This meaty collection of great stories told by great graphic storytellers is an absolute tour de force of literature that has Umapagan Ampikaipakan yearning for more
The Graphic Canon, Volume 1
edited by Russ Kick
500 pages / Seven Stories Press
THERE is nothing quite as pleasing as when a great idea gets executed well. The story goes that Russ Kick, while browsing the graphic novel section of a Tucson bookstore, had a sudden burst of inspiration. He came across a comic adaptation of Franz Kafka’s The Trial and was inspired to develop a comic anthology that paired the world’s greatest stories with the world’s greatest graphic storytellers.
Of late, we have seen quite the spate of literary adaptations into the graphic form. From Pride and Prejudice to the Kite Runner. From Stephen King’s The Dark Tower to Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series. With the motivations behind each work being quite different. Some graphic adaptations serve to introduce these works of literature to a new audience of readers while others seem to function as supplementary material to the core text. The one commonality, however, between all of these recent literary adaptations is that none of them truly embraced the art form. They felt like afterthoughts, like so many movie tie-ins, like just another way to make a quick buck. I’m looking at you, George Lucas.
The problem was simple. The art was mediocre and the storytelling was subpar. There was little to no creative exposition. So much so that these books failed on the most basic of levels. They failed to be entertaining.
With The Graphic Canon, Russ Kick seems to have somehow accomplished what so many literary adaptations have thus far failed to do. A fidelity to the text. A celebration of the comic art form. While never, not even for a single page, losing those all important qualities of being engaging, enlightening, and entertaining. A true testament to the skills of a virtuoso editor.
This is a book that is tailor-made for literary junkies. All the usual suspects are here. All those yarns you grew up with are given new life and new light. From Gilgamesh to Beowulf to The Divine Comedy. There are delightfully explicit and shocking tales by Aristophanes and John Donne. There are new views on stories excerpted and expunged from The Arabian Nights, from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, from the Book of Revelation.
And there’s more. For Russ Kick does not use the word “Canon” lightly. He doesn’t just throw it around willy-nilly. This collection is a genuine tour de force. Sharon Rudahl adapts three poems from the Tang Dynasty. Molly Kiely gives us a wonderfully inked rendition of The Tale of Genji. There is even a trickster’s story called Coyote and the Pebbles based on an old Native American folktale that somehow managed to survive the ancient oral tradition and get translated into Spanish.
My personal favourite is an extract from Will Eisner’s brilliant take of Don Quixote from his 2003 graphic novel The Last Knight. It is charming. It is humorous. It is full of manic energy. It is a faithful homage to Cervantes’ original. It is an exploration in search for new meaning in the text. It is an attempt to “show people the value of dreams and dreamers!” It is an addition to the text that I for one am most grateful for. Especially since the original is so hard to come by.
These are 500 pages that contain more intelligence, wit, and savvy social commentary than anything else I have read in a long time. It is crammed full of some of the greatest artists of our time, from Seymour Chwast to Robert Crumb to Molly Crabapple. It is an amazing work. It is wild. It is dirty at times. It is nothing short of beautiful.
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