How this comic book came to be is almost the most interesting thing about the book. Kurtzman spend years working on his graphic novel Marley's Ghost, but could never find a publisher. This comic was drawn by Gideon Kendall using Kurtzman's layouts and designs as his guide, with Josh O'Neill and Shannon Wheeler adapting Dickens' text to the medium (not why you need two writers to adapt the text, but here we are). The book includes images of Kurtzman's layouts and of a finished page which he had Jack Davis draw. I'm afraid the comparison between those pages and the actual book hurts the finished product a little, in my view. Kurtzman's art was simply so uniquely his own that I was instantly more taken with his layouts than those of Kendall. Likewise, Jack Davis' cartoonish characters outstrip those of Kendall.
But there's nothing wrong with Kendall's efforts on this adaptation. His own cartoony designs (particularly the long-faced Scrooge) are excellent, keeping the scenes lively. And it may simply be impossible to do wrong when faithfully adapting Dickens, which is what this book is - it retains much of the dialogue from the original work.
As I write this, Marley's Ghost is on sale at Comixology. Why not pick it up before the holidays are over?
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