Author: Charles Dickens
Publisher: Marvel
Rating: WORTHY!
Adaptation by Jim McCann
Penciling David Baldeon and Jeremy Treece
Inking Jordi Tarragona and Roger Bonet
Coloring Ferran Daniel and Jorge Gonzalez
Lettering Jeff Eckleberry
This is exactly what the title says (for once!) - a straight adaptation of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol into graphic novel format, with a dash (or more accurately, a stagger) of zombies tossed in, and I have to say that it worked!
I'm not a fan at all of zombie stories (or vampire or werewolf as long as we're covering certain animistic supernatural plots), but this one actually wasn't repulsive to me at all.
The novel carries a parental advisory, FYI, but there really isn't anything in it that need be kept from any well-adjusted, everyday teen - nothing that they wouldn't see, for example, on your average gaming card. In fact, by zombie story standards, this one was relatively tame.
The beauty of it lies in the way it was adapted, and Jim McCann did a sterling job there, bringing the zombies in and making them threatening without any really overt violence or gore. They're not overwhelming, either - just a background, really, to Scrooge's story, which largely follows the original, but which is adjusted here and there to fit the zombie story into it.
Zombies and Christmas might not seem like a natural fit, but what the heck? Sometimes you want to down-shift at Christmas and try something new, or at least, different instead of blindly following all those same old traditions again this year like you did every other year. This story fits the bill, and I recommend it.
