Editor's Note: Pride and Prejudice #1 arrives in stores tomorrow, April 1.

Karyn Pinter:
Dave Wallace:

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Karyn Pinter:

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice has been the basis for several film and TV adaptations. Not to mention it's been in constant print since its publication in 1813, and on the reading list for high schools around the country. Well, it has finally taken over the world of comics thanks to Marvel Comics and writer Nancy Butler.

Being one of only three books I genuinely enjoyed reading in high school, Pride and Prejudice holds a very special place in my heart, so I was thrilled to see this pop up on Marvel's release list. Sadly, this adaptation is lacking Jane Austen's wit. In the novel, Mrs. Bennet's high-strung neuroses and overeagerness to see her daughters marry comes off as humorous. In the shortened comic version, Mrs. Bennet's mentality isn't explained, so she just comes off as a boorish loud mouth. Personality seems to be the unfortunate victim of this version. Lizzy, our heroine, comes off as rather unremarkable and flat. Mr. Darcy seems to give in to his secret love for Lizzy too easily when he should just seem like a complete jerk for the first two-thirds of the story. Being a public domain book, all of the dialogue and captions are straight from the original text, but you can only fit so much of a novel into 32 pages. So much of Austen's original theme of how important social upbringing was, not to mention a fair majority of the sarcasm, is lost due to space limitations. I wasn't too keen on the art work either. With the exception of Mrs. Bennet, all the female characters look the same, and it's only by the color of their hair that you can tell them apart. And Lizzy's eyes were so dull. In the novel, Lizzy was supposed to have these stunning eyes that even Mr. Darcy comments on.

The best and most interesting part of the comic is the teen magazine inspired cover art that displays headlines such as "Who is Mr. Darcy?," and "17 Secrets about Summer Dresses." This will probably get the comic a lot of attention, which is great. Young readers might unwittingly read a classic novel, although not the best adaptation. No, the best version has Colin Firth in it. If you're a fan of the novel, then you'll probably feel a little disappointment in this rendition mixed with happiness that a classic novel has been accepted into the world of comics. If you're new to the wonderful world of Jane Austen, then this is a great starting point. However, this is just training wheels and you'll have to read the real thing.

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Dave Wallace:

Whilst I haven't read many of Marvel's adaptations of literary classics, I admire the apparent intention behind them: to bring classic literature to an audience that is perhaps more used to reading Stan Lee than Shakespeare. However, when I saw Pride and Prejudice on Marvel's release slate, I was surprised. Previous titles in the Marvel Illustrated line (such as The Iliad, The Three Musketeers, Last of the Mohicans or Treasure Island) have all contained a fair amount of action or fantastical elements that lend themselves well to the visual medium of comics. Jane Austen's well-loved novel about the pairings of a middle-class family of sisters, on the other hand, hardly seems ripe for such an adaptation. As such, I was worried that the book would either be visually dull, or would have dynamic action sequences artificially inserted into the story.

As it turns out, the writing poses just as many problems as the art. Whilst the basic story is intact, some necessary compromises have been made in order to compress Austen's full-length novel into a five-issue comic miniseries. Whilst the pacing inevitably feels more hurried -- with little time to establish the reasonably large cast of characters -- the greatest casualty is the narrator's voice. Sure enough, Austen's famous opening line is preserved in all its glory on the title page, but the wry, almost sarcastic tone (always an important component of Austen's novels) is lost, with captions kept to a minimum, presumably in order to retain as much of the original dialogue as possible. The result is a faithful transposition of the plot of the novel, but without any of the gentle ridicule of the characters' middle-class customs and aspirations that can be found in the original.

Not all of the enjoyable elements of the book are lost: the opening exchange between Mr. and Mrs. Bennet is captured well, as is the later verbal sparring between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy that foreshadows their relationship. However, the whole thing feels a little rushed, with only the most fundamental core scenes included. It feels like a "Greatest Hits" approach to Pride and Prejudice, rather than a translation that retains any depth of characterisation, or the tone of Austen's original.

The art is also a little hit-and-miss: whilst I love the cover concept, which seeks to make the book feel relevant by presenting some or its elements as captions on the cover of a fashion magazine, there's no similar sense of invention on the interior pages. The vast majority of the book is comprised of talking-heads sequences, and artist Hugo Petrus struggles to overcome the stiffness of the exchanges. Instead of feeling dynamic and sparkling, many of the conversations feel stilted thanks to the blank expressions of the rigidly posed characters. Close-ups fare better (there's an especially vibrant shot of a contemptuous Miss Bingley later in the issue), but for the most part the book sticks to medium and long shots that feel visually uninteresting.

Visual characterisation is also mixed: whilst Mrs. Bennet is drawn in a style that emphasises her comic role, and Mr. Bennet is very much as readers of the original novel will probably imagine him (with his affection for Elizabeth as obvious as it should be), the Bennet sisters are distinguished more through the colour of their hair than anything else. It might have been nice for the book to mark their characterisation visually, as well as through the text, which is necessarily condensed to such an extent that it omits many of the finer points of characterisation that can be found in the book. For example, Mary Bennet's plainness and bookishness is an important part of her character in the original novel, but she appears just as attractive as her sisters here, all of whom sport curiously modern hairstyles that feel like they've been modelled on actresses from shampoo advertisements. The art isn't ugly or unclear, but I feel as though more might have been done to give the characters a sense of individuality.

Pride and Prejudice has been adapted so many times for film and television that any new adaptation must compete not only with the well-known original novel but also with these subsequent adaptations, and I'm not sure that this comic bears favourable comparison to any of them. Of course, this won't be true for newcomers to the story, but I wonder whether any comics readers who aren't familiar with the original novel will be compelled to read further after an issue of static talking-heads sequences set in the drawing rooms and ballrooms of Hertforshire. Perhaps it might have been nice to see a fresher and more innovative take on the story (perhaps a modernised version?), rather than such a faithful, yet compressed, adaptation of the original.

I really don't want to sound too down on this book, because the idea of the Marvel Illustrated line is one that appeals to me in principle, and I'd love to think that it could open readers up to a world of literature with which they might not already be familiar. However, on the strength of this first issue, I'd probably advise those readers to check out one of the other titles that the imprint has to offer before taking a look at Pride and Prejudice.

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