The new issue of Newsweek contains a three-page article by Malcolm Jones about Classics Illustrated comic books, the original series that was published between 1941 and 1971 and the new Classics Illustrated graphic novels released by PaperCutz.  After reminiscing about the original Classics Illustrated, Jones gets around to reviewing the new Papercutz releases starting with Rick Geary's Great Expectations. While Jones admires the way in which Geary manages to compress Charles Dickens' saga of the orphaned Pip's search for his anonymous benefactor into 56 pages that "read easily and swiftly," he faults Geary for not being temperamentally "dark enough" for the material.

Jones has no such reservations concerning Michel Plessix's graphic novel adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, which he calls a "visual masterpiece" and proclaims the equal of Grahame's prose novel.  "I sat down with Plessix's and Grahame's versions, read them side by side, both for the first time, and I can't say that one is better, other than the significant fact that Grahame dreamed it all up in the first place," he said.  "Their charms are different, but each man has created a wonderful world, one out of words and the other in images." 

This is high praise indeed -- and the fact is these encomiums are truly warranted--Plessix's adaptation of The Wind in the Willows with its superb line work and subtle watercolor shadings is one of the great contemporary achievements in the difficult process of transforming literature into the graphic novel format.  Retailers should seriously consider mounting a copy of this review and displaying it along with the new Classics Illustrated edition of The Wind in the Willows.  Anyone who loves Grahame's original classic and who purchases this volume will not be disappointed.