Harper Lee’s classic work of literature gets the graphic novel treatment. What does this new format bring to the title?
(Please note that this review contains spoilers for the original 1960 Harper Lee novel and 1962 film, along with references to triggering language.)
Cover by Fred FordhamWritten by Harper Lee
Adapted and Illustrated by Fred FordhamA haunting portrait of race and class, innocence and injustice, hypocrisy and heroism, tradition and transformation in the Deep South of the 1930s, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird remains as important today as it was upon its initial publication in 1960, during the turbulent years of the Civil Rights movement.
Now, this most beloved and acclaimed novel is reborn for a new age as a gorgeous graphic novel. Scout, Jem, Boo Radley, Atticus Finch, and the small town of Maycomb, Alabama, are all captured in vivid and moving illustrations by artist Fred Fordham.
Enduring in vision, Harper Lee’s timeless novel illuminates the complexities of human nature and the depths of the human heart with humor, unwavering honesty, and a tender, nostalgic beauty. Lifetime admirers and new readers alike will be touched by this special visual edition that joins the ranks of the graphic novel adaptations of A Wrinkle in Time and The Alchemist.
If there was ever a time for To Kill a Mockingbird to return to the public eye, this time would be it. With Americans divided deeply among social and cultural lines that seem too deep to cross, we need the lessons of young Jean Louise “Scout” Finch and Jeremy Atticus “Jem” Finch to lead and remind of us of our shared humanity. The release of Go Set a Watchman four years ago certainly brought Ms. Lee back to the wider public eye, but that work itself was mired it its fair share of controversy, mostly around the timing of its release. With this new graphic novel adaptation from Fred Fordham, the staple of high school curricula in the United States gets renewed attention completely on its own merits.
Fordham’s work is a straight retelling of the novel, with text taken directly from the work, problematic language and all. We know that the use of the word “nigger” is downright offensive in 2019, but in the setting of the novel (the Deep South during the Depression), it’s part of the portrait of time and place and should be taken as such, just as Fordham cautions in the afterword. Where Fordham has made changes, they are to best represent the story and the sentiment of it in the graphic novel medium, not to change it. It has been a long time since I read the original novel (though I did re-watch the 1962 film with Gregory Peck as part of preparation for this review) but as far as I can recall, nothing in this graphic novel retelling is greatly out of place from this source work.
The beauty of the medium is that we get to visualize characters and scenes through another’s eyes, characters and scenes that were not in that film, for the first time. Aunt Alexandra in all her stuffy glory makes her appearance here, along with crotchety Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose and Scout’s well meaning but uneducated in the ways of Maycomb schoolteacher. All this remains through the eyes of young Scout Finch with adult recollections alongside them, making both books feel more like a journal or diary than novel. (The cover, with Scout looking on the smaller figures of her father and Tom Robinson, certainly puts forth this tone.)
Fordham has done well to avoid using the film depiction as basis for his own character artwork, with a few exceptions. It may not be fair to compare these two medium to each other, but it’s certainly the closest visual representation of the novel we have at hand. Atticus Finch bears more than a strong resemblance to Gregory Peck. This is the Atticus we all know and love, and I truthfully cannot see him any way that isn’t the late Mr. Peck. And Scout does have similar traits to her movie counterpart (Mary Badham) but with more innocence and less sass.
In fact, Fordham has done better justice in his artwork to certain characters that perhaps that 1962 film did not get right. His take on Dill Harris, summertime friend of the Finch children, is of a lithe, pale boy who looks much younger than his actual age – – a far cry from the extreme gentlemanly Dill from the movie portrayed by John Megna. Tom Robinson, the man Atticus defends on trial for the alleged rape of a white woman, himself also looks more anxious and apprehensive throughout his testimony, a contrast to Brock Peters’s silent giant. This rendering shows a man caught up in something larger than him, knowing he is doomed no matter what he says or does on the stand. It’s also thanks to this graphic novel that we get the full extent of the injury to his left hand (which he had gotten caught in a cotton gin as a child), the injury that was supposed to acquit him of his crimes.
Continued belowDespite the heavier subject matter, artwork throughout “To Kill a Mockingbird” has a peaceful, sepia tone feel to it. The opening pages with a bird’s eye view of Maycomb provide that sense of a setting lost to time and history and the idea of the beauty that can hide ugly character. Fordham has a light hand with his pencils and inks in both character and setting. His faces are certainly flat in nature, though with slight touches to indicate Atticus’s age and world-weariness, particularly as the novel progresses through the Tom Robinson trial and its aftermath. With duller colors (though not without their vibrance), the sense of the novel’s basis in memory truly shines through. The pictures may not be 100 percent accurate in memory, but their spirit alongside the words that lead to those memories are. This certainly is a text heavy work, with passages lifted right from the novel, but text and art do not fight each other on the page. Careful choice in lettering – – a simple font that bears resemblance to handwriting – – keeps the two at safe, respectful distance from each other, while adding to the journal-like tone.
If there is anything Fordham’s graphic novel does brilliantly, it is reinvention of key scenes from the book into powerful treatises on its main themes. Early on, we see Jem retreat from playtime from Scout and Dill, in mourning for the later mother he remembers and misses. Nearly the entire page is background for the Finch home and street, with the children left to small silhouettes, emphasizing their own smallness within in their larger absences. As Atticus departs the courthouse at the conclusion to Tom’s trial, we get a view from the back of the courtroom as Atticus walking out the door. The entire upper balcony, the African-American section, stands in reverence to the man who tried and failed valiantly to save one of their own. It shows beautifully the scope and depth of love Maycomb’s African-Americans had for this white man, who chose to stand for them when virtually everyone else stood against them. Its one weakness? Choosing half the page and not a full page for this scene. But perhaps that is a deliberate choice, to show the quieter power in these small moments.
In fact, paneling and layout choices are the one weak point of this work. The nine panel grid is quite overused, making text and art start to fight each other for space and attention, but this is a conflict that thankfully does not come to pass. Certain scenes (not just the aforementioned courtroom one) would have lent themselves well to the full page treatment. Others that were full page spreads really did not need that layout to signal their message. (An entire page devoted to tracing the Finch family history early on is certainly not necessary.) I imagine this is a deliberate choice on Fordham’s part, not to fall into cliche and to keep the point of view focused solely on Scout, a child struggling to make sense of the world around her.
The “To Kill a Mockingbird” graphic novel has certainly led me to re-read Harper Lee’s novel with the same adult eyes as I took to this work, absorbing its gentle lessons on humanity at a time when we need to shout them from the rooftops. There’s no doubt these are lessons to pass from generation to generation, and thanks to this work, a new generation will have them in a more accessible format than ever before.
