A Wizard Of Earthsea graphic novel faithfully captures the magic of Le Guin's world

Fred Fordham’s adaptation tightens up Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic novel while adding dimension with gorgeous illustrations.

By Samantha Nelson | March 5, 2025 | 10:00am

Image: A Wizard Of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin and Fred Fordham (Clarion Books)

Books Reviews Ursula K. Le Guin

A Wizard Of Earthsea graphic novel faithfully captures the magic of Le Guin's world

Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1968 novel A Wizard Of Earthsea is one of the seminal works of fantasy, but it has an unfortunate history of adaptations that have whitewashed its characters and ignored its themes in favor of sculpting Le Guin’s work into a more conventional fantasy tale with monsters to be slain and wars against evil to be fought. Fred Fordham’s graphic novel adaptation thankfully bucks that trend, staying faithful to Le Guin’s beautiful prose and story while bringing her world to life with lush illustrations.

Fordham has plenty of experience adapting literary classics, including To Kill A Mockingbird and The Great Gatsby, and he does a phenomenal job with the tale of the young wizard Ged, also called Sparrowhawk, who has to balance his talent against the perils of his pride. Le Guin wrote A Wizard Of Earthsea for children but it’s packed with depth that can be appreciated by all ages. The graphic novel has that same richness with the added benefit of illustrations that could further widen its appeal.

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Le Guin invented the concept of a boy wizard attending wizarding school, but her novel feels more like an epic pulled from antiquity than Harry Potter. In its earliest panels portraying the island of Gont, the graphic novel explains that Ged will eventually be perhaps the greatest wizard of all, but this is a story long before that time, of a lonely child who picks up a bit of magic from his aunt which sets him down a path of power and danger.

Ged’s story begins like that of Rand al’Thor or Luke Skywalker as he discovers the strength of his abilities when his small, isolated home is exposed to great danger. But A Wizard Of Earthsea is an unconventional hero’s journey. There is no great evil Ged is destined to fight, save for the dark being he accidentally summons into the world when trying to show off in a duel against an arrogant classmate—who is certainly a precursor to Draco Malfoy. While Ged comes into great power at the school of Roke and meets one lifelong friend, even attending that academy is portrayed less as a measure of his great talent but as a questionable decision Ged made because he didn’t have the patience for the more thorough magic taught by the naturalist Ogion.

That reframing helps make Ged a more complex and relatable protagonist than a typical fantasy chosen one. He is better at some things than his peers, but the graphic novel makes it clear that kindness and discipline are often equally as important as raw talent. The most important lessons Ged learns are to accept his limits and the help of others, a valuable moral for readers of all ages that also feels deeper than the tendency of fantasy heroes to just dig deep within themselves for new wells of power and determination.

Visually, blocks of prose take on the form of scripture with uneven edges, which fits well with the idea of Ged’s story as an ancient tale. Fordham’s art style resembles the soft hues of watercolor, with stunning landscapes of goats grazing beneath Gont’s sole mountain or Ged sailing on darkened seas. But his character details are just as fine, showing a young Ged’s delight at his first work of magic quickly turning to terror as he deals with the unintended consequences. A striking set of panels shows Ged aging interspersed with small images of branches changing with the seasons.

Fordham also finds creative ways of portraying magic itself, with Ged and other wizards both speaking in runes and weaving them in the air as they charm animals and invoke illusions. A powerful dragon Ged must negotiate with is portrayed as glowing green eyes and a kindle of flame breath mostly obscured by mist, making him far more imposing than the fully realized dragons Ged easily dispatches. Action blends with a bit of humor and real temptation, as the dragon laments that men aren’t as greedy as they used to be when he can’t bribe Ged to leave him alone with gems, but instead offers Ged the answers about his shadowed foe he spends most of the book fleeing.

The contrast between light and dark is particularly dramatic as the shadows are painted stark black against white light. Stormy seas open to welcoming sun and a rainbow and fog, and smoke subtly enhances the landscapes of Ged’s wanderings. When Ged turns himself into a bird and flies into a moonlit sky to avoid evil forces, the transition from darkness to a brighter shore neatly demonstrates the distance that he has fled.

A Wizard Of Earthsea is remarkable for introducing so many concepts and mysteries that feel like they could easily be spun into hundreds more pages, like a pair of exiled nobles Ged encounters on a deserted island or an ancient rock that wishes to give the wizard the power to conquer the world. Fortunately, Fordham avoids the temptation to embellish, keeping the story taught and wondrous. If anyone attempts to adapt Le Guin’s work to film or television again, this is a model they should hold to as tightly as her wizards guard their true names.