JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH

An abbreviated retelling, translated from Greek, of the Jules Verne classic, illustrated with suitably adventuresome montages.

Papatheodoulou leaves out no significant events from the plot of the original, beginning with the coded message (here in reverse printed English rather than Latin) that sends Axel and his uncle on the titular journey. With a silent local guide, they head down a certain tunnel mouth in Iceland, past encounters with giant mushrooms and battling prehistoric sea monsters, to a dramatic reemergence through an erupting volcano off Sicily. Adding map fragments and clipped photos of spelunking gear to painted views of the white trio feeling their way through dimly lit passages and strange landscapes, Samartzi ably captures the original’s exhilarating sense of wonder. That sense comes through just as strongly in the co-published retelling of From the Earth to the Moon, though this version abruptly cuts off before the proto-astronauts’ return to Earth—and, more significantly, repeatedly works in a concept not found in Verne’s novel, that the whole lunar expedition is founded on the notion of turning a weapon of war to (as the subtitle has it) a “Cannon for Peace.” Journey offers a truer taste of the iconic author’s exhilarating vision than From the Earth, which is in essence a reboot that forcibly transforms the more martial original’s thematic swords into plowshares.

Together with its companion, quick voyages down and up, but both grandly visionary.