The Hobbit
Novel by J.R.R. Tolkien · adapted by Chuck Dixon and Sean Deming, painted by David Wenzel · Eclipse, 1989–90
Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit of settled habits, is talked into joining thirteen dwarves on a quest to steal back their treasure from a dragon, and comes home a rather different hobbit. You know the story. The question is whether a comic can do it justice, and this one comes closer than anyone had a right to expect.
Dixon and Deming keep a great deal of Tolkien's text, which makes some pages crowded with captions, but David Wenzel's soft, storybook watercolours are the reason to read it: his trolls are grubby and funny, his Mirkwood is properly gloomy and his Smaug is magnificent. It is the version to give a young reader who is not yet ready for the book, and a nice thing to own if you are.
