Preview of Sense and Sensibility Comic Book
March 24, 2010
Marvel has put up a small preview of their comic book version of Sense and Sensibility, which will be out in May 2010. We think the larger drawing is the cover, and the smaller images the actual comic. It looks like the same artist, Sonny Liew did both; he also drew the covers of the P&P comic that everyone seemed to like (and not so much the actual book art). It’s a very different style from the first comic. No. 2 will be out in June.
(And what is with the Edward swordfighting with Margaret theme? Emma Thompson really created a monster with that one, didn’t she? Does anyone remember that’s not actually in the book?)
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Why is Marianne winking at me, mama?
and why does Elinor have to look like such a prune/prude? Why must wisdom, restraint and sense be represented by a bun that pulls back one’s hair so tightly that one’s eyebrows are raised up? I suppose we have Katherine Hepburn in the African Queen to blame for this.
and as for the sword-fighting thing, well, it has amused me for some time to see, as these different movies, etc., come out, each one using tropes from the last, spreading out in an ever-widening gyre (gosh, never used that word before!) and becoming a paler and paler copy of the original.
It was quite evident from the P&P Marvel comic that the artist–no matter how skilled and clever–was working from the Keira movie, not from Austen’s book. So the amusement in his S&S will be to see which of the movies he is taking his images from.
When I first saw the Emma Thompson S&S, I had not read the book, but an acquaintance with P&P and general social history made me realize that much of the Margaret scenes could not be taken from Austen. It was that glaring. And when I read it and realized there wasn’t even an Edward-Margaret special relationship…
Yes, that makes it easy to recognize a copy of a copy.
What’s with the red bulbous noses on the guys? Do they all have a cold or a drinking problem?
After reading the artist’s comments on his website, I think he’s deliberately referencing things in the films as well – not just the sword-fight, but also the seaside theme in the second cover. Additionally, he talks about how he tried to make Edward not handsome, because he’s not in the book – which I thought was a good sign.
After doing a bit of searching on Hugo Petrus, the artist for P&P, I think one of the major problems with the book was that he explicitly thought of the book as “not his thing.” Now, certainly, the (completely) uninspired script didn’t help anything, but his rather generic faces (though his layouts showed a bit more creativity than the otherwise excellent Northanger Abbey comic) were a huge part of the problem.
I think Sonny Liew’s work shows both quirky humor and beauty, which bodes well for his adaptation of Austen’s narrative voice to the visual.
Sketches and originals for the covers are here: sonny123.deviantart.com/gallery
I do like the subtle colouring of this illustration; but Marieanne’s wink is so out of charecter !
Will be interested how ‘Jane Friendly’ the dialogue is for the S&S comic.
As I’ve said quite often of late, I love S&S95 as a movie, but I do not love it as an adaptation. And the whole Margaret thing is one of the reasons.
I need to get me those comics.
For actual previews of the interior art (no colors or text yet), you can find two pages here:
http://sonny123.deviantart.com/art/sense-and-sensibility-page15-158567437
http://sonny123.deviantart.com/art/sense-and-sensibilty-page19-158567607
I think they’ll look fantastic when colored. And the humor of the cartoon-ish bits I think will be wonderful. Also a big fan of the creative layouts here – the tiny panels inset into larger panels, instead of a modified (boring) grid.
I think I’ll buy it, just so that I have a companion to go along with my P&P set.