Peter Pan Goes to War: the Reimaging and Exploration of J.M. Barrie’s Story as a Historically Realistic Graphic Novel

Abstract

The adaptability of stories helps ensure their survival in the popular consciousness and fairy tales in particular exhibit this characteristic. The numerous retellings, reinterpretations and recreations of these beloved tales ensure that they endure to enchant a new generation. One such fairy tale which continues to lend itself to adaptation is J.M. Barrie’s elusive creation, Peter Pan. Kurtis J. Wiebe and Tyler Jenkins’s graphic novel, Peter Panzerfaust (2012–2017), is one of the most recent retellings of this beloved tale, and forms the focus of this chapter. In this story, Peter is removed from the fantasy of make-believe and transposed onto the realistic historical setting of wwii. I consider various instances throughout the graphic novel that have appropriated Barrie’s elements from the Peter Pan story and reinterpreted and recreated these elements to suit not only the historical wartime milieu, but also the graphic novel as new medium. Hutcheon’s adaptation theory and how adaptations are a form of palimpsest will form the basis for interpreting the interplay between the Peter Pan story and the graphic novel through the analysis of features such as dialogue and imagery (particularly that of Peter Pan) thereby showing that through this process of recreation and reinterpretation of the original text, this graphic novel can be seen as a successful adaptation.