Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, Vol. 1 by Leah Moore

Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, Vol. 1 Reviews

• 
  Calista

  There are 4 short stories in this volume. It's not bad, I simply didn't feel much. The Ash-Tree was the best one - the last one. I didn't care for the art either. The 3rd story was also good - the Mizzotint. There was creepy and it's good to read around the October. It seemed Hollow some how. I felt there is potential here and something was a little off. I am glad I read it as it was not a waste of time.
  
  You might really enjoy this. They are stories set in the 1700 and 1800s. They are macabre nature. The story was simply missing something for me.
• 
  Sam Quixote

  The husband and wife team of John Reppion and Leah Moore (Alan Moore’s daughter) collaborate with four artists to adapt four of MR James’ spooky stories into comics: Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book, Lost Hearts, The Mezzotint, and The Ash-Tree. And unfortunately it’s not very good.
  
  The stories are full of demons, witches, haunted pictures and sorcerers, which sounds like juicy and exciting stuff, but, presented in MR James’ Edwardian storytelling style, becomes oddly dull and stodgy. I thought a comics adaptation would liven up the material - I’ve really tried with MR James numerous in the past but can’t get along with his writing - except Moore/Reppion are very faithful to the language and structure of the stories so they still have that same plodding pace and unmemorable way to them.
  
  Worse is that James is one of those writers, like HP Lovecraft, who never completely described the horrors that featured at the heart of his stories - they were always vague and left up to the reader’s imagination. Here we see what they’re describing because comics is a visual medium so the most powerful parts of their stories are rendered on the page as unremarkable horror tropes.
  
  Ghost Stories of an Antiquary is aptly named in that these are dated tales - some of the art is decent, particularly Fouad Mezher’s on The Mezzotint, but this is a very boo-ring horror comics anthology to read.
• 
  Andrew

  I realise now I read a lot over the weekend and failed to update my progress - I hope I have time to catch them all.
  
  This is another of the Self Made Here series of graphical re-telling of classic stories this time from M R James. I will admit that I am a fan of the "Christmas Ghost story" although in the introduction to this first volume the guest author (one Ramsey Campbell no less) goes to great lengths to say that the stories of Mr James are more than that. My apologies.
  
  Anyway the book contains 4 stories which are given the treatment and reimagined in this format. They are illustrated by different teams so you have 4 very destructive stories in 4 very distinctive styles.
  
  Now I see from other peoples reviews that this is a "marmite" book you look it or hate it. For me I loved it as I love seeing how other people see things - especially in situations which are naturally outside our normal everyday experiences - well at least I hope they are.
  
  So you have 4 of the most famous of his stories- I will not try and comment on them as my no spoiler rule dictates however I am sure once you see the list you will recognise something. For me I am happy to read them again as I always enjoy his work (just as well as I would have to guess how many anthologies I have seen his work appear in).
  
  The book itself is printed on heavy quality paper which makes the book feel sturdy and well made (just as well since it is). I have yet to be disappointed by a book from these publishers which is just as well since I have quite a few of them,
  
  And so on to volume 2
• 
  ?0?0?0

  Not having read James in over a decade, unable to locate any of his works currently, I can only say I really enjoyed this work for what it was, and cannot really say how it works as an adaptation. Nevertheless, Leah Moore and husband John Reppion have, with the help of four artists, created the perfect little just-in-time-for-Halloween graphic novel read. With four different artists, the art remains consistent in both style and quality, while the dialogue, either lifted word for word or tweaked, is selected with care, resulting in four unsettling tales all set in the most atmospheric of places and including frights that still fill the modern reader's imagination with questions while it actively fills in the gaps that M.R. James only hints at, and sometimes what the reader comes to on their own is the most horrifying part of the experience. What's hinted at and the settings of these stories and their fine-tuned, lucid prose (opposed to a Lovecraft) elevate these tales, and this collection in particular, to levels not attained by most modern horror writers.
• 
  Margaret

  Saw this sitting on the display shelf at the library on Saturday an snagged it.
  
  It's an adaptation of 4 of M. R. James stories: Canon Albaric's Scrap Book, The Lost Hearts, Mezzotint, and The Ash Tree.
  
  I wasn't sure how thse were going to take to being adapted to a graphic novel. After all, James relied on words to spin tales where the chill lingers well after you've read them.
  
  Mostly, the adaptations work well. Canon Albaric's Scrap Book is suitably scary. The Lost Hearts and Mezzotint don't work quite as well. But the cream of the crop was The Ash Tree. It left behind the same lingering chill as the original story.
  
  Highly recommended.
• 
  Robin Stevens

  I love MR James's ghost stories, and I think this is a great translation of his works into comic form. I think they lose a little just because a lot of his genius is in the detailed description of scenes, but this makes them accessible (and still extremely terrifying). (12+)
  
  *Please note: this review is meant as a recommendation only. Please do not use it in any marketing material, online or in print, without asking permission from me first. Thank you!*
• 
  Jill

  The first two stories were meh, the third story was my favorite my far, and the last story was really great as well.
• 
  Daniel Carpenter

  Poor adaptation. In the introduction by Ramsey Campbell, he highlights that one of MR James’ strongest suits is his language, “he is still the undisputed master of the phrase or sentence that shows just enough to suggest far worse.” What Moore and Reppion have done is to strip the story of those wonderful phrases, choosing instead to show the most horrific moments, rather than imply them. It appears to be totally against the spirit of James’ storytelling, and it robs all of the stories of any power that they may have once held.
  
  It’s also a bizarre decision considering just how much Moore and Reppion rely on MR James’ writing for the rest of the stories. A huge amount of his prose and dialogue is reproduced verbatim on the page as narrative captions from an unnamed narrator. A lot of this is useless, and even more of it is a crutch, stopping the artist from ever taking on any graphic storytelling responsibilities. These are not so much adaptations as they are illustrated stories.
• 
  Shan( Shans_Shelves) 💜

  Out of all the four stories one of them was scary. Which is a little disappointing. I found this volume in the adult section of my local library and I expected to be terrified after finishing. To be completely honest the 2 stories were good and 2 were really boring. The art was fantastic. There were four artists that designed the illustrations for each of the four stories. Each art piece was unique and different. The art is the reason this volume is getting 3 instead of 2 stars.
• 
  Johanna

  I read this months ago and never added it here, so now I'm a bit hazy on the details... I do remember that the primary thing I enjoyed was the art though – each story had a different illustrator, and every illustrator's style was distinctively unlike the others', which was interesting to pay attention to. Especially since I recognised one artist's style because I know Kit Buss from her Critical Role fanart, so her illustration of "Lost Hearts" felt like a fun cameo.
• 
  Chris Thorndycroft

  Excellent and very faithful adaptation of M. R. James's first four stories. A different artist for each story keeps things fresh and the artwork is superb. Top quality. Please tell me volume 2 is in the works!
• 
  Octavi

  Muy buenas adaptaciones. Los relatos son, por supuesto, cojonudos. Buena novela gráfica.
• 
  Nathan Moore

  Excellent adaptation of classic ghost stories. Some of the art was exceptional, especially in the last two stories.
• 
  Frank Pierucci

  Reading these late at night at the family cabin maybe wasn't the smartest idea...great stories though.
• 
  Orrin Grey

  These are generally good, clear, direct adaptations of four well-known M.R. James stories, but while the art is always good, the act of adaptation doesn't really do anything to elevate any of the already very strong tales.
• 
  Brian O'Connell

  Chilling and effective adaptations of classic M.R. James stories. "Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book" (my first M.R.J. story, and one still very close to my heart) is given a feverish, hyper-colored, and yet supremely eerie - the illustration found in the titular book is particularly effective - interpretation by Aneke; "Lost Hearts" has a somewhat manga-inspired style from Kit Buss that works surprisingly well, especially given the story's subject matter; "The Mezzotint", while one of my least favorite M.R. James stories, is illustrated in a charmingly modern style by Fouad Mezher; and "The Ash-Tree" (a personal favorite) has a scratchy, Gothic feel with noted artist Alisdair Wood illustrating. The stories are all adapted quite well with respect to the source material, and Ramsey Campbell brings a very astute introduction into the bargain. I wish the book was longer; it took me half-an-hour to read it - but it is certainly worth your money. Please get on with volume two; we're all waiting!
• 
  Antti Rask

  I used to love ghost stories. I think I still would, but getting older, being amused, let alone scared, by them is certainly harder. And what this adapted collection of short stories by
  M.R. James fails to do is to be scary.
  
  Now, I haven't read M.R. James original stories so I don't know whether the problem lies there or in the adaptation, but I'm just letting you know that I'm judging this based on the graphic collection alone.
  
  The illustration of one of the stories, The Mezzotint, gave this book its "third star". Fouad Mezher was a new one to me, but I will definitely seek out more of his work. The style brings to mind that of
  Mike Mignola, but there is enough originality there for it to be more than a carbon copy.
• 
  cat

  I really wanted to love this, but it's just missing something. The stories being translated into comic form just seems to be...incomplete. I think if each was drawn out a bit more it may have seemed more together, but the stories just seemed to jump all around leaving me confused and constantly trying to catch up.
  
  The artwork it very nice. I enjoy the use of the dark colors. The added touch of making some of the characters 'creepy cute' was a bonus for me.
  
  Sadly I just couldn't finish this graphic novel. I made it half way through the 3rd story, but was just uninterested in trying to keep up.
  
  I may come back to this when my 'to read' like gets a dent.
• 
  S

  In spite of the great illustrations, this comic seems to have lost something in the interpretation. I have to agree that, although I have not read the original M.R. James stories,, this didn't convert well to graphic form. The stories seemed rather hard to follow and/ or understand (with the exception of "Lost Hearts). It has, however, made me interested in reading the original stories -- so at least there's that. 2*
• 
  Fiona

  Disappointing. The transition to graphic novel has disrupted the narrative flow so much , or has been done so poorly that the structure and pace needed to give these stories the qualities James is famous for have been destroyed. As a result the 'horror' is completely lost and what is left is a collection of nicely illustrated but pedestrian stories of misadventure.
• 
  Rhys Thomas

  This makes an excellent companion piece to the original stories, with the antiquarian aspect perfectly rendered by great artwork. The 'Jamesian wallop,' that moment in all the stories where you get the shiver, is less effective here because we get to see the big bad, and that can never be as creepy as James' suggestive prose.
• 
  Andy

  Nice adaptations of four M.R. James stories, all illustrated by four different artists, all of them new to me. I eagerly await the next volume of this work and to see if we'll see more from these four artists or four different ones.
• 
  Jacqui☕️

  I thought this graphic novel was okay. The stories are definitely creepy and most of the illustrations are well done, but I had a hard time really connecting. I basically skipped one of the stories completely because it was very boring.
• 
  Canavan

  ✭✭½
• 
  Doug Bolden

  Having read similar adaptive works in this vein (The Lovecraft Anthology 1 and 2, from the same publisher, comes to mind), and not having heard of this pair of books until just a couple of days ago, I was fairly excited. M.R. James is one of my favorite writers, naturally, and sometimes the visual additions by the comic-medium can add new flavors and ideas to a story. I liked the idea of taking a single collection - in this case, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, and adapting all of it instead of picking piecemeal from the more complete oeuvre (though that method also has its boons). I knew that the stories would have be cut down a little, tweaked a little, but I was ok with that. I read both of them over, mostly, a single sitting, and the results are mostly good, but a tad mixed.
  
  First, as intimated in my last sentence, these are fairly slight volumes that could have most likely been combined into a single volume (even a single volume at twice the cost) to give a more complete product. By splitting this in two, you furthermore split the stories into a slight imbalance. Depending on your take, the four in this one are a smidgen more minor (the second volume has two of the major James tales - "Oh, Whistle and I Will Come for You" and "Count Magnus" - by comparison). However, it would be mostly unfair to review this collection by the source material, so I will try and avoid that.
  
  The opening number, "Canon Alberic's Scrapbook," is perhaps the weakest across both volumes. The story has never been a particular favorite of mine, though I enjoy it alright, and the issues I had with it (namely the way the darker aspect just sort of leaps up and then is forgotten) are only exacerbated, here. Many panels are spent dealing with what counts for this story's build up, with the more climatic parts relegated to largely visual cuts that confuse more than shock the reader (the volume is dialed up maybe a bit too much to really congeal with the elements around it, though the woodcut is a nice touch). Likewise, the second story, "Lost Hearts," which does a better job of retaining the Jamesian text and blending with visuals, goes a tad too far to make a pair of betrayed children with hearts torn out by their killer seem monstrous. James is a surprisingly gory writer, in his way, but there is a sense of control in his gore.
  
  These adaptations hit their stride perhaps with "The Mezzotint," the third story, which utilizes an art style more generally fitting the mood of the story and embraces the flow of the James text better than the opening numbers. With tighter panels and an avoidance of excess to dial home the punch, it fairs quite well. Similarly, "The Ash-Tree," which suffers in the original maybe by being a bit too...obvious...does a good job, here, of blending art style to the story and holding to the Jamesian flow. If it delights in being a bit gruesome, it does so in balance with the style and does not try to enhance, which helps plopping spiders to sing just fine.
  
  This is not a bad collection. It is only a bit light and does not quite sell M.R. James as well as it could. Had this been a single volume, I think it would have gone down much better. I'll continue this review, essentially, in
  the second volume review.
• 
  Adrian

  Qualiter S. Bertrandus liberavit hominem quem diabolus diu volebat strangulare.
  
  Having read and enjoyed the
  Lovecraft Anthology I thought I'd turn my attention to these graphic novel adaptations of
  M.R. James's ghost stories.
  
  Taken from
  Ghost Stories of an Antiquary; the four stories are Canon Alberic's Scrap-book, Lost Hearts, The Mezzotint, and The Ash Tree.
  
  The adaptation by
  Leah Moore, daughter of
  Alan Moore, maintains the air of horror and stays faithful to the original stories.
  
  The anthology is completed in
  Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, Vol. 2
• 
  Rosie

  i really enjoyed this adaptation! rankings:
  
  1. canon alberic's scrapbook
  this is definitely bias speaking because this is the first visual adaptation of this story i've come across, but i absolutely loved the design of the Creacher here... and dennistoun was appropriately pathetic and twinky as i've always envisioned him
  
  2. the ash tree
  excellent design and i liked the panel work when the vicar was reading the sortes. generally i think this owes a lot to the lawrence gordon clark version but i can't complain considering how hard that one goes
  
  3. the mezzotint
  beautiful art which makes up for the fact that objectively this story is not that scary. the bbc adaptation was correct in adding the twist ending and i will defend that opinion to my death
  
  4. lost hearts
  i loved stephen here but the design of the ghost children failed to fall into the uncanny valley for me. a bit too dramatic and comic-ish to be scary