Marvel Illustrated: Picture of Dorian Gray

(Marvel, 2008)
™ and © Marvel Characters, Inc.

The novel, by 19th century writer Oscar Wilde, is the story of a handsome, vain young man who, after he has his portrait painted, realizes that this painting will always maintain its beauty and appeal while he is destined for the ravages old age and death. In a fit of pique he wishes that the opposite were true. He would give his soul for that. Even the reader who has never heard of this story will understand where this tale is going.

The Marvel Illustrated imprint, similar to Classics Illustrated, adapts literary novels to the comic format in what can literally be called a graphic novel. Other titles in this series are Treasure Island, The Man in the Iron Mask and The Last of the Mohicans. Roy Thomas, who actually was a high school English teacher before breaking into comics, does a fine job of interpreting The Picture of Dorian Gray to this seemingly shorthand but altogether appropriate form.

This is not the first translation of Oscar Wilde’s writing to the comic form. P. Craig Russell adapted some of Wilde’s more platonic stories like “The Selfish Giant” and “The Star Child” in The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde.

— George Haberberger

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