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A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel - TV Tropes

  • ️Thu Dec 19 2024

A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel (Comic Book)

Ready for some freaky interdimensional travel?

In 2012, the 1962 classic novel A Wrinkle in Time was made into a 392-page graphic novel.

It's largely a straight adaptation which is extremely faithful to the source material. The story is the same and the plot, drama and characterization beats are all there.

Awkward math nerd Meg Murry, her super genius younger brother Charles Wallace Murry, and a classmate from Meg's school, Calvin O'Keefe, are all transported across space, time, or alternate dimensions (it's not made clear) by three celestial beings, Mrs Who, Mrs Whatsit and Mrs Which, in order to find Meg and Charles Wallace's missing father. Along their journey, they travel across multiple planets that are significantly different from each other, and learn of a hidden cosmic battle going on, of which they glimpse only part.

Since this is a visual adaptation of the type of story told normally with prose, some adjustments had to be made. The scenes where characters travel between worlds, known as "tessering," were portrayed in the original novel by describing the sensations Meg's body experienced as she traveled interdimensionally. The comic opts instead to show these in great detail, across multiple pages, using both imagery and Meg's narrated thoughts, to try to portray something so abstract.

There have also been some cuts to the dialog to shorten dialog scenes or to slightly paraphrase things, which also results in the cutting of some small bits of backstory and character drama.

Tropes featured in A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel include:

  • Abusive Parents: It's implied that Calvin's mother is abusive in a flashback accidentally shown to everyone via a medium's crystal ball. The novel went into more detail about Calvin's family woes, while the comic simplifies it to him talking about being his family lacking the love that the Murrys have, and one scene of Calvin's mother smacking him for crying when he was little.
  • Adaptation Distillation: While the comic fits all of the book's story beats, it does compress them a bit, sometimes resulting in details that flesh out the world or add a bit more emotion to certain scenes being lost.
    • Long conversations and very emotional scenes, while still long, are a little bit shorter, with some details being removed. None of them are details that are key to the story, but some of them did originally reveal more information about the story.
    • Some of the 1950s slang has been cut out of the dialog, though a lot was still kept. There was also some paraphrasing to update the characters' speaking patterns to be more modernized.
    • The Camazotz arc is most heavily affected by the changes:
      • Much of what happens on the roads of Camazotz when heading to Central Intelligence is also cut out, including most of the conversation while in the city, and details such as speculating on whether or not the townspeople are robots. In the novel, that's when Charles Wallace talks about trying to "feel their minds" and feeling a "sort of pulsing." In the comic, that bit of dialog is pushed to a later scene, with no mention of him thinking the people might be robots.
      • Much of Charles Wallace's dialog when possessed by IT has been removed, particularly him describing details of Camazotz such as how people with illnesses are killed, explaining that doors are opened by rearranging atoms, and referring to IT as the "Happiest Sadist."
      • Meg feeling IT trying to control her heart and lungs and force them into rhythm was instead shortened to her internally narrating that she can feel IT trying to hypnotize her in her heart and lungs (which we actually see). When she returns to Camazotz later in the story, the part about her feeling her heart and lungs being affected by IT as soon as she enters the building was removed.
  • Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole: Inverted. A minor detail, where Mrs Which tells Meg to do something and Meg repeatedly says that it was Mrs Whatsit who gave the command, was corrected in the comic so that Meg instead correctly says it was Mrs Which who gave the command.
  • All Planets Are Earth-Like: Played straight and averted alike. Uriel is fairly similar to Earth, and Camazotz is basically Earth if it were an extremely oppressive version of 1950s USA, while other planets include one populated by sightless tentacle-covered giants, and a two-dimensional planet that nearly crushes everyone into flatness.
  • And I Must Scream: After escaping near-certain possession at the hands of IT by teleporting to another world via her dad's inexperienced tessering capability, we next see several pages of Meg's thoughts narrating how she can't see, can't move, can't talk, can only hear, and is extremely cold, all in front of a pitch black background. She even believes that she has turned to stone. We can see the speech of the people around her, and Meg making some frustrated attempts to speak that go nowhere.
  • Assimilation Plot: Camazotz is ruled by IT, a giant brain, which attempts to fully control everyone and force them to act exactly the same.
  • Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted, kinda. Meg is actually described in-universe as being ugly. But notably, she receives a bruise after picking a fight with a boy who is making fun of Charles Wallace, and she ends up sporting that bruise that lasts the entire story.
  • Brain Monster: IT is a giant brain on a pedestal which has the ability to possess people and speak through them, and its goal is to "think for everyone" and force everyone to be exactly the same.
  • Child Prodigy: Charles Wallace is a mega genius, and it leads to some arrogance, including a belief that he can resist IT's control of him... which he can't.
  • Cut-and-Paste Suburb: Camazotz is shown in the comic as containing rows of identical looking houses with people who all look the same and act the same. Being a visual medium, seeing it in comic form helps sell the sheer lack of deviation allowed in the world.
  • Decompressed Comic: Some scenes are stretched out with panels that set up atmosphere and contain no dialog, to set the mood.
  • Electric Torture: The possessed Charles Wallace (by way of IT) shows Meg and Calvin a room where a crying young boy is trapped, bouncing a ball against a floor, which electrocutes him every time he catches it. The reason for this punishment? Because the boy was slightly out of line and not bouncing his ball exactly the same way as the other kids. What's more, the original novel only said that the boy was reacting as if in pain every time he caught the ball, but not saying why. The comic goes further by adding "ZZAP" type onomatopoeia when the ball touches the boy's hand, making it explicitly clear that he's being electrocuted.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Meg tries to figure out what IT does not have, as whatever she has that IT does not, is her only weapon. She notes that hate is something IT understands easily. But IT doesn't understand love, which is how she's able to fight back.
  • Heart Symbol: Meg's heart is shown twice. The first time, it's a heart symbol, when she recognizes that her heartbeat, seemingly stopped during tessering, has started again. The second time her heart is shown, it's an actual realistic heart and not the ♥ symbol.
  • Inner Monologue: Used as a replacement for the dramatic narration of the novel and how it would show Meg's thoughts or describe what was physically happening to her in odd situations such as "tessering" to other worlds. In the comic, Meg's thoughts on these situations are shown directly.
  • Mind-Control Eyes: When Charles Wallace is possessed (or hypnotized as the characters call it) by IT, his eyes get a spiral look to them.
  • Painting the Medium: Done a few times to try to portray things that would be difficult to portray without narration:
    • During the first "tessering" between worlds, Meg tries to shout out Charles' name, and the speech balloon bends back and forces itself down her throat. This is an attempt to portray what the novel described as the word being "flung back" followed by her "choking" on it.
    • When the protagonists travel to a two-dimensional world and get flattened, the voice of one of the Mrs Ws is shown in a pixelated font to represent the "flatness" of her words.
  • The Power of Love: Meg tells Charles Wallace repeatedly, across multiple panels, that she loves him, in order to break IT's hold on him. It works.
  • Pragmatic Adaptation: It's not easy to convert a 200+ page novel (224 to 288 pages depending on edition) into a 392 page comic without at least leaving some things out, or to replace text narration with visuals and keep the same feeling intact, but this comic tries.
    • The original novel used narration to portray characters' feelings and to show their bodily sensations as they "tessered" between worlds. The comic handles this by showing Meg's narrated thoughts during dramatic scenes, and portraying the physical sensations of spacetime travel in an abstract visual form, across multiple pages.
    • Some scenes had to be changed to be more visually oriented to make it clear what's going on. For example, in the book, Meg thinks of taking a dissecting knife to IT in order to kill IT. In response, it beams a message directly to her, that if she kills IT, she also kills Charles Wallace due to him being linked. In the comic, Meg is about to smash IT with her fist, and IT's threat is delivered instead via a speech balloon.
  • Searching for the Lost Relative: The goal of Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin, who's simply along for the ride. Mr. Murry has been missing, and the Mrs Ws claim they can help find him.
  • Silent Scenery Panel: There are a bunch of these. Many locations are revealed by showing them off without any characters talking.
  • Splash Panel: The finale is one large two-page panel, followed by another panel that takes up a full page.
  • Stepford Suburbia: Camazotz, now that it's visually portrayed in the comic, is clearly seen as a suburban style town where people all act the same in unison. Except for those who don't, who are sent to Central Intelligence to be re-processed.
  • Taken for Granite: Meg thinks this is what's happened to her after a spacetime warp gone horribly wrong. Her internal narration literally says that she's been turned to stone. But she hasn't; she instead temporarily lost her ability to move, see, speak or even feel, but not hear.
  • Truer to the Text: The comic is far more accurate to the original novel than either movie adaptation, to the point of not only not changing any plot beats, but being close to verbatim with its dialog.
  • Uncanny Valley: Camazotz serves as this in-universe for the protagonists, particularly Calvin, who is extremely creeped out at the people's almost robotic actions, and repeatedly says he wants to leave.
  • Unsound Effect: On Camazotz, the uncanny way all of the kids skip rope and bounce a ball in absolute unison is shown along with the words "SKIP!" and "CATCH!" as if they were sound effects. Calvin is even seen freaking out in front of a backdrop consisting only of a white background and the words "SKIP!" "BOUNCE!" "CATCH!" repeated over and over.
  • Visual Pun: Used twice, in this visual medium of comics. Meg is once seen "shooting daggers out of her eyes" at someone, and another time when she is unhappy, she is seen with a raincloud over her head.
  • Wise Beyond Their Years: Charles Wallace, who acts more like an adult than a child. He is, however, very confident in himself to the point where he makes the mistake of thinking he can resist IT.
  • Witch Classic: Mrs Which changes into this when she assumes human form. While the novel described it, the comic directly shows the classic witch form visually.