Some Sense Reviews

A bunch of reviews:

Diary of an Eccentric

1979-SemiFinalist

and this was on ComiXtreme before the site revamp :p

"Sense & Sensibility #1 (Marvel Comics)
By Jane Austen, Nacy Butler, Sonny Liew Sotocolor & Joe Sabino
The Dashwood ladies have it rough. Their father has passed on and left the estate entirely to their only brother, John. The house is now run by John's harridan of a wife, Fanny, and increasingly it seems there is little place for the Dashwood ladies in her demesnes. To complicate matters, Fanny's eldest brother Edward seems to be courting the eldest Dashwood daughter, Elinor. Sense & Sensibility is a comic/tragic/comedy of what occurs when strong personalities clash and quieter personalities get swept up in the fervour. This is an excellent comic book. The dialogue sparkles and vast amounts of plot are covered in the space of 22 pages with few seeming abridgments. Each few pages presents a new discrete scene. But the true star herein is Sonny Liew's art. He veers between a fairly intricate detailed style to cartoony caricatures depending on the needs of the scene. There is little action to portray, but Sonny poses the characters as in mid movement and shows a lot of character in their faces. Rating: 4.5/5 --Todd Dyck"

issue one

Finally got hold of a copies of issue one this week; always a little nerve-wrecking waiting to see how the actual comic turns out. As it was the colours by Sotocolors were quite nice indeed :) some issues with word balloon colours and placement but hopefully something we can fix for future issues. Another tricky question is whether readers will get the switches to a chibi/cartoony style in some sections. Was hoping the formal switch would be reinforced with a different colouring style (screen tone effect to emulate old newspaper strips or pre-digital comics?) but i guess team productions do involve everyone making their own aesthetic choices :p

Upcoming

Image Comics press release for Liquid City Vol.2 has gone out, the cover and some sample pages can be seen at fanboy.com.



Also out later this year is the Italian edition of the Malinky Robot collection from Lavieri Edizioni. "Le atmosfere rese in questi brevi episodi narrano le avventure minimaliste di due amici che si dividono tra il centro futuristico e la periferia rurale della metropoli asiatica. Spettacolari le tavole, le colorazioni e lo stile fluido e dettagliato di Sonny Liew" apparently :p



Issue 2 of Sense and Sensibility is also out this month :)

Sense and Sensibilty #1

Issue 1 is on sale now i think. Haven't seen the book yet, not quite sure what the interior colours or lettering/balloons look like :p

Sense & Sensibility issue 5 cover

Cover for issue 5 of Marvel's Nancy Butler's Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility adaptation :)

Sense and Sensibility Covers

covers for issue 2 and 3 of Marvel's Sense and Sensibility adaptations.

Wonderlands and Liquid Cities

Sense and sensibility vol 1 listed for Marvel's May solicits  :)

http://marvelousnews.com/index.php?itemid=12809

"Marvel’s best-selling adaptation of PRIDE & PREJUDICE, returns to Marvel with another Jane Austen classic: SENSE & SENSIBILITY! Alongside incredible artist Sonny Liew (My Faith in Frankie, Wonderland), Butler brings to life the world of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, two daughters without parents or means, forced to experience hardship, romance, and heartbreak, all in the hopes of achieving love and lasting happiness. 40 PGS./Rated A ...$3.99"



The French edition of Wonderland is out in March, and last month Delcourt released volume 2 of  "Le Tour du monde en bande dessinée" (A World of Comics) which includes a story I did about Mas Selamat; quite an exciting thing to be included alongside creators like Gipi and the amazing  Carlos Nine! :p



Finally,  a review of Liquid City Vol1  at Popmatters. Vol2 due out in July! :)

sense and sensibility cover 1

Cover for issue 1 of Marvel's Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility adaptation (that's a mouthful just like Kenneth Branagh's Mary Shelly's Frankenstein! :p)

Jane Austened

Started sketches for the Marvel adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, which will be written by Nancy Butler.  Did some of the covers for the Pride and Prejudice adaptation, but hadn't really read any of Austen's books before, and only had a vague awareness of all the movies made from her book...

It seemed like an intriguing challenge though; how to translate a novel into comic form, especially a story that featured no real action scenes, and where so much is just people talking in rooms....



So first thing to do was to read the book itself, followed by watching adaptations like Emma Thompson/ Ang Lee's 1995 film and Andrew Davies' more recent BBC production. The Thompson/Lee version was especially entertaining, but raised issues in terms of how true to the novel it was (something covered quite a bit in another book I picked up, "Jane Austen in Hollywood"). One of the thorny issues of adaptations i guess; how much to adapt to modern sensibilities, how reverential to treat the source material.

That's mostly Nancy's call though - the main goal on my part would be to try to make the adaptation make sense as a comic - to justify its existence, maybe, through the use of comics language. The Karasik/Mazzuchelli adapation of Paul Auster's City of Glass might be a touchstone of sorts...



Interpretation aside, there's the issue of character designs, which is kinda like a casting process, figuring  out how to make the characters look right, how to avoid being too influenced by movie or tv versions... particularily tricky in Sense is Edward Ferrars, who is supposed to be plain looking in the book, but is usually played by attractive actors - difficult I suppose to separate the idea of interior worth and exterior looks when it comes to any visual medium?





A couple more sketches can be found on the deviantart site here.

In the meanwhile, a lot more research to do; period costumes, architecture... i wonder if the prodcution crews of the movie and tv adaptations kept any of their notes, and if they would lend me some :p

Janed

The hardcover trade of  the Marvel Adaptation for Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice has been out for a bit, and seems  to be going down like gangbusters, if this NYT article is any indication..

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/jane-austen/

Having worked on 3 of 5 covers for the series, I'll be working on the interiors as well for the new Sense and Sensibility adaptation, also with Nancy Butler. No sea monsters unfortunately :p

Regency Reference Book Hunting is go! :p