I recently picked up Agatha H And The Voice Of The Castle, by Phil and Kaja Foglio. It's a novelization of their comic Girl Genius.
The book is unfortunately not very good, but as I'd heard good things about the comic I looked it up and started reading it. It's available on their website Girl Genius Online Comics
I'm also still reading the book, as I'm not too keen on giving up on a book once I've started it - I can be pretty stubborn like that.
The book is supposed to cover the events of the 7th, 8th, and 9th volume of the comic, and I figured it'd be interesting to see how the two different versions match up. Turns out they're extremely similar - the characters even say the same lines in the book as they do in the speech bubbles in the comic.
I guess what they've done is they've used the comic as the outline and then just translated it, panel by panel, into text. It doesn't really work. The ideas are nice, the setting is intriguing, and the plot is interesting. It's just that the execution really isn't up to par. As a comic, it's great, but as a novel, it's not.
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This has got me wondering about the difference between the two mediums. With comics, you get the visual aspect of the characters right away there in the picture. In a novel, all you see is what you can infer from what the writer shows you.
Now, how would I do this? I've been thinking about how I would approach this kind of task: writing a story based on a comic. How would I do it, and how would it work out? Would readers of the comic be able to recognize the characters or would they feel I portrayed them incorrectly?
I don't think the difference between a comic and a novel would be as big as between a novel and a movie, but I think that in order to make it work you might have to take some liberties with the source material and make your own interpretations of things.
What's your take on this?
Have you read any novelizations of comics? Did you feel they were well done or not?
The book is unfortunately not very good, but as I'd heard good things about the comic I looked it up and started reading it. It's available on their website Girl Genius Online Comics
I'm also still reading the book, as I'm not too keen on giving up on a book once I've started it - I can be pretty stubborn like that.
The book is supposed to cover the events of the 7th, 8th, and 9th volume of the comic, and I figured it'd be interesting to see how the two different versions match up. Turns out they're extremely similar - the characters even say the same lines in the book as they do in the speech bubbles in the comic.
I guess what they've done is they've used the comic as the outline and then just translated it, panel by panel, into text. It doesn't really work. The ideas are nice, the setting is intriguing, and the plot is interesting. It's just that the execution really isn't up to par. As a comic, it's great, but as a novel, it's not.
-
This has got me wondering about the difference between the two mediums. With comics, you get the visual aspect of the characters right away there in the picture. In a novel, all you see is what you can infer from what the writer shows you.
Now, how would I do this? I've been thinking about how I would approach this kind of task: writing a story based on a comic. How would I do it, and how would it work out? Would readers of the comic be able to recognize the characters or would they feel I portrayed them incorrectly?
I don't think the difference between a comic and a novel would be as big as between a novel and a movie, but I think that in order to make it work you might have to take some liberties with the source material and make your own interpretations of things.
What's your take on this?
Have you read any novelizations of comics? Did you feel they were well done or not?