Of course I saw the Winx Club Vol. 1: Welcome to Magix graphic novel on NetGalley and decided I ABSOLUTELY HAD to read it! I loved the show as a kid; it’s got magic, fairies, lots of heels and crop tops; what more could a little me have needed in a series?
So the pros are right in your face!
This book literally looks like the show! You really think for a minute that they just took little screen grabs and used that to put the graphic novel together! This could honestly be half the case, but honestly, it’s not a thing to mind; the OG Winx club girls liked the first version that we used to watch on TV!
You also get the whole original cast, with the Specialists, the Trix, the teachers, all introduced to us. The drama with the sceptre is still the main thing; like it was in the first few episodes of the show!
But the graphic novel also relies heavily on the reader having watched the cartoon; this makes it great for people who watched the show, but probably won't attract people who just randomly pick it up!
Things have to deviate; but they deviate knowing that the reader will be familiar with the source material. The novel starts off with Bloom walking to the border with Stella and her parents; we’re not told what led Bloom here, just that her parents are sending her off to a magic school for fairies. We miss the whole thing with the troll and we don’t know anything about Blooms powers.
As a companion to the show, great! It’s a throwback, albeit one that reminds us that the original gang could be slightly obnoxious. As a standalone, it does not entirely work!
The book is also marketed at 7-12 year olds and I do feel like a few bigger shots of the girls, with their wings could have been a fun thing to include simply because half the appeal of Winx was that it was so pretty!