The Abbreviated Monte Cristo

Section Three: Monte Cristo in Comics and Manga "A picture is worth a thousand words". I like comics. If I wish to discover great literature, I am not ashamed at all to head for a copy "Classics Illustrated" to get the general gist of a story. If I like it, I could read the actual book. If I hated it, then maybe one hour is "lost" and not several days of reading through tomes of dense text, only to be sorely upset and disappointed at the ending, Comics are a very visual medium, and The Count of Monte Cristo has little physical action but a lot of psychological warfare. Comics publishers understandably try to make the story appear "more exciting" so they add pages of sword fighting or knife fighting, at the cost of plot-essential developments ("Jumbo Comics", "Dell Four Color" #794, "Marvel Classics Comics"). The "what's disposable" and "what's essential...

Section Four: The Weird and Wacky World of Monte Cristo In my explorations of abridged editions, children's editions, comics and manga and derivative works, I'd run across some unintentionally hilarious things. The two available unabridged books (intended for an adult audience) have some subtle humor, as written by Dumas, but that's not the subject of this page. It's in the adaptations where the comedy gold lies, because some play so fast n' loose with the material. Some of them are bad translations. Some of them are from attempts to make the story "exciting" or to wallpaper-over some of the more NSFK elements (or even add NSFK elements). Some are from rewrites that make characters behave in bizarre ways. All of these made me laugh, and brought out my Inner Snark Monster(tm)! The Prisoner of If, in Ainsworth's Magazine. 1845, Credited to Wm. H. Ains...