The Graphic Canon, Vol. 2 From "Kubla Khan" to the Bronte Sisters to The Picture of Dorian Gray

by KICK, RUSS

• ISBN13: 9781609803780
• ISBN10: 1609803787
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-10-02
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press

Summary

Vol. 2 gives us a visual cornucopia based on the wealth of literature from the 1800s. Several artists--including Maxon Crumb and Gris Grimly--present their versions of Poe's visions. We see two stunning but very different takes on the greatest American novel, Moby-Dick, including one by Eisner Award-winning artist Bill Sienkiewicz. That other great American novel, Huckleberry Finn, is adapted, uncensored for the first time, as Twain wrote it. The bad boys of Romanticism--Shelley, Keats and Byron--are visualized here, and so are the Brontë sisters. Philosophy and science are ably represented by ink versions of Nietzsche's T hus Spake Zarathustraand Darwin's On the Origin of Species. Frankenstein, Les Misérables, Oliver Twist, Crime and Punishment(a hallucinatory take on the pivotal murder scene), Thoreau's Walden(in spare line art by John Porcellino of King-Cat Comics fame), Leaves of Grassby Walt Whitman and two of Emily Dickinson's greatest poems are all present and accounted for. The inimitable Dame Darcy puts her unmistakable stamp on--what else?--the Alice in Wonderlandbooks. Christina Rossetti's haunting, dark poem "Goblin Market" will linger long after the last panel is viewed. And Pride and Prejudicehas never looked this splendiferous! Curveballs in this volume include fairy tales illustrated by the untameable S. Clay Wilson, a fiery speech from freed slave Frederick Douglass (rendered in stark black and white by Seth Tobocman) and selections from Wagner's colossal Ring cycle of operas, which won two Eisner Awards for artist P. Craig Russell, among many other canonical works.

Author Biography

Founder of the website The Memory Hole, which archived sensitive and difficult to find official documents, RUSS KICK has devoted much of his life to digging up what others hope to keep buried. His bestselling anthologies, including You Are Being Lied To and Everything You Know Is Wrong, have sold over half a million copies. The New York Times has dubbed Kick "an information archaeologist," Details magazine described Kick as “a Renaissance man,” and Utne Reader named him one of its “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World.” Russ Kick lives and works in Nashville, Tennessee, and Tucson, Arizona.