A man-behind-the-curtain look at a seminal graphic novel.
When Moore and Campbell teamed up on the grim, nuanced From Hell in the 1990s, they created an epochal work that remains a highlight even within the legendary Moore’s unparalleled oeuvre. Far from the playground of Technicolor superheroes, the book’s unflinching black-and-white portrayal of Jack the Ripper’s London set the standard for “mature” graphic novels. From Moore’s exhaustive research to Campbell’s incredible attention to detail, the book remains worthy of close reading, making Campbell’s behind-the-scenes commentary an indispensable reference. Campbell offers access to some of Moore’s infamously detailed scripts, providing an entree into the inner workings of his twisted, genius mind—and the daunting task his artist partners face in having to translate those scripts into pictures. The interplay between Moore and the dryly humorous Campbell leads to a series of amusing exchanges that provide insight into their working relationship. For example, when the script calls for two of the main characters to traverse, in a carriage, a bridge that the enterprising Campbell discovered, through photo references, was not yet finished at the time of the story, he sent Moore a photocopy of the partial bridge with a drawing of the carriage plummeting off it, suggesting that perhaps they send the characters “round the long way.” Campbell also includes his daughter’s somewhat disturbing but highly entertaining “Ripper File,” complete with a drawing of a “rotton kidney.” Beyond the story notes, Campbell’s commentary provides insight into the artistic process, including his research methodology and his working relationship with assistants who helped with backgrounds, building layouts and other details.
Aimed at a very narrow audience, but a treasure trove for would-be comic scribes and artists and independent comic aficionados.Pub Date: May 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-60309-303-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Top Shelf Productions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
Categories: GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS | MYSTERY & CRIME
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Design veteran Chwast delivers another streamlined, graphic adaptation of classic literature, this time Mark Twain’s caustic, inventive satire of feudal England.
Chwast (Tall City, Wide Country, 2013, etc.) has made hay anachronistically adapting classic texts, whether adding motorcycles to The Canterbury Tales (2011) or rocket ships to The Odyssey (2012), so Twain’s tale of a modern-day (well, 19th-century) engineer dominating medieval times via technology—besting Merlin with blasting powder—is a fastball down the center. (The source material already had knights riding bicycles!) In Chwast’s rendering, bespectacled hero Hank Morgan looks irresistible, plated in armor everywhere except from his bow tie to the top of his bowler hat, sword cocked behind head and pipe clenched in square jaw. Inexplicably sent to sixth-century England by a crowbar to the head, Morgan quickly ascends nothing less than the court of Camelot, initially by drawing on an uncanny knowledge of historical eclipses to present himself as a powerful magician. Knowing the exact date of a celestial event from more than a millennium ago is a stretch, but the charm of Chwast’s minimalistic adaption is that there are soon much better things to dwell on, such as the going views on the church, politics and society, expressed as a chart of literal back-stabbing and including a note that while the upper class may murder without consequence, it’s kill and be killed for commoners and slaves. Morgan uses his new station as “The Boss” to better the primitive populous via telegraph lines, newspapers and steamboats, but it’s the deplorably savage civility of the status quo that he can’t overcome, even with land mines, Gatling guns and an electric fence. The subject of class manipulation—and the power of passion over reason—is achingly relevant, and Chwast’s simple, expressive illustrations resonate with a childlike earnestness, while his brief, pointed annotations add a sly acerbity. His playful mixing of perspectives within single panels gives the work an aesthetic somewhere between medieval tapestry and Colorforms.
Chwast and Twain are a match made in heaven.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-60819-961-7
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
Categories: GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Continuing his apparent mission to refract the whole of English culture and history through his personal lens, Ackroyd (Thames: The Biography, 2008, etc.) offers an all-prose rendering of Chaucer’s mixed-media masterpiece.
While Burton Raffel’s modern English version of The Canterbury Tales (2008) was unabridged, Ackroyd omits both “The Tale of Melibee” and “The Parson’s Tale” on the undoubtedly correct assumption that these “standard narratives of pious exposition” hold little interest for contemporary readers. Dialing down the piety, the author dials up the raunch, freely tossing about the F-bomb and Anglo-Saxon words for various body parts that Chaucer prudently described in Latin. Since “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” and “The Miller’s Tale,” for example, are both decidedly earthy in Middle English, the interpolated obscenities seem unnecessary as well as jarringly anachronistic. And it’s anyone’s guess why Ackroyd feels obliged redundantly to include the original titles (“Here bigynneth the Squieres Tales,” etc.) directly underneath the new ones (“The Squires Tale,” etc.); these one-line blasts of antique spelling and diction remind us what we’re missing without adding anything in the way of comprehension. The author’s other peculiar choice is to occasionally interject first-person comments by the narrator where none exist in the original, such as, “He asked me about myself then—where I had come from, where I had been—but I quickly turned the conversation to another course.” There seems to be no reason for these arbitrary elaborations, which muffle the impact of those rare times in the original when Chaucer directly addresses the reader. Such quibbles would perhaps be unfair if Ackroyd were retelling some obscure gem of Old English, but they loom larger with Chaucer because there are many modern versions of The Canterbury Tales. Raffel’s rendering captured a lot more of the poetry, while doing as good a job as Ackroyd with the vigorous prose.
A not-very-illuminating updating of Chaucer’s Tales.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-670-02122-2
Page Count: 436
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2009
Categories: RELIGIOUS FICTION | GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS
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