REVIEW: Mary Shelley: The Eternal Dream is a Rudimentary Introduction to the Literary Icon

Mary Shelley: The Eternal Dream Cover. Written by Alessandro Di Virgilio. Illustrated by Manuela Santoni. Translated by Lucy Lenzi. Letters by Giulia Gabrielli. Published by Comixology Originals and Becco Giallo on March 28, 2023.

Mary Shelley: The Eternal Dream charts the early life of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley, from her days as a youngster yearning for escape to her romance with Percy Bysshe Shelley and her eventual inspiration to write Frankenstein.

Mary Shelley: The Eternal Dream

Alessandro Di Virgilio (Writer), Manuela Santoni (Artist), Lucy Lenzi (Translator), Giulia Gabrielli (Letters)
Comixology Originals and BeccoGiallo
March 28, 2023

Mary Shelley: The Eternal Dream Cover. Written by Alessandro Di Virgilio. Illustrated by Manuela Santoni. Translated by Lucy Lenzi. Letters by Giulia Gabrielli. Published by Comixology Originals and Becco Giallo on March 28, 2023.

I love a good biography, no matter the format — prose or graphic novel. When I saw Comixology Originals and Italian publisher BeccoGiallo releasing five graphic biographies on well-known European figures, I knew I had to review them for WWAC. The first of the biographies that caught my eye was Mary Shelley: The Eternal Dream.

Here’s something you need to know—in my house, we adore Mary Shelley. Granted, it’s my twin who’s the major fan, but by dint of that, I know a lot about Mary Shelley, née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin.

I wasn’t expecting an in-depth biography of the Frankenstein author from Mary Shelley: The Eternal Dream, but this book is a bare-bones retelling of only part of an incredibly eventful life. Not only does the story end with the creation of Frankenstein, which Shelley wrote when she was only 18 years old, but the book also takes several detours to tell readers the histories of the people in Shelley’s life. While the context is appreciated, it sometimes feels like Shelley is a passenger in her own book.

 

Mary Shelley: The Eternal Dream Page 16. Written by Alessandro Di Virgilio. Illustrated by Manuela Santoni. Translated by Lucy Lenzi. Letters by Giulia Gabrielli. Published by Comixology Originals and Becco Giallo on March 28, 2023.

Perhaps I’m being harsh on Mary Shelley: The Eternal Dream for choosing to end when it does. There’s a narrative reason for it, but one which only becomes clear in the last pages of the book. My frustration at this curtailed retelling comes from recently having read a bunch of biographies about women which end before the most exciting moments of their lives. Again, Shelley was 18 when she wrote Frankenstein. She died at the age of 53. That’s a lot of life that this book straight-up ignores.

As fascinating as the events of 1816, the Year Without a Summer, were, haven’t we all heard the story of the Shelleys and Lord Byron coming up with stories during that dark season in Villa Diodati? It’s a really popular story—I feel like people know the Villa Diodati story better than they actually know the story of Frankenstein.

There are so many incredible moments from Shelley’s life after Frankenstein, even immediately after, like the interesting and extremely sexist debate around the authorship of her book. How great would it have been for Mary Shelley: The Eternal Dream to examine how a young woman fought for ownership of her ideas? What about all the moments later in Shelley’s life? What about her radical politics, which she’d learned from her father? Or her feminist activities, a legacy of her mother’s? The whole affair with who was supposed to own Percy Shelley’s heart? So. Many. Stories! And Mary Shelley: The Eternal Dream doesn’t give us any of them.

I would have been more understanding about what was excluded from Mary Shelley: The Eternal Dream if the moments included in the book had given Shelley her proper due. But I actually found a lot of the panels confusing. This is not a book that satisfies the reader—it leaves you begging for more because some sections make no sense. There’s the introduction of Shelley’s stepmother and stepsister that is so surface-level that you will need to at least visit a Wikipedia page to understand the context. Instead of fleshing out these stories, we get pages of poetry that Shelley may have been privy to while hiding during her father’s parties. Those pages are stylistic but tell us little about Shelley or her motivations. We barely get an essence of Shelley the person in The Eternal Dream.

I’m also not a fan of the art style in Mary Shelley: The Eternal Dream. I’ve looked through Manuela Santoni’s website, and her art is lovely, vivacious, and evocative. And I’m not critiquing the monochromatic approach because Santoni has examples of her gorgeous black-and-white illustrations. But the art in this book looks rushed and unfinished. The panels are inconsistent—some of them look clean, others have messy edges. Is that because I got a review copy? I did notice a few typos, as well, so I’m not sure. I didn’t quite understand the use of red. Sometimes red is used to depict pain, other times for anger and for gestures. It’s implementation was confusing.

Mary Shelley: The Eternal Dream Page 17. Written by Alessandro Di Virgilio. Illustrated by Manuela Santoni. Translated by Lucy Lenzi. Letters by Giulia Gabrielli. Published by Comixology Originals and Becco Giallo on March 28, 2023.

Confusing and far too simple is how I’d describe Mary Shelley: The Eternal Dream. That the book is historical fiction and not a factual retelling doesn’t seem a good enough excuse for it to be this bland. Artistic license is fine, especially when the subject existed so long ago, but what we get in this book is an inability to grasp what made Shelley such a long-lasting feminist literary icon. She wasn’t perfect by any means, but this cookie-cutter portrayal does her no justice. Will somebody with absolutely no knowledge of Mary Shelley enjoy this book? Not really, because the book gives you so little information, you may spend a fair amount of time reading up on Shelley and the people in her life. Which raises the question: who is this book for? Because it won’t be satisfying to newbies or fans.

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Louis Skye

Louis Skye

A writer at heart with a fondness for well-told stories, Louis Skye is always looking for a way to escape the planet, whether through comic books, films, television, books, or video games. E always has an eye out for the subversive and champions diversity in media. Pronouns: E/ Em/ Eir

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