The Graphic Canon, Volume 3: From Heart of Darkness to Hemingway to Infinite Jest

Representing huge swaths of literature in visual manners is a huge undertaking, as is trying to review all the intricacies of such a volume. Because it's that time of the year for me, I do not know if my brain or energy level is up for the task of describing these myriad adaptations, but suffice it to say that as a whole this book is impressive, thought-provoking, striking, daring in parts, and excellent for fostering discussions about representation and analysis. Russ Kick's third volume of the Graphic Canon contains a huge range of styles and interpretations of literature beginning from the late 19th century and extending to the end of the 20th, and it touches on more works from outside of the traditional European canon than the second volume did.

My favorite things in this book are the scattered "Three Panel Review" comics by Lisa Brown. They just tickled my funny bone with the way they simultaneously commented on and distilled books into comic strips.

A good number of the entries are more visual interpretations that do not have much textual accompaniment, such as

Graham Rawle's photo-diaramas of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Laura Plansker's photo-diaramas of Animal Farm

T. Edward Bak's spare adaptation of The Maltese Falcon

PMurphy's impressionistic panels from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Onsmith's frenetic panels interpreting J.G. Ballard's Crash

Other entries melded illustrations with the original text, such as Anthony Ventura's interpretation of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

Other entries used more sequential art styles and conventions to both adapt and interpret literary works.

Sonia Leong's appropriately manga-flavored version of Reginald

David Lasky re-imagining James Joyce's Ulysses as mini-comics

Peter Kuper adapting more Kafka tales in paranoid, impressionistic ways

Trevor Alixopulos capturing the wild, deranged sides of Lord of the Flies

Jason Cobley coordinating a contextualized "Dulce et Decorum Est"

C. Frakes 1-page chapter summaries of The Age of Innocence

There is even a smattering of nonfiction pieces, such as Steve Rolston's adaptation of an Ernest Hemingway newspaper article "Living on $1000 a Year in Paris."

One of the aspects I appreciate most about this book is its selection of artists. I was unfamiliar with many until seeing them here for the first time, and I am glad to have been introduced to their work. As you can see from the images above, there is so much to peruse, mull over, and digest in these images. This book is chock full of literary and aesthetic goodness.

I have not been able to find many reviews about this volume in particular, but the entire project has generated much praise and good will. Henry Chamberlain called Volume 3 "such a mighty undertaking that you just can’t go wrong." The folks at Publishers Weekly named it one of the summer's best books and called it "the most beautiful book of 2013."

The Graphic Canon, Volume 3 was published by Seven Stories Press. Excerpts, information, reviews, and more can be found at the book's official site.

Thank you so much to Jesse for the review copy!

The Graphic Canon, Volume 2: From "Kubla Khan" to the Brontë Sisters to The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Graphic Canon is an ambitious project that began earlier this year with the first of a projected trilogy of tomes. It has garnered positive attention from a number of prominent sources, including The New York Times, and this the second volume ranges roughly from the Romantic to Victorian literary eras. Not all of the entries are sequential art, and some are stand alone illustrations or text pieces with a few illustrations. Most of them have not been published before. This volume focuses more on British literature than the prior one, which was more international, but it still contains a number of winning entries from exciting creators, including established figures as well as up-and-comers.
Among my favorites are:

• Underground comix fixture Hunt Emerson's adapted excerpt from Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
• Alice Duke's vibrant version of Coleridge's "Kubla Khan"
• Anthony Ventura's strong take on Shelley's "Ozymandias"
• Shawn Cheng's cartoony version of the Brothers Grimm's "How Six Made Good in the World"
• Neil Cohn's earthy adaptation of Keat's "La Belle Dame Sans Merci"
• The reproduction of William Blake's epic "Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion"
• Tim Fish's fine, melodramatic take on Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights
• Alternative and mini-comic maven John Porcellino's expert, spare excerpt from Thoreau's Walden
• Dave Morice's fantastic, superheroic version of Whitman's Leaves of Grass
• Michael Keller and Nicolle Rager Fuller portraying Chapter 4 of Darwin's On The Origin of the Species
• Seth Tobocman's powerful, impressionistic version of Frederick Douglass's "The Message from Mount Misery"
• Corinne Mucha's depiction of a "Letter to George Sand" by Gustave Flaubert
• Dame Darcy's frightening, claustrophobic, and beautiful take on Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
• The gallery of various Lewis Carroll-inspired art works
• Eran Cantrell's dark, forceful version of "Jabberwocky"
• Megan Kelso's crisp, expressive look at Eliot's Middlemarch
• Ellen Lindner's gorgeous take on Tolstoy's Anna Karenina
• In an excerpt from the Introducing series, Laurence Gane and Piero's impressive and referential delineation of Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra
• Danusia Schejbal and Andrzej Klimowski's appropriately moody depiction of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

As you can tell, there is a lot of ground, both in terms of content and styles, covered within these pages. Most of it is not for young children, but other than the inclusion of an excerpt of Venus in Furs, nothing is beyond the ken of typical high school students. It seems that editor/provocateur Russ Kick played it a little safer with this volume. Maybe he is saving up "the good stuff" for the final volume, which will be more contemporary in scope?

Reviews I have read about volume two might not be as positive as they were about volume one, but they are still strongly in its favor. Emphasizing the worth of this book, Publishers Weekly wrote, "Apart from containing insightful introductions and wonderful artwork, these selections have a not-to-be-underestimated pedagogical value that educators will no doubt find invaluable in bringing classic works of literature to a 21st-century audience immersed in visual culture." Glenn Dallas offered a more tempered opinion, calling this collection "pretty hit-or-miss, depending on the source material and the artist," adding, "but it’s still an impressive sampling of historical and literary touchstones." Buzz Poole concluded that most of what is in this volume "exceeds expectations for how it absorbs familiar texts and shapes new lives into them, reminding readers how words read in a book can color so much of life that exists far beyond the page."

The Graphic Canon, Volume 2 is published by Seven Stories Press. A YouTube preview is available from the editor. Also, a number of preview images are available here from Brain Pickings.

Thank you, Gabe, for the review copy!

The Graphic Canon 1: From the Epic of Gilgamesh to Shakespeare to Dangerous Liaisons

The first book of a proposed trilogy, this volume speaks well of what is to come with a strong initial offering. The works contained and excerpted here range from epic poems to plays, poetic fragments to novels, folktales to religious tomes, short stories to essays. They are illustrated by a who's who of comics creators both new and old, including Robert Crumb, Rick Geary, Gareth Hinds, Roberta Gregory, Valerie Schrag, Fred Van Lente, Ryan Dunlavey, Peter Kuper, and Will Eisner. 75% of the book's contents were also commissioned for this volume, so most of it is unavailable elsewhere. Excerpts from prior publications include great bits from longer adaptations such as Hind's Beowulf, Chwast's The Canterbury Tales and Divine Comedy, and Van Lente and Dunlavey's Action Philosophers series.

Although I cannot say all of the entries are tremendous, I can say that the majority are winning. Of the new adaptations, some of my favorites are:

• Schrag's beautifully rendered version of the randy anti-war comedy Lysistrata
• Kevin and Kent Dixon's comical retelling of the Epic of Gilgamesh
• Hunt Emerson's cartoonish version of the journey through Dante's Inferno
• Andrice Arp's rollicking rendering of "The Fisherman and the Genie" from The Arabian Nights
• Shawn Cheng's detailed depiction of the rebel characters from the classic Chinese novel Outlaws of the Water Margin
• Hinds' gritty excerpt from Gulliver's Travels set in the land of the giants, Brobdingnag
• Kuper's striking adaptation of "A Modest Proposal"
• Eric Johnson's dreamlike drawings of Spenser's The Faerie Queene 

A word of warning, which is probably not needed for most people familiar with any of these classics: this book contains depictions of nudity, sex, flatulence, violence, suffering, swearing, and philosophy. I would not suggest this book for small children without informed parental approval, though I think the vast majority of the book could easily be shared with most older students.

The Graphic Canon's editor, Russ Kick, is known more as a provocateur than a comics aficionado. He is a writer and editor of multiple books published by The Disinformation Society, including 50 Things You're Not Supposed to Know. He also created and maintained (until 2009) the website The Memory Hole, an archive of politically inconvenient government documents and photographs. He and his site gained notoriety when he published photographs of hundreds of coffins containing US military casualties of the Iraq War. Kick speaks extensively about his work and choices for this imposing graphic anthology in this interview with Joe Nolan.

Most of the reviews I have read about this book have remarked on its impressive range of styles and works. Francisca Goldsmith gave the book a starred review in the School Library Journal, calling this anthology "all diamond, no rough" and "a required purchase for any library." Mallory Gevaert wrote that it "is a whirlwind tour both through the classics and the numerous artistic styles and interpretations available to the modern comic-book writer. Sure, it’s educational; moreover, it’s fun." Wayne Alan Brenner summed up his rave review of the book, "The diversity and excellence of this volume, which goes to the 1700s, is just about overwhelming. And by the time we've recovered from the awe, around October, the next volume will be out."

A wealth of information about the book, including preview images, its stories, reviews, and authors, can be found at the series' blog.