Guards! Guards!: A Discworld Graphic Novel - Softcover

Terry Pratchett

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0575070714 ISBN 13: 9780575070714

Publisher: Gollancz, 2000

Synopsis

Some night-time prowler is turning the (mostly) honest citizens of Ankh-Morpork into something resembling small charcoal biscuits. And that's a real problem for Captain Vimes, who must tramp the mean streets of the naked city looking for a 70-foot-long fire-breathing dragon which, he believes, can help him with his enquiries.

But there's more - now we get to see Ankh-Morpork in all its glory; illustrations so vibrant you can practically smell and taste the denizens of this delightful city (although with Corporal Nobbs, you might rather wish you didn't have to). All rendered in painstaking detail by Graham Higgins (who feels he now knows altogether far too much about the murky goings on inside Nobbs' head).

About this title

Review:

Terry Pratchett's eighth novel Guards! Guards! (1989) opened Discworld's popular "Ankh-Morpork City Watch" police-procedural comic fantasies. Now Captain Vimes and his motley watchmen go down those mean streets again in this graphic adaptation, assisted in their enquiries by two of the usual Pratchett Gang suspects: illustrator Graham Higgins, who drew the Mort comic, and adaptor Stephen Briggs, who condenses Discworld into theatre scripts.

Fans will know the story by heart. Alcoholic Vimes, corpulent coward Sergeant Colon and barely human runt Nobby are joined by the huge, innocent new Watch recruit Carrot (a dwarf by adoption), as Ankh-Morpork city enters a reign of terror. There's a ravaging dragon about, whose flame doesn't just toast people but vaporises them. Behind the dragon are its summoners, those hilariously seedy ritualists the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night. Behind the Brethren... but that would be telling.

Guards! Guards! is a substantial novel with a serpentine plot; boiling it down to 122 pages of speech balloons and glossy colour art must have been daunting. Some favourite Pratchett lines and running gags were thrown to the wolves, but the streamlined story still works well, and Higgins' quirky artwork adds a new dimension. Wickedly funny details lurk in street and crowd scene backgrounds. Eccentrics like Lady Sybil Ramkin, the "statueskew" dragon breeder, would be easy to turn into caricatures but are given a proper comic dignity.

A highly enjoyable read--but funnier if you know the original, where Pratchett had room to give his characters more depth. --David Langford

Review:

"Discworld takes the classic fantasy universe through its logical, and comic evolution".-- Cleveland Plain Dealer

About this edition

• Publisher: Gollancz
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0575070714
• ISBN 13: 9780575070714
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128
• Illustrator: Graham Higgins