Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

❗This is a spoiler-free ARC review from NetGalley❗


Confession Time: I have never read The Count of Monte Cristo. I saw the book at a bookstore one time and it was GIGANTIC, so I am deeply intimidated by it. I do plan on reading it at some point in the future, however, but for now the manga will do. That being said, I can't be a judge to how accurate the manga is to the original book, but I can be a fair judge to everything else 😝😝

Other than that, this manga was pretty good. I really like the idea of classic novels being adapted into mangas, graphic novels, etc. It's fun, and becomes much easier to read for those who are having trouble with that complicated way of writing from the past (me, I'm talking about me). Again, I couldn't tell you how accurate it is to the book because I haven't read it, but I can't imagine it straying too far from the original.

I was intrigued by the story, it was very clever. I really really liked the character of the Count, once an honest man, now hell-bent on exacting revenge on those who wronged him and ruined his life many years ago. He shows great intelligence, and there's a contradiction to his character, from the kind man he once was and still is deep down, to this vengeful and angry man who will stop at nothing to achieve his goals, even if it means harming others in the process. There's really not much else I can tell you guys, this is a famous story and you probably know pretty well what I'm talking about.


This is a really cool way of adapting famous classic novels and I definitely recommend giving it a try.

This has long been one of my favorite stories since seeing the 2002 movie adaptation. After a few years, I decided to give the book a read, and that is a commitment! There is so much to this story and compressing it into this format is a risky proposition. I do feel the challenge was successfully met and loved jumping back into this world. This may be a great jump-in point for new readers and I'd love to have some of my reluctant reader students give it a look.

Title: The Count of Monte Cristo
Author: Alexandre Dumas

A manga retelling of the classic The Count of Monte Cristo.

What an interesting premise. Who had the idea of retelling classics in a format and genre that will attract younger readers? It is absolutely brilliant!

I am not a fan of classics, I find them extremely overbearing, too long and drawn out and it requires too much of my attention for me to ever finish one (I did end up finish one or two and I do have a classic or two on my shelf at home which I thoroughly enjoyed). Yet, which this new format and genre I actually ended up finishing the book and now can at least pretend to know what is going on when speaking to my more cultured friends.

Although I probably won't go out of my way to read any more Manga Classics retellings, I really did enjoy this book and I'm glad I had the opportunity to enjoy this story in a new form. This was also one of the few Manga -type books I have read and it is a style I really enjoy and will seek out when I have the opportunity (just not necessarily classics).

Definitely would recommend for high school aged children or people who dislike reading classics but still want to be able to keep up in 'cultured' conversation.

*Thank you to NetGallery and the publisher for the making the ARC available to me.

“Man is not meant to enjoy happiness so unmixed with sorrow and strife. Have I earned this joy?”

This story was called the Ultimate Revenge saga by many others. No wonder it is told time and again, so many years after it was first published.
Overall, this adaptation succeeded in bringing to life the characters and time period, full of charm and personality through the visualization of the great source material.
I can see both a younger and adult audience enjoying this, which might not be the case for the original novel.

I have previous experience reading manga with tens or over a hundred separate volumes, so they have a lot of page time to fully flesh out the story and manage for the message to sink in. So I having this manga be only one novel of about 400 pages, it has so constraints.
This manga is well aware of the limitations of this medium, and one can find a detailed explanation of how a trimming was used in order to condense a very lengthy novel into a 400-ish page manga. Considering this, it did a good enough job overall. If a reader did not have former knowledge of the plot, this manga would not feel incomplete or too rushed. But I must say that I might have gotten a bit overwhelmed and confused, if I wasn’t already familiar with the source material.
Unfortunately, due to the limitations regarding the number of pages, some good scenes had to be trimmed drastically, such as the finding the treasure of Monte Cristo and Edmond escaping prison after the death of Abbe. I would have liked more pages given to the first part, since it is the build up o the entire story. That way, the main characters were a bit more fleshed out before the bulk of the story starts.

I’ll praise the overall quality of the manga, the illustrations were great, very detailed and they have done a good job using the panels to help convey the story and set the atmosphere.
I especially liked the part in chapter 2 where Edmond is mentored in prison, it’s such an iconic scene that was well developed in the manga, even though it was quite dialog heavy.
I appreciate the illustrated family tree provided, using it as referencing while reading was helpful. The small panels with a character’s name and title are also helpful.

TW// suicide, incest (between cousins), mentions of cheating, murder of a child

I knew nothing about The Count of Monte Cristo before reading this version, but I love manga classics, so I decided to give this one a shot. The Count of Monte Cristo follows the story of a man who was on the verge of pure happiness when three men wrong him. He gets tossed in jail for several years. Upon his escape, he sets into motion a plan to get revenge against those who stole his happiness from him.

The original story was over 1,200 pages and had to be cut down to just over 400 pages for this manga version, so as you can guess, large chunks of the story had to be cut out. This had its pros and its cons for me. I found that cutting so much story out made it hard to keep track of the large cast of characters, but I know that cutting so much out probably helped with the pacing of this story. Classics are generally slow paced and dull, but condensing this story into a manga format helped make the story quicker and more interesting. I was always eager to find out what happened next and the story held my attention the whole time.

The Count of Monte Cristo had one of the most interesting and complex storylines that I’ve ever read in a classic. There’s tons of characters whose lives all intersect in well thought out ways. There’s plot twists occurring every few pages and every detail in the story was well thought out down to the last detail. This isn’t a story for light and easy reading though as you have to pay really close attention to understand how each of the characters connects to each other in order to see how clever the story was. It takes a genius to plan out and write such a complicated yet interesting story like this one.

The main character in this story who goes by many names was phenomenal. I felt for his pain and found him to be a really well rounded character. His actions sometimes had unfortunate side effects, but his dedication to his cause was incredible.

A big issue I had with this story was the romance. It was very forced and thrown in there right at the end. There’s not even a hint that the main character felt any romantic love for anyone besides his ex-lover, so the romance caught me off guard. The girl also referred to the main character as being somewhat of a father figure for her, so the romance gave me sort of incest vibes (even though I know it’s technically not).

As for the manga illustrations, the illustrator did incredible. All the characters were so unique and the drawings were beautiful. It was fun to get to see into the illustrator’s mind a little bit at the end of the book. It’s clear that the illustrator put a lot of research and effort into designing the best story possible.

Overall I’d recommend giving this manga classic a read if you can. It had a few flaws, but it was still really enjoyable and the story will stick with me for a very long time.

Eventhough I really love these Manga adaptations of classics, especially due to the beautiful drawings, I didn't really liked the story itself. The Count of Monte Cristo just isn't the classic for me.
But I still love these Manga adaptations and will read more of them.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Manga Classics: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas is a stunning new manga adaptation of a classic work of literature. This book is literally tailor-made for classroom use. The classic work of literature is here in a trimmed-down form that will hold the student's interest while maintaining the integrity of the plot. Meanwhile, the cool and stylish manga-style artwork is sure to attract the attention of reluctant readers.

As a teacher myself, I am definitely happy to see this book and this series in general. I often have to teach classic works of literature to students who are reading below grade level, who are still learning English, or who have no interest in reading books without pictures. These books are a life-saver for teachers like me. If you're intrigued by the description, or if you're a fan of manga, I highly recommend that you check out this book, which is available now!

This was an awesome tale of revenge, I haven’t read the book, and I did think some of the plot wasn’t explained, reading in the end I did learn that some parts were skipped not to make the story as long, but I do think it was necessary to show that parts. I did like the manga drawing.

I received a free ARC of this manga through NetGalley, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Having never read the actual story, this intrigued me enough to give the classic a go. I enjoyed the art and the flow of the story. Can't wait to give it a read someday soon.

Dumas' "The Count of Monte Cristo" is an intimidating book to a lot of readers. This is a classic manga is great in getting the story out there and putting it in a friendly way.

The adaption is done wonderfully you can tell this is really deidcated to the true story. This hits it all and give you that nostogalic story. The art work has done really well and is very good in attention to detail.

Dumas' "The Count of Monte Cristo" is an intimidating book to a lot of readers, and not for the contents but the brick-sized heavy editions it comes in. Even the abridged versions are still very long, much longer than this manga adaptation is at a little over 400 pages.

The Manga Classic series by Udon & Morpheus is therefore an excellent means of getting these readers engaged with the ponderous classics of yore that they might be otherwise circumventing due to length, and they've done it without sacrificing quality. Whoever is scriptwriting their adaptations has done an excellent job, and the writer that adapted "Manga Classics: The Count of Monte Cristo" deserves all the kudos. I've read Dumas' novel twice, and can tell you this manga is very faithful to the original story. It hits all the hallmark points, and doesn't sum it all so much that you miss nuance and miss the feel for time and place and characters. They've been careful to explain their storytelling choices in the notes as well, so you will know their reasons for them.

And the artwork is good quality as well. Classics readers don't usually like manga and might be dismissive of the art style, but objectively and assessing it on its own merit, it's good. I happen to think that it would've looked much better if coloured than black and white, or perhaps more "shaded" and grayscale inking than pure black & white, because it'd have made it look more "of the period," as well as if they hadn't gone for the cliché depiction of hair in manga. But those are my personal aesthetic preferences for historical manga.

Additionally, I would recommend the publishers to be more careful with their editions, because pages are out of order. In the copy they provided, you start by the end of the story and end at the start of the story because the pages seem to have been shuffled backwards. From comments I heard, it's something that's happened before, too.

This has been one of my favorite classic novels for a long time, so I greatly enjoyed this adaption. The manga adaptation was well put together. Of course it’s a long story, this was lengthy as well in order to preserve details. I enjoyed reading this even though I already was familiar with the plot and characters. The art was nice and wasn’t distracting from the seriousness of the story. Well done.

This story is very good . The main character I felt for him and all he had to go through, but I don't like how he took revenge on those who did him wrong. This classic is full of betrayal, some that are forgivable and some that isn't. I love the illustrations of this classic and would read more like it. I also liked the ending .

*I received this book for free through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

Too confusing.

This didn't download correctly. What I could see kept jumping all over my screen and was blurry. The art was okay. It was a cool idea to turn known stories into manga.

I am not much of a classic reader as I sometimes find it too long or slow paced. So turning this classic into Manga just made the story easier to read. The illustrations made it enjoyable as it allows you to easily picture the story. I would recommend this to those who are like me — who are not fond of reading classics but would still want to know the story.

My library doesn't buy manga classics, but I will suggest that we should be purchasing them. I read The Count of Monte Cristo years ago, so my memory is a little sketchy, but I felt like this followed the original story faithfully.

I have never read The Count of Monte Cristo before this, but this book definitely made me want to read it! Absolutely loved the story! And as always with the Manga Classics, loved the art. Great book, definitely recommend.

Thank you for the publisher for providing me with an e-arc.

This is such an interesting read to me since I got to read a manga adapation of a great classics. This definitely made me intrigued in the original book. I really like the depiction of the characters in here and they are written so well. Will be reading the original Count of Monte Cristo

An intriguing comic retelling of the eternal classic novel by Alexandre Dumas! More classic books deserve the same approach!

I truly adore this series. The Count is Monte Cristo is the sixth one I have read, and I would say it is second only to Les Miserable in its engagement possibilities. The artistry is complex enough to support the depth of the story and clear enough to keep readers of the manga style page-turning. I sincerely hope that UDON and Morpheus continue to translate classics into this format. I can see lots of use for them both for pleasure and for education.

Thank you to Norman Poon, Artist, the publishers, and NetGalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.