The Graphic Canon, Vol. 3: From Heart of Darkness to Hemingway to Infinite Jest
Volume 3 of this critically acclaimed series rounds out Kick’s maniacally ambitious effort to collect graphic adaptations of world literature throughout history by focusing on the twentieth century.  Here there is less repetition of authors in favor of casting a wider net through the cultural currents that dominated the literary century and a greater use of excerpts and single-image representations of entire works.  This affords the joy of being able to compare, say, Tara Seibel’s surrealist take on Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams with Peter Kuper’s paranoid visualization of Kafka’s fever dreams, or seeing Dan Duncan’s look at Hemingway’s tough-as-nails A Matter of Colour side by side with T. Edward Bak’s look at Hammet’s tough-as-nails The Maltese Falcon, all sandwiched among Yeats, Joyce, Pynchon, Robert Crumb, and Lisa Brown. Although much of the excerpting and wordless adaptations assumes prior knowledge of these classics, all are once again accompanied by Kick’s brief but insightful introductions.  Delightfully, women are well represented (though as adapters more than original authors), and the entire project remains an astounding survey of the state of the art form itself. --Jesse Karp