understand: sometimes it doesn't bother me if it is done well enough and doesn't take away the meaning of what was being said, but a lot of the time there is something lost in modernization. In Sense and Sensibility the comic book, I didn't find that problem. The language seemed close to what Austen had wrote for her characters. Of course, there would have to be parts of the dialogue paraphrased, but I think the dialogue was well done.

Comparisons
Warning: Spoilers Below

Marianne taking a walk
in damp grass: a scene
left out of recent adaptations.

I would have to say that this comic book is very close to the book. As much as I liked the 1995 movie of Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson, there were a couple of things that were left out: characters like Lady Middleton, the Middleton children, Anne Steele, and Mrs. Ferrars were entirely left out of the movie, along with scenes such as the dinner party with Mrs. Ferrars and Willoughby's confession scene. In this comic, those characters and scenes have been included.

Also, the movie (and from what I've heard, the 2008 miniseries), also added a scene of Marianne walking in the rain in her distress over Willoughby, which was not in the book. In the comic, you get a closer picture of what happened in the book: Marianne was walking in wet grass and caught a chill that lead to her fever. This comic does a good job staying faithful to the original story.

Overall: 5/5
I would highly recommend this comic. Of course, you should read the original novel, but this comic does the novel justice. It stays pretty close to the original work. You also get certain aspects of the novel in this comic that you might not get in recent adaptations.

Sense and Sensibility is available in the stores (I got mine at Borders) or online. It is 128 pages long. The rating on it is A (which, I believe, means "All Ages").

Here are some extra pictures.