The Graphic Canon, The - Vol. 1 by Russ Kick

The Graphic Canon, The - Vol. 1 by Russ Kick

THE GRAPHIC CANON (Seven Stories Press) is a gorgeous, one-of-a-kind trilogy that brings classic literatures of the world together with legendary graphic artists and illustrators. There are more than 130 illustrators represented and 190 literary works over three volumes--many newly commissioned, some hard to find--reinterpreted here for readers and collectors of all ages.

Volume 1 takes us on a visual tour from the earliest literature through the end of the 1700s. Along the way, we're treated to eye-popping renditions of the human race's greatest epics: Gilgamesh, The Iliad, The Odyssey (in watercolors by Gareth Hinds), The Aeneid, Beowulf, and The Arabian Nights, plus later epics The Divine Comedy and The Canterbury Tales (both by legendary illustrator and graphic designer Seymour Chwast), Paradise Lost, and Le Morte D'Arthur. Two of ancient Greece's greatest plays are adapted--the tragedy Medea by Euripides and Tania Schrag's uninhibited rendering of the very bawdy comedy Lysistrata by Aristophanes (the text of which is still censored in many textbooks). Also included is Robert Crumb's rarely-seen adaptation of James Boswell's London Journal, filled with philosophical debate and lowbrow debauchery.

Religious literature is well-covered and well-illustrated, with the Books of Daniel and Esther from the Old Testament, Rick Geary's awe-inspiring new rendition of the Book of Revelation from the New Testament, the Tao te Ching, Rumi's Sufi poetry, Hinduism's Mahabharata, and the Mayan holy book Popol Vuh, illustrated by Roberta Gregory. The Eastern canon gets its due, with The Tale of Genji (the world's first novel, done in full-page illustrations reminiscent of Aubrey Beardsley), three poems from China's golden age of literature lovingly drawn by pioneering underground comics artist Sharon Rudahl, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, a Japanese Noh play, and other works from Asia.

Two of Shakespeare's greatest plays (King Lear and A Midsummer Night's Dream) and two of his sonnets are here, as are Plato's Symposium, Gulliver's Travels, Candide, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Renaissance poetry of love and desire, and Don Quixote visualized by the legendary Will Eisner.

Some unexpected twists in this volume include a Native American folktale, an Incan play, Sappho's poetic fragments, bawdy essays by Benjamin Franklin, the love letters of Abelard and Heloise, and the decadent French classic Dangerous Liaisons, as illustrated by Molly
Crabapple.

Edited by Russ Kick, The Graphic Canon is an extraordinary collection that will continue with Volume 2: Kubla Khan to the Bronte Sisters to The Picture of Dorian Gray in Summer 2012, and Volume 3: From Heart of Darkness to Hemingway to Infinite Jest in Fall 2012. A boxed set of all three volumes will also be published in Fall 2012.

Best-selling anthologist RUSS KICK (You Are Being Lied To and Everything You Know Is Wrong, among others) informed a whole generation of Americans with the hard truths of American politics and created a media frenzy for being the first to publish suppressed photographs of American flag-draped coffins returning from Iraq. The New York Times dubbed Kick an information archaeologist, Details magazine described him as a Renaissance man, and Utne Reader named him one of its 50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World. Then, in 2009, Kick embarked on an entirely new kind of project, returning to his love of literature and art, and to comics art in particular. For his groundbreaking new series of books The Graphic Canon, Kick has commissioned new work from over 170 artists, as well as reintroduced existing work that wasn't easy to find. With over 35,000 copies in print of the first three volumes, The Graphic Canon series has been welcomed by a wide range of different types of media, from traditional print to comics blogs, from NPR and the New York Times to Wired and Maria Popova's Brain Pickings blog, which have all hailed Kick as a visionary, expanding readers' visual vocabulary through the creation of a new kind of canon.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781609803766
ISBN 10	1609803760
Title	The Graphic Canon, The - Vol. 1
Author	Russ Kick
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Seven Stories Press,U.S.
Year published	2012-05-22
Number of pages	502
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable