Graphic Novel Review: Wicked: The Graphic Novel Part I, by Scott Hampton

reviewed by Julian Lawrence

Wicked: The Graphic Novel Part I. Gregory Maguire, adapted and illustrated by Scott Hampton. New York: William Morrow Paperbacks, 2025. https://www.harpercollins.com/products/wicked-the-graphic-novel-part-i-gregory-maguirescott-hampton

 The publication of Eisner-winning veteran Scott Hampton’s wonderfully illustrated adaptation transports the transmedial Wicked phenomenon into comics. The strength of this property lies in the range of themes that underlie its overarching tale of transformation. Elphaba’s character transformation in Wicked portrays her as going “from being a misunderstood outcast to being a friend, a love interest, and a social movement activist” (Schrader, 2011: 49). Furthermore, “Elphaba's peers initially ostracize her for her physical difference, but we soon see that her real difference is political” (Wolf, 2008: 9).

 Wicked has impacted a variety of mediums including literature, theatre, film, and now comics. I discovered Wicked when I attended a live performance of the show in the summer of 2024, over twenty years after the Tony Award-winning musical premiered, and almost 30 years since the novel’s publication in 1995. I have not read author Gregory Maguire’s novel, but now that I have read the graphic novel, I have added the book to my 2025 summer reading list.

 Themes relevant to LGBTQ+, race, and disability are clearly presented in the stage, film and comic book adaptations of Wicked, yet the theme of speciesism jumped out at me the first time I saw the musical performed. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes speciesism as “the view that only humans should be morally considered” (Gruen and Monsó, 2024). The group of human animals with whom I attended the performance understood the show’s themes of identity and transformation, but they all overlooked the significance of speciesism in Wicked. This appears to be the case for most audiences with whom I discuss the topic; people downplay or ignore the catalyst that leads to Elphaba’s transformation, namely her advocacy for animals. Like the musical, animal oppression is important to the film, and this theme is explored in more detail in Hampton’s adaptation. Thus, in this review of the graphic novel, I will address the importance of Elphaba’s transformation into a vegan advocate for the animals, which ultimately leads to her vilification by Oz society.

 Like Elphaba, I have been an advocate for the animals since January 2000 and over the decades I have noticed a palpable anti-vegan bias in society that has compelled “scholars and legal bodies to recognise anti-veganism as a prejudice, resulting in the protection of ‘ethical veganism’ under the UK Equality Act 2010. Some evidence, reported by The Times, even suggests that vegan-related hate crimes may be on the rise in the UK” (Gregson, Piazza, and Boyd, 2022: 2). As such, the broad lack of media and critical focus on the vegan theme in Wicked is not surprising to me. For instance, it has been suggested that “the Animals stand in for the racialized Other, with strong associations with Jewishness in the musical” (Wolf, 2008: 10). However, a vegan reading of Wicked (musical/film/comic) aligns with critiques of unsustainable and inhumane practices that slaughter billions of land animals annually in factory farms. It can be said that Wicked is commenting on our contemporary animal holocaust rather than the Holocaust.

 Through a vegan lens, Wicked does not focus on racism or sexual orientation, but speciesism. As a woman, Elphaba brings an additional feminist layer because “both sexism and speciesism are not only positively correlated but are also underpinned by group-dominance motives, consistent with ecofeminist theorizing highlighting the role of patriarchal values of domination underlying attitudes towards both women and animals” (Salmen and Dhont, 2023: 5). Elphaba is vilified and hunted down by Oz society not because of her skin colour or the romantic relationship she has with Glinda; rather, Elphaba is perceived as “wicked” by Ozians because she is a woman fighting the Wizard’s patriarchal oppression of animals. Visually, Hampton creatively demonstrates the connection between speciesism and sexism on two pages: the large panel on page 59 portrays a white cockatoo in a cage (fig.1), and on the last panel of the next page, the male Munchkin Boq gazes lustily at two women in their white undergarments through a window whose frames simulate the bars of a bird cage (fig. 2).

fig. 1

fig. 2

 The graphic novel adaptation includes the animal rights theme and utilizes it as the motivation that transforms Elphaba into the story’s Wicked heroine: she wants to be a voice for the increasingly silenced and voiceless animals. The wise goat, Dr. Dillamond, becomes her mentor as they work together to fight legislated animal oppression. On page 76, Elphaba says to Boq: “I admire the goat intensely. But the real interest of it to me is the political slant. How can the Wizard publish those bans on Animal mobility if Doctor Dillamond can prove, scientifically, that there isn't any inherent difference between humans and Animals?” (Maguire and Hampton, 2025: 90). As such, Elphaba “notes the unjust treatment of Animals, the questionable conduct of the Wizard, and the ways in which greater equality might be achieved” (Kruse and Prettyman, 2008). Most of us acknowledge equality as it relates to diversity, equity, and inclusion for humans. However, the theme of non-human animal equity lies at the foundation of Wicked’s narrative as Elphaba “flies on a broom at night in order to free captive Animals” (Schrader, 2011: 57). Fighting animal abuse is a noble cause, but the authorities in Oz vilify Elphaba for defying the Wizard’s legislated oppression of non-human animals.

fig. 3

 Hampton’s effective portrayal of the Wizard as a deformed, monstrous animal evokes the spirit of the late comic book horror artist Bernie Wrightson’s fearsome creatures of yore. In her meeting with the Wizard (fig. 3), Elphaba implores him to “reverse your recent judgements on the rights of animals…The hardship on the Animals is more than can be borne” (Maguire and Hampton, 2025: 126-127). Her pleading falls on deaf ears, and the meeting is fruitless; thus, Elphaba’s resistance and activism is born. Parallels between humans and non-human animals are affirmed later in the comic when Fiyero walks into the bedroom while Elphaba sleeps: “a smell of perfume still in the air, and the resiny, animal smell…” (143).

fig. 4

 The graphic novel is indeed beautifully illustrated, and Hampton is a master of quality comic art. His depiction of Dr Dillamond’s violent murder is respectfully illustrated, with the hint of a glazed-over goat eye peering out from underneath the shroud that covers his unfortunate corpse (fig 4). The caption above this sad illustration explains that “his throat was still knotted with congealed ropes of black blood, where it had been slit as thoroughly as if he had wandered into an abattoir” (90).

 I note, however, that despite the careful detail in the art, some of the text renders could be improved. For instance, captions are sometimes casually applied, unfortunately obscuring interesting portions of the art (fig. 5).

fig. 5

fig. 6

 In another couple of instances, speech bubble fonts randomly change (fig. 6). These are typographical and editorial issues that can be rectified in future printings; they do not impact the detailed watercolour art overall. It is, nonetheless, a very wordy comic, with lots of telling rather than showing. However, moments where Hampton shows, rather than tells, effectively and wordlessly capture tone and mood. Pages 146-47 present a particularly touching sequence that clarifies the impacts of the Wizard’s laws on the oppressed animals (fig. 7).

fig. 7

 The graphic novel opens with a Leo Tolstoy quote: “In historical events great men – so-called – are but the labels that serve to give a name to an event, and like labels, they have the last possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.” In contextualizing that quote with Wicked: The Graphic Novel, it can be said that greatness is achieved when individuals permit the moral progress of history to guide their actions. Elphaba’s advocacy for the animals presents a critical and ethical step forward for civilization, and that is Wicked’s underlying message.

 Tolstoy was a strict vegetarian, which inspired him to ask: “Who will deny that it is repugnant and harrowing to a man's feelings to torture or kill, not only a man, but also even a dog, a hen, or a calf? I have known men, living by agricultural labor, who have ceased entirely to eat meat only because they had to kill their own cattle” (Tolstoy, 1886: 16). Consider that quote before you bite into another’s flesh while eating a sandwich or a burger, because Dr Dillamond’s hypothesis is correct: there are no relevant scientific, biological, or theoretical differences between humans and non-human animals. We all want to defy gravity, including Elphaba flying on her broom, lambs gamboling in the fields, dogs running in a park, and caped children leaping from swings.

 References

Gregson, Rebecca, Jared Piazza and Ryan Boyd. 2022. ‘“Against the cult of veganism”: Unpacking the social psychology and ideology of anti-vegans’, Appetite, 178, pp. 106143–106143. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2022.106143.

 Gruen, Lori and Susana Monsó, "The Moral Status of Animals." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Fall 2024 Edition. Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.). Available at <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2024/entries/moral-animal/>. Accessed February 22, 2025.

 Kruse, Sharon and Sandra Spickard Prettyman. 2008. “Women, leadership, and power revisiting the Wicked Witch of the West.” Gender and education, 20(5), pp. 451–464. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/09540250701805797. Accessed February 22, 2025.

 Salmen, Alina and Kristof Dhont. 2023. “Animalizing women and feminizing (vegan) men: The psychological intersections of sexism, speciesism, meat, and masculinity.” Social and personality psychology compass, 17(2). Available at https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12717. Accessed February 22, 2025.

 Schrader, Valerie Lynn. (2011) “Witch or Reformer?: Character Transformations Through the Use of Humor in the Musical Wicked.” Studies in American humor, 23(23), pp. 49–65. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/42573612. Accessed February 22, 2025.

 Tolstoy, Leo. 1886. What I Believe. New York: William S. Gottsberger.

 Wolf, Stacy. (2008) “‘Defying Gravity’: Queer Conventions in the Musical “Wicked.’” Theatre journal (Washington, D.C.), 60(1), pp. 1–21. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1353/tj.2008.0075. Accessed February 22, 2025.

 

Julian Lawrence is a senior lecturer in comics and graphic novels at Teesside University, specializing in storytelling, graphic memoir, and comics pedagogy. As a cartoonist, researcher, and teacher, his work bridges creative practice and academic research, exploring comics as a medium for education, reflection, and social change. http://www.julianlawrence.net/

A version of this review will appear in print in IJOCA 27:1

Book review: Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist by Simon Grenann, Roger Sabin, and Julian Waite

Simon Grenann, Roger Sabin, and Julian Waite. Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020. 288 pages, £85.00 978-1526133540. https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526133564

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

            Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist is the first, and much-needed, critical survey of Marie Duval's body of work. Duval is one of a few pseudonyms used by Isabella Émilie de Tessier, who was an actress on the London stage and also a prolific cartoonist, with a wealth of comics and cartoons published between 1860 and 1885. The authors examined various primary sources to analyze Duval's major themes, vision, and processes in relation to historic contexts. They provide a brief biography of Marie Duval, stitched together from public records, newspaper articles, and her body of work. They also discuss their website The Marie Duval Archive https://www.marieduval.org/  created in 2016 as a key resource that provides online information about Duval and seeks out her unknown work.

            The book is divided into two main parts: Part I, Work, and Part II: Depicting and Performing. There are also two appendices on attribution and terminology. Part I is comprised of five chapters which "examines Duval within her own context, presenting an overview of the publishing industry and her place and influence in it" (p. 6). Part II, Depicting and Performing, consists of four chapters where her accomplishments are highlighted, along with the significance of her cartoons and characters (p. 6).

            Part I opens with a chapter on Duval's role working in Judy, a magazine where Duval was employed from 1869 through 1885. Sabin asserts that Judy was not merely a "low-level Punch clone" but was "innovative and often pioneering" (p. 11) and argues that Duval, as a cartoonist, was essential to the publication's development. After all, a woman was a key contributor in a time when most society held they were supposed to be relegated to more domestic roles and pursuits. He explains a serio-comic magazine is a publication that covers serious topics, such as politics and daily news, as well as more leisurely topics, such as fashion, humorous stories, cartoons and comic strips. Sabin also discusses the importance of the periodical itself, including the topics, the layout of the contents, and other producers of Judy, such as cartoonist William Boucher, editor Charles Henry Ross, owner and publisher William Spencer Johnson, and others.

            This brings us to Marie Duval herself. Considering her brief history, including her time as an actor and that she contributed art to other publications, Sabin states that it "is important to mention these other endeavors because they indicate that Duval, like her fellow practitioners, was part of the Victorian swirl of hustling and entrepreneurship. If you had a skill, you used it" (p. 21). Sabin discusses Duval's most prolific work on Ally Sloper; her unique style; influences such as Doré and Cruikshank; and content and subject matter of her strips (not shying away from mentioning racist and anti-Semitic content), as well as her theater work and how she was able to "bring the stage to the page" (p. 27). Sabin concludes the chapter with further discussion of The Marie Duval Archive in that as an online resource of her work, it effectively removes the context of the Victorian period. The need for this book is clear from this statement alone. By providing context into the publishing cycle in the Victorian era with an analysis of Duval's work with Judy as a whole, readers get a better idea of her influence on publishing and comics in that era.

            In the second chapter, Grennan considers how women "undertook work, performed work and visualised work" (p. 40). The author provides an overview of women's employment in the Victorian period and asserts that employment "was thought to make women masculine because employment was considered to be masculine. As a result, employment for women challenged conceptions of the significance of domestic life, upon which the highest personal premium was placed, for women rather than men" (p. 40). Grennan, referring to the women's household management roles, says "work in one's own house was not work, because it was not employment" (p. 39). One could ask if this notion has changed much in the following 150 years. Sabin noted that Duval and other women who opted to enter the workforce outside the domestic realm, which included domestic work, were considered to be masculinized, despite the fact they are acting as caregivers (e.g. the employment of governesses). Grennan then juxtaposes Margaret Beetham's assertion, that with the rise of mid-to-late century periodical journal publishing, there came "new visualisations of femininity," especially with regard to advertisements directed at women readers, with Duval's rendering of women in her comics (p. 46). Another juxtaposition Grennan mentions regarding Beetham and Duval is the benchmarks of gender, as well as providing a great example of how Duval contradicted an ad page in Ally Sloper's Comic Kalendar for 1878 (p. 49). Grennan examines the fictional woman employee in The Girl of the Period Miscellany and fictional editor Miss Echo, comparing them to Duval's own work. The author closes the chapter with the concept of anonymity and the adoption of pseudonyms, which undoubtedly opened up the employment field in publications more widely to women than by writing under their own names and posits reasons for Duval's adopting more than one pseudonym, as these allowed her to explore different styles of illustration (p. 59).

            In Chapter 3, Waite maps Duval's time on the stage to her cartoons published in Judy. The author looks at Duval's time as an actress, from early appearances, her performances in Charles Ross' lost play Clam, as well as Silence, and The Beggar's Uproar, her time on tour, and in other plays. While she was on tour, she was constantly drawing and publishing, but her comics do not reveal personal details about Duval (p. 75). Waite examines Duval's late acting career and, with a chronology of her life and works, its influences on her cartoons and comics (p. 93). A section is devoted to Duval's involvement in the Such and Such divorce case in 1873 (p. 90). The chapter ends with the notion that there "are no known portraits of Marie Duval" in existence (p. 96). Despite the small amounts of evidence available, Waite provides a good analysis of how Duval's experiences with acting affected her work for Judy.

            In Chapter 4, Sabin considers Duval's children's book, Queens & Kings and Other Things, written under the pseudonym S. A. the Princess Hesse Schwartzbourg. Sabin argues that her "naïve drawing style she had developed at Judy made her a natural choice for a children's book" (p. 101). He also mentions while her name was not included in the creation of the work, her readers could easily recognize her distinct style and would purchase the book. The author discusses the creation and rise of the children's book, as well as the gift book (p. 104). Sabin compares Duval and Edward Lear in terms of their work and how both children and adults appreciated them, the latter's influence on Duval's work, and where the similarities stopped and Duval diverged from Lear, in terms of verse, tone, and art style (p. 109). Sabin then moves on to discuss the content of Queens & Kings and Other Things, Duval's rich illustrations of medieval fashion and royalty, of which could be attributed to her stage work, and how the book was received by the public -- sadly not a roaring success.

            Concluding the section on work, Grennan looks at women and gender in the printing business. He presents a framework for "considering the material conditions, social expectations, opportunities, prohibitions and representations of the type of work in the production of periodical publications" (p. 123). In so doing, Grennan explains that what modern readers may know as the process of creating a comic book involving a penciller, an inker, a colorist and so on, has nothing to do with Duval, who apparently drew directly on the engraving woodblock. Most cartoonists draw on paper, and then the engraver would transfer the illustration, sometimes by gluing the paper to the woodblock and carving through it. He describes general woodblock processes and further discussion of women's employment in printing, including Duval's own work.  

            Part II: Depicting and performing opens with the sixth chapter, Grennan's "The significance of Duval's drawing style." In this, he examines the "surviving public, non-academic commentary on Marie Duval's work from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries" and that it is "brief and easy to summarize" (p. 137). Basically, her art was judged by critics as elementary or downright terrible, and humorless, which Grennan asserts was a result of Victorian sexism and prejudice. The author also examines her parodies of various artworks displayed at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions of 1880 and 1876, and concludes the chapter declaring that Duval "made a living recklessly, by drawing attention to the contradictions of a working life that she shared with her readers, so as to provoke laughter and, in doing so, to sell the next publication, bring on the next comics register and create a new visual culture" (p. 159).

            In Chapter 7, Waite looks at "nineteenth-century theories of acting in relation to visual aspects of the craft" to determine whether there is evidence that Duval's role as an actor influenced her work as a cartoonist (p. 160). Waite analyses resources including unpublished manuscripts and diaries of contemporary performers to Duval and published acting manuals that she and others in the theater either had access to or had knowledge of. He also takes a closer look at her Ally Sloper cartoons as a means to show her own performance as an "imperfect artist" (p. 182-183).   

            In Chapter 8, "Waite continues from Chapter 3 his analysis of the theater, specifically "Victorian spectacle" such as pantomime and special theatrical effects that "involved the manipulation of bodies in a way entirely unrecorded in the usual drawing tropes of the nineteenth century, arising as they did from classical training and fine art models", as an influence on Duval's illustrations (p. 187). There is extensive analysis of transformations scenes and characters in pantomime performances, as well as what the author terms as "flying bodies" and physical performance, such as the extreme physical work of the Hanlon-Lee Brothers and circus and music hall acts, and Duval's incorporating certain elements into her artwork. Waite concludes that, because of Duval's potential access to circus and music hall acts, and participation in acting herself, she may have put her observations to use in her cartoons and  "allowed her to depict the actions and presence of bodies in space through a unique gestural, graphic style that communicates movement" rather than simply relying on the theater manuals and other works available (p. 214).

            In the closing chapter, Sabin examines Duval's comics and cartoons attempting to answer whether she is "a 'women's cartoonist' (p. 216) and looks at other women in the cartooning business and women's magazines as an emerging genre. Sabin notes that because of the lack of primary resources with such information, that "the historical record relating to women is sparse to the point of near invisibility" which he assigns to prejudice. The author discusses the content of Judy, such as fashion, politics, and advertising, and how Duval "fit in" with the publication (p. 222), presenting perhaps why she chose Duval as a penname, her subject matter, and her comedy. 

            Authors Simon Grennan (Leading Research Fellow at the University of Chester), Roger Sabin (Professor of Popular Culture at the University of the Arts London), and Julian Waite  (independent scholar and former Senior Lecturer in Performing Arts and Programme Leader MA Drama at the University of Chester) provide valuable analyses of Marie Duval's works, both as a cartoonist and as an actor on the London stage. They place her firmly in the important tradition of British magazine cartooning. Alongside the text, the authors include a rich selection of Duval's art, as well as of other contemporaries. In creating this volume, Grennan, Sabin, and Waite have created a multidisciplinary text that would be good for comics studies, gender studies, art or theater history, and more. It is also a good resource for those interested in digital humanities and archives, as libraries and special collections are increasingly making such materials accessible by digitizing resources. This text is an excellent example of what scholars can do with digitized collections. The authors mention that comprehensive mapping work has not yet been developed between her stage work and artistic efforts that might provide even more information on this important cartoonist. This book is the first step in mapping Duval's two career paths.