Monday, December 05, 2011

Great Expectations part 1

With the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens' birth due on 7 February 2012, there are a great many celebrations of the authors' works planned. BBC Radio 4 has already nailed its colours to the mast, with the announcement of a number of shows to be broadcast over the next couple of months.

I was looking for something Christmassy for the run-up to December 25th and found this superb adaptation of Great Expectations drawn by Bill Lacey. I've been a Lacey fan for over forty years: he was drawing 'Mytek the Mighty'when I started buying Valiant every week back in the late 1960s and I've always had a special appreciation for his work ever since, whether he was drawing 'Tarzan' in TV Comic or 'Eagles Over the Western Front' in Look and Learn.

The cover above is, incidentally, by Jack Keay, not Lacey. It sets the scene nicely for what is a moody and occasionally dark tale, one of Dickens' finest. I hope you'll enjoy it.

 
(* Artwork © Look and Learn Ltd. Reprinted by permission.)
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2 comments:

  1. Richard Williams8 Dec 2011, 21:49:00

    Thanks to you and "Eagles" Steve, I am now a big Bill Lacey fan! I used to read Mytek the Mighty but at an age when the art wasn't the attraction or appreciation, just the character's adventures every week!

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  2. Anonymous13 Dec 2011, 13:28:00

    Of course, none of the story could have happened - Magwitch would have drowned attempting to swim from the hulk in leg irons! (Another classis novel also has a major flaw - Jules Verne could have got round the problem in Around The World in 80 days by having the journey start and end in San Francisco. However, as the story stands, Fogg has to cross the entire breadth of the USA and catch a ship on the Eastern Coast without knowing the day of the week - impossible!

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