It’s been made into movies nearly a dozen times. School systems worldwide tell their students to read it. It’s in the top one-tenth of one percent of Amazon.com’s bestsellers. And in April, Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations appears under the Papercutz Classics Illustrated imprint as a graphic novel by Rick Geary, creator of the popular series Treasury of Victorian Murder.
Great Expectations is a full-color hardcover, 56 pages long, at a size of 6 1/2” by 9”, a cover price of $9.95, and the ISBN 978-1-59707-097-3. In both the prose novel and the graphic novel, the homeless orphan Pip falls desperately in love with the beautiful but shallow Estella. Pip struggles to prove himself worthy of Estella while a mysterious benefactor intervenes in the boy’s life. You can see preview art at http://www.papercutz.com/classics/greatexpectpre1.html.
Geary has won the 2007 “Best Title for a Younger Audience” Eisner award (the comic-book Oscar) and the National Cartoonists Society’s Book and Magazine Illustration Award. His Treasury of Victorian Murder graphic novels have inspired praise such as:
• “First rate. Superb as always.”--Publishers Weekly
• “Meticulously researched, beautifully drawn, and quite entertaining. My highest
recommendation!”--Comics Buyer’s Guide
• “A must read!”--Andrew Smith, Scripps-Howard Newspapers
• “ Will have even reluctant readers immersed in history.”--School Library Journal• “Geary relies not on gore but on the scrupulously drawn detail and the droll, telling
expression.”--Booklist
• “A keen sense of period detail and sharp pacing.”--Kirkus Reviews
• “Filled with rich detail and told with the tightness of a thriller.”--Time.comix
• “Geary shows a true talent for capturing the images, mood and even language of Victorian
society.”--Washington Post
Classics Illustrated has introduced generations of students to great literature. These comic- book editions of novels, plays, and epic poems sold about 200 million copies from 1941 through 1998. Geary originally created his version of Great Expectations for a Classics Illustrated series published by Berkley Publishing and First Publishing in 1990. It has been out of print for more than a decade, and Papercutz is proud to bring it back.
Great Expectations is the second of Papercutz’s new Classics Illustrated volumes. The first two was Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, adapted by Michel Plessix. Up next: Grimm’s Fairy Tales by Mazan (pen name of Pierre Lavaud), Philip Petit, and Cecile Chicault.
