edited by Byron Preiss & Howard Zimmerman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2006
If this collection spawns annual volumes, they’ll need to be more representative and timely—or carry a different title.
This grab-bag, scattershot selection might appeal to fans of contemporary comics but won’t win converts or satisfy the curious.
With all the attention graphic narratives have generated, an annual “best of” anthology is long overdue. The problem starts with the “year” of the title. In a field where trends move faster than those of hip-hop and advances rival computer technology’s, the period surveyed—June 2003 through December 2004—means that the oldest pieces are almost three years old and none were published within the last year. Whether because of licensing issues or cutting-edge mandate, readers won’t find many of the artists who have achieved a higher profile (no Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, David B. or Harvey Pekar). Yet most of what’s here is intriguing, much of it’s inspired and the sheer variety is proof of the possibilities under the ever-expanding comics umbrella. Among the highlights, an excerpt from Joe Kubert’s Yossel takes a boy’s-eye view of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, and Xaime’s “Life Through Whispers” from Love and Rockets, which explores the seamier side of romantic desire. Meanwhile, the selection of Manga—literally, “comics” in Japanese—suggests why the form has been as culturally pervasive in that country as cable TV is here (as Jake T. Forbes’s introduction to that unit attests). Edited by the late Preiss (a pioneering publisher of graphic novels) and Zimmerman (who has worked at Marvel and DC Comics), about half of this anthology consists of excerpts from graphic novels, providing readers with an introductory taste that often proves frustrating. (Imagine an anthology of the year’s best novels that limits each to a chapter or less.) Contributing both an introduction and the concluding piece, The Sandman (which finds its protagonist crossing barriers of time in Venice), the visionary Neil Gaiman indicates where comics have been and where they’re going.
If this collection spawns annual volumes, they’ll need to be more representative and timely—or carry a different title.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-312-34326-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2006
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by Geoffrey Chaucer and Peter Ackroyd and illustrated by Nick Bantock ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 16, 2009
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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by Peter Kuper ; illustrated by Peter Kuper ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 5, 2019
Gorgeous and troubling.
Cartoonist Kuper (Kafkaesque, 2018, etc.) delivers a graphic-novel adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s literary classic exploring the horror at the center of colonial exploitation.
As a group of sailors floats on the River Thames in 1899, a particularly adventurous member notes that England was once “one of the dark places of the earth,” referring to the land before the arrival of the Romans. This well-connected vagabond then regales his friends with his boyhood obsession with the blank places on maps, which eventually led him to captain a steamboat up a great African river under the employ of a corporate empire dedicated to ripping the riches from foreign land. Marlow’s trip to what was known as the Dark Continent exposes him to the frustrations of bureaucracy, the inhumanity employed by Europeans on the local population, and the insanity plaguing those committed to turning a profit. In his introduction, Kuper outlines his approach to the original book, which featured extensive use of the n-word and worked from a general worldview that European males are the forgers of civilization (even if they suffered a “soul [that] had gone mad” for their efforts), explaining that “by choosing a different point of view to illustrate, otherwise faceless and undefined characters were brought to the fore without altering Conrad’s text.” There is a moment when a scene of indiscriminate shelling reveals the Africans fleeing, and there are some places where the positioning of the Africans within the panel gives them more prominence, but without new text added to fully frame the local people, it’s hard to feel that they have reached equal footing. Still, Kuper’s work admirably deletes the most offensive of Conrad’s language while presenting graphically the struggle of the native population in the face of foreign exploitation. Kuper is a master cartoonist, and his pages and panels are a feast for the eyes.
Gorgeous and troubling.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-393-63564-5
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
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