Aimed at a very narrow audience, but a treasure trove for would-be comic scribes and artists and independent comic...
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. 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
A gorgeous symphony.
Illustrator McGuire (What’s Wrong With This Book, 1997, etc.) once again frames a fixed space across the millennia.
McGuire’s original treatment of the concept—published in 1989 in Raw magazine as six packed pages—here gives way to a graphic novel’s worth of two-page spreads, and the work soars in the enlarged space. Pages unspool like a player-piano roll, each spread filled by a particular time, while inset, ever shifting panels cut windows to other eras, everything effervescing with staggered, interrelated vignettes and arresting images. Researchers looking for Native American artifacts in 1986 pay a visit to the house that sprouts up in 1907, where a 1609 Native American couple flirtatiously recalls the legend of a local insatiable monster, while across the room, an attendee of a 1975 costume party shuffles in their direction, dressed as a bear with arms outstretched. A 1996 fire hose gushes into a 1934 floral bouquet, its shape echoed by a billowing sheet on the following page, in 2015. There’s a hint of Terrence Malick’s beautiful malevolence as panels of nature—a wolf in 1430 clenching its prey’s bloody haunch; the sun-dappled shallows of 2113’s new sea—haunt scenes of domesticity. McGuire also plays with the very concept of panels: a boy flaunts a toy drum in small panels of 1959 while a woman in 1973 sets up a projection screen (a panel in its own right) that ultimately displays the same drummer boy from a new angle; in 2050, a pair of old men play with a set of holographic panels arranged not unlike the pages of the book itself and find a gateway to the past. Later spreads flash with terrible and ancient supremacy, impending cataclysm, and distant, verdant renaissance, then slow to inevitable, irresistible conclusion. The muted colors and soft pencils further blur individual moments into a rich, eons-spanning whole.
A gorgeous symphony.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-375-40650-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
A not-very-illuminating updating of Chaucer’s Tales.
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 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2009
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