Euro Previews: ‘A Christmas Carol’ Breathes New Life Into The Familiar Tale

by Richard Bruton

Yes, we may be post-Christmas, it may be New Year’s time, but don’t let that stop you looking at this new Cinebook take on the Dickens’ classic with a perfectly executed twist in José-Luis Munuera‘s visually beautiful and fascinatingly nuanced and different Christmas Carol…

I meant to bring this one to your attention before Christmas but I managed to completely blow that. This means that this is not only late but really the absolute wrong side of Christmas time. And that’s a terrible shame because this is a book that really needs your attention. The only thing I can say is that it’s a book good enough to be read any time of year and that there’s no reason you couldn’t buy it now to enjoy for the Christmas season of 2024.

Whatever you do, don’t let reading about it out of season put you off what is an excellent and inventive spin on the classic tale.

Anyway, it should come as no surprise that this is the story we all know so well, Dickens’ Christmas classic set to graphic novel form. The miserly Scrooge, the put-upon employees suffering the winter of Victorian London, and the ghostly spirits of the season, whether it’s Jacob Marley or those three spirits of past, present, and future Christmases.

Yes, it’s all here as you’d expect. But Spanish writer and illustrator Jose-Luis Munuera has managed to breathe new life into things with a few very simple, fundamental things, chief of which is the masterstroke of switching Scrooge’s gender. Ebeneezer becomes Elizabeth and, in that simple change, the entire story opens up to explore the differences that a woman making her way in this male-dominated Victorian world gives us – and it’s wonderful done by Munuera.

Elizabeth Scrooge is just as driven and bloody-minded, just as much a skinflint as Dickens’ version, but Munuera skillfully gives an extra layer of meaning and understanding to the tale by building on Scrooge’s history, her terrible father, and the pressures faced by a business woman in Victorian London.

The way it’s all handled gives the classic and very familiar tale a frisson of the unexpected, a new perspective, and makes Scrooge’s spirit-driven change of nature all the more real and believable and nuanced with the way the ending plays out.

All of this comes with absolutely sumptuous artwork, as you can so easily see from the accompanying images and preview. The watercolour effects of the backgrounds are beautiful, the spirits are expressive and distinct, beautiful almost at times even, and the main characters are done in that almost animated fashion, exaggerations in characters and expressions done just enough but never too much to keep the mood of the book flowing perfectly.

All in all, it’s quite the most wonderful new Christmas book and an unexpected take on the classic tale, expanding the simple transformative story we all know with fresh ideas and a subtlety that really impresses.