Publisher: Papercutz

Release Date: September 18, 2012

Price: $11.99 (TP); $15.99 (HC)
Creators: Rodolphe, Estelle Meynard
Format: 96 pgs., Full-Color, Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-5970-7345-5 (TP), 978-1-5970-7346-2 (HC)
Age Rating: 8 and up

ICv2 Ratings: 5 Stars out of 5

 

This edition of Classics Illustrated Deluxe contains not one but two adaptations of Christmas stories by Charles Dickens.  The much adapted A Christmas Carol and the sadly much lesser known "A Remembrance of Mugby," from the set of short stories known as Mugby Junction.

 

I should admit upfront A Christmas Carol is my favorite book so I tend to be pretty particular about the way it's adapted.  That having been said, Rodolphe and Estelle Meynard (whose impressionistic art reminds me of Raymond Briggs' Where The Wind Blows) have done an outstanding job.  Meynard even manages to come up with a visual interpretation of Scrooge that I've never seen before.  But I do of course have a couple of minor quibbles.

 

Like I see no advantage, other than to make the story shorter, for dismissing all of the other ghosts and making Marley's Scrooge's only guide through the past, present and future.  And I do wish that more of Dickens actual words had made into the text; I understand the need to simplify it for reasons of space but its absence is keenly felt.

 

But as good as Scrooge is much better is A Remembrance of Mugby, a work by Dickens I must confess I wasn't familiar with.  It's more of a story set at Christmas rather than an actual Christmas story, the bittersweet story of a successful businessman facing middle age absolutely alone in the world and searching for his place in it.  It's absolutely wonderful.  This is a volume everyone should read this holiday season.

 

--Steve Bennett: Writer and retail services consultant.