“You’re ruining the original.”

So complain the literary purists, according to novelist Ben H. Winters, when a cherished work of literature is adapted for a graphic novel (or TV series, Broadway musical, etc.). Here the offending remake is Raymond Chandler’s Trouble Is My Business (Pantheon, May 20), a pulpy comic book based on the classic detective story, adapted by Arvind Ethan David and illustrated by Ilias Kyriazis, with colors by Cris Peter. Winters, who contributes the foreword, isn’t buying this specious objection: “It should go without saying that it is impossible to retroactively ruin a piece of art,” he writes, “especially a great work of art.”

This graphic retelling makes a few changes to Chandler’s original—it opens, for example, with a sequence from the childhood of the femme fatale—and brings a lurid cartoon style and sepia color palette to its portrait of 1940s Los Angeles. Redheaded Harriet Huntress is as curvy as Jessica Rabbit, her long cigarette holder practically an appendage. Detective Philip Marlowe is appropriately stone-faced and laconic, a lit cigarette drooping from his mouth in almost every frame; he’s a “war hero who knows how to wear his hat,” in the words of Anna Halsey, the heavyset, deskbound detective who hires him on the case ($25 a day, with a guarantee of $250 if he solves it). This isn’t Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep—but it’s definitely a Chandleresque mood all its own.

If Paul Auster’s 1985 novel, City of Glass, and its follow-ups were themselves a postmodern gloss on the noir detective story perfected by Chandler, then why not give them a graphic adaptation of their own—this time in black and white? A trio of artists contributes to Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy (Pantheon, April 8), each bringing a unique style to the project: David Mazzucchelli’s “crisp, confident lines” in City of Glass; Lorenzo Mattotti’s “sumptuous shading” in Ghosts; and Paul Karasik’s “inventive paneling” in The Locked Room. Our reviewer calls this omnibus an “engrossing marriage of literature and pulp.”

Does genre fiction lend itself more naturally to graphic adaptation than other books? A Wizard of Earthsea: A Graphic Novel (Clarion/HarperCollins, March 11) certainly captures the fablelike poetry of Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1968 fantasy classic; in a starred review, our critic calls it a “beloved cornerstone of the genre brought vividly to life through striking illustrations.” As he explains in a recent interview, illustrator and adapter Fred Fordham sought a more painterly, less cartoony style of artwork for the novel: “I try mixing textures and things to make it feel like an actual piece of art,” Fordham told Kirkus. “You don’t need to make something look like a comic for it to have all the benefits of the medium.”

More fantasy fiction geared to young readers (but to be enjoyed by all ages): The Raven Boys: The Graphic Novel (Viking, August 5) is an adaptation by Stephanie Williams of Maggie Stiefvater’s 2012 YA novel, illustrated by Sas Milledge, with colors by Abel Ko. Our reviewer found that far from ruining the original, Milledge’s “expressive and nostalgic artwork” lent “extra life and added dimensions” to this beloved tale of psychics, schoolboys, and ancient magic. Take that, naysayers!

Tom Beer is the editor-in-chief.