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  • Published: 1 January 2012
  • ISBN: 9781609803780
  • Imprint: Seven Stories Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 512
  • RRP: $79.99

The Graphic Canon, Vol. 2

From "Kubla Khan" to the Bronte Sisters to The Picture of Dorian Gray



Vol. 2 gives us a visual cornucopia based on the wealth of literature from the 1800s. Several artists--including Maxon Crumb and Gris Grimly--present their versions of Poe's visions. We see two stunning but very different takes on the greatest American novel, Moby-Dick, including one by Eisner Award-winning artist Bill Sienkiewicz. That other great American novel, Huckleberry Finn, is adapted, uncensored for the first time, as Twain wrote it. The bad boys of Romanticism--Shelley, Keats and Byron--are visualized here, and so are the Brontë sisters. Philosophy and science are ably represented by ink versions of Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra and Darwin's On the Origin of Species.

Frankenstein, Les Misérables, Oliver Twist, Crime and Punishment (a hallucinatory take on the pivotal murder scene), Thoreau's Walden (in spare line art by John Porcellino of King-Cat Comics fame), Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman and two of Emily Dickinson's greatest poems are all present and accounted for. The inimitable Dame Darcy puts her unmistakable stamp on--what else?--the Alice in Wonderland books. Christina Rossetti's haunting, dark poem "Goblin Market" will linger long after the last panel is viewed. And Pride and Prejudice has never looked this splendiferous! Curveballs in this volume include fairy tales illustrated by the untameable S. Clay Wilson, a fiery speech from freed slave Frederick Douglass (rendered in stark black and white by Seth Tobocman) and selections from Wagner's colossal Ring cycle of operas, which won two Eisner Awards for artist P. Craig Russell, among many other canonical works.

  • Published: 1 January 2012
  • ISBN: 9781609803780
  • Imprint: Seven Stories Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 512
  • RRP: $79.99

About the author

Russ Kick

Russ Kick is the editor of You Are Being Lied To, Everything You Know Is Wrong, Abuse Your Illusions
and Everything You Know About Sex Is Wrong. He is the author of 50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know Volumes 1 & 2 and The Disinformation Book of Lists. He is a regular contributor to the Village Voice.

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