Jane

September 25, 2017
In this modern take on Jane Eyre written by the cocreator of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Jane is an art student splitting a New York apartment with her sassy gay friend and working as a nanny in the penthouse apartment of aloof millionaire Edward Rochester. Jane pushes her tall, dark and boxy-shouldered employer into taking an interest in his daughter, coaxing him out of his shell and his three-piece suits. Naturally, that’s when Rochester’s past, and his supposedly dead first wife, come back to haunt them. McKenna is sure-footed in her first graphic novel, helped by artist Pérez (Tale of Sand), who fills the pages with pretty, lanky characters and vivid colors. This retelling smooths over the bumpy eccentricities of the novel: Charlotte Brontë’s characters certainly weren’t this good-looking, and her plot didn’t end in a blockbuster-movie–style action sequence. All the elements of the original are reworked into a more conventional romance plot, like a better-scripted, better-looking Fifty Shades of Grey.