The Graphic Canon, Vol. 1

Praise

“Through the reprinted and newly-produced work of 59 (mainly American) adapters and 58 adapted titles, this is not only a survey of the world’s diverse artistic past, but also a breathtaking glimpse of this young medium’s incredible future.” —Booklist

“The graphic publishing literary event of the year.” —Publishers Weekly

“This meaty slab is laced with more wit, beauty, social commentary and shock than one might expect. . . If artists, as British sculptor Anish Kapoor famously said, make mythologies, then this volume is genuinely a marriage of equals.” —Kirkus Reviews
 
“The Graphic Canon is absolutely the most ambitious book I’ve picked up this year.” —Newsday
 
“The Western literary canon has long been debated and criticized by academics, and rightly so. Which books belong and which don’t? Now The Graphic Canon, a three-volume series edited by Russ Kick which presents classic lit as comic strips, adds a bit more fuel to the intellectual fires.” —Steven Heller, The Atlantic 

“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 an amazing work. It is wild. It is dirty at times. It is nothing short of beautiful.” —New Straits Times
 
“The diversity and excellence of this volume is just about overwhelming.” —The Austin Chronicle

“Looks like a must-buy for all academic libraries, many public libraries, and many high schools, and an exciting new benchmark for comics!” —Martha Cornog, Library Journal

“This is a masterpiece of literary choices as well as art and interpretation. It is a perfect graduation or summer-reading present, and the solid editing, including introductory notes for each piece, makes it a required purchase for any library.” —School Library Journal

“It takes time to read this book, but it is a book worth taking time over […] Robert Berry and Josh Levitas’ adaptation of Shakespeare’s eighteenth sonnet is among the best of the lot. They succeed, not only in doing justice to the original poem, but also, with the illustrations, in adding a kind of meditative short story reflective of the emotion the sonnet conveys.” —The Comics Journal

“This series is the mother lode of beautifully illustrated and refreshingly adapted classics, featuring stories from throughout the globe and human history. The Epic of Gilgamesh, Beowulf, The Tale of Genji, Candide… the list of tales is as staggering as the list of contributing artists, who include Will Eisner, Robert Crumb, Milton Knight and Molly Crabapple. And it’s not just the far past that’s brought to these pages; you’ll also find the poetry of Langston Hughes, Marquez’s dreamlike epic One-Hundred Years of Solitude, and David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest here. It’s a veritable library made into a series of elegant artworks, and perhaps the ultimate example of the capabilities of the humble comic book.” —IGN