By Terry Pratchett & Graham Higgins (VG Graphics/Gollancz)
ISBN: 0-575-05699-1
Us old codgers have always maintained that a good comic needs a good artist and this superb adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s fourth Discworld novel proves that point. The Discworld is a flat planet supported on the backs of four elephants standing on the back of a giant turtle swimming across the universe. Magic works there and the people are much too much like us. This, of course, makes it an ideal location for spleen-venting, satire, slapstick and social commentary…
Scripted by the author and brilliantly illustrated by Graham Higgins it tells a complex and darkly witty tale of Death (big grim chap, carries a scythe) and the hapless, literal-minded, sort-of-useless young goof Mort, whom he hires as his apprentice.
Of course that’s not all there is to it, with sub-plots including an orphaned princess and her dangerously ambitious guardian, Death’s vacation, the daughter he adopted and the mystery of his most peculiar servant Albert to season a very impressive spin on a very familiar myth.
Higgin’s light, dry touch adds volumes of texture to the mix and the leaden slavishness of the first graphic adaptation (The Colour of Magic – ISBN: 0-552-13945-9) is utterly forgotten in a superb mix of Pratchett’s acerbic dialogue and the artist’s deft sense of timing and comedy pacing, which is most reminiscent of Hunt Emerson.
If you have to have adaptations of great novels this is how it should be done.
Text © 1994 Terry and Lyn Pratchett. Illustrations © 1994 Graham Higgins. All Rights