H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds

Yet another comics adaptation of the classic tale, this one is set in the original's 19th-century and intended as the prequel to an all-new steampunk series by the same creators imagining what the Victorians would have done with Martian technology. In its time, the novel was a caution against the hubris of empire, a timely lesson for today but one not evident here. Instead, it's a demonstration that the lucky will survive, if they can just wait out danger without getting involved. The art is impressive, mostly due to the good design work and atmospheric coloring, which enlivens the frequent closeups. The dialogue features the complex sentence structure and vocabulary of the original. However, the story's impact is sometimes muted due to the compressed nature of the adaptation (the main story is only 64 pages long), which demands more and smaller panels per page. It's a nice, although somewhat distant, reconstruction of the original, which mainly proves that Edginton and D'Israeli have done their homework for their new series. (May)