The Christmas Carol Project | “I Was a Boy Here!”

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, which means that it's also time to get back to our annual look at everyone's favorite Christmas/ghost story, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. If you're new to this, the idea is to pay attention to the way Scrooge's story has been interpreted and adapted to other media over the years. I’ve broken the story into scenes (or sometimes parts of scenes) in order to look at their translation to 19 different films, TV shows, and comics.

Here's the list of adaptations in the order I'll take them:

• Classics Illustrated #53 (1948)
• Marvel Classics Comics #36 (Marvel; 1978)
• A Christmas Carol: The Graphic Novel (Classical Comics; 2008)
• A Christmas Carol (Campfire; 2010)
• "A Christmas Carol" in Graphic Classics, Vol. 19: Christmas Classics (Eureka; 2010)
• Teen Titans #13 (DC; 1968)
• A Christmas Carol cartoon (1971) starring Alastair Sim
• The Stingiest Man in Town (1978) starring Walter Matthau
• Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983) starring Scrooge McDuck
• A Christmas Carol (2009) starring Jim Carrey
• A Christmas Carol (1910) starring Marc McDermott
• Scrooge (1935) starring Seymour Hicks
• A Christmas Carol (1938) starring Reginald Owen
• Scrooge (1951) starring Alastair Sim
• "A Christmas Carol" episode of Shower of Stars (1954) starring Fredric March
• Scrooge (1970) starring Albert Finney
• A Christmas Carol (1984) starring George C. Scott
• The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) starring Michael Caine
• A Christmas Carol (1999) starring Patrick Stewart

Annual Disclaimer: This obviously isn’t an exhaustive list. I started with my favorites, added some that people have recommended over the years, and then threw in some others that just caught my attention. We can talk about the ones I left out, but I will say that the reason Mr Magoo’s Christmas Carol isn’t here is because I hate it with a passion. It’s neither a good Christmas Carol nor a good Mister Magoo cartoon. There’s also no Scrooged or An American Christmas Carol or Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. When I first started this, I tried to stick to more or less faithful adaptations, but even though I've since added Teen Titans to the list, I'd rather that be a fun exception and not have to figure out where I'm going to draw the line.

This is going to take years. Every December we'll look at one scene, starting with Dickens' version, then exploring individual adaptations of that scene in the days leading up to Christmas. In this year's scene the Ghost of Christmas Past takes Scrooge to the first stop on their trip: Scrooge's boyhood school. It's an easy scene to drop for the shorter adaptations, but when it does show up, I always love the opening images of children playing in snowy countryside.