An Epic Tale Expertly Retold: On “A Wizard of Earthsea”
Thoughts on Fred Fordham's graphic novel adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin's "A Wizard of Earthsea"
Some great works of science fiction and fantasy have lent themselves well to adaptations in other media. Others can become cautionary tales. In a 2004 essay for Slate, Ursula K. Le Guin wrote about a recent television adaptation of her Earthsea novels, but also addressed how many visual depictions of the novels have misrepresented the character Ged as, well, a white guy. (He’s not.) “On my books, Ged with a white face is a lie, a betrayal—a betrayal of the book, and of the potential reader,” Le Guin wrote.
Some writers will leave the physical qualities of their characters vague; others venture into specific detail. Le Guin is more in the latter category, and so I’m glad to report that Fred Fordham’s new graphic novel adaptation of A Wizard of Earthsea features characters whose appearance is consistent with Le Guin’s prose.
What’s especially compelling about this book is how Fordham’s particular approach emphasizes certain elements of the source novel and reduces others — and how his artistic style and page layouts make that possible.
It had been a while since I’d last read Le Guin’s novel, so I sat down with it before reading Fordham’s adaptation. What struck me most about it was the density: this is a story that spans several years in the life of its protagonist and sees him hone his abilities even as he — as is the way of many a young man — makes a few drastic errors in judgment. There are also several maps within the book, emphasizing the idea of a society where seafaring is an essential part of life.
For me, the most compelling aspects of Fordham’s adaptation came when he used the size of different pages to his advantage. Read this story in prose and you get a sense of how ubiquitous the ocean is. Fordham achieves a similar effect by eschewing maps (other than one at the start of the book) and instead showing the reader images of a very small boat on a very large body of water. There’s one double-page spread late in the book in which Ged’s boat is literally the only thing that isn’t colored blue, between the vast waters before it and the sky above.
That’s one of several ways in which Fordham uses light and color to achieve an all-encompassing sense of place. In one case, this way works better on an intellectual level than a storytelling one: several of the nighttime scenes involve plenty of shadows, a reminder that this is not a world where light sources are widespread. That’s effective on its own, but there were a few moments where the low-contrast shadows made it difficult to tell what exactly was happening.
A Wizard of Earthsea is a story of a young man’s magical education, but Fordham keeps the figures realistic and grounded. This works especially well in sequences like the one where Ged challenges a family of dragons, defeating many of them through magical means. Their battle, presented largely without the distraction of sound effects or narration, is both gripping in its own right and captivating in terms of its panel-to-panel storytelling.
This is the only one of Fordham’s books I’ve read, but he has adapted several other beloved novels, including Brave New World and To Kill a Mockingbird. In his preface to this edition, Theo Downes-Le Guin writes of Fordham’s quality of being “faithful but not deferential" to the original work. It’s a very accurate description of what Fordham has done here: a retelling of a story that brings out the qualities that are most suited for this particular medium.
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As always, I'm Tobias Carroll, and this has been Postcards From Komiksoj.
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