edited by Russ Kick
This 500 page large format anthology is the first in a series that presents "the world's great literature as comics and visuals", "from the Epic of Gilgamesh to Shakespeare to Dangerous Liaisons" in black & white and full color comics and illustration. The contributor list read's like a who's who from the past, present and future of comics, including the likes of Will Eisner, Robert Crumb, Rick Geary, Sharon Rudahl, Seymour Chwast, Hunt Emerson, Peter Kuper, Andrice Arp, Edie Fake, Matt Wiegle, Aidan Koch – whose adaptation of Shakespeare's Sonnet 20 is a revelation – and Rebecca Dart – whose twelve full page illustrations of Milton's Paradise Lost channels Charles Burchfield through Chuck Jones to create an epic synthesis that will knock your socks off. Some of the works in this collection have been seen before: notably, the Crumb, Chwast, Eisner and Emerson contributions are reprinted and/or excerpted from previously published works. Most – by a large majority – are new to this volume, however, and make it well worth a look. And this is only the first of three volumes! Some parents reading this might be prompted to think, "Hey, this would make a swell way to get the kids interested in the classics of literature!" Thus we must duly note that there are some graphic depictions of sexuality contained within the pages of this volume. And while they are very modest in number, making up only a tiny minority of the pages (certainly less than 5%), they are there. The primary culprit here is Aristophanes's Lysistrata, which just about everyone read(s) in high school, and so should have some idea what to expect; it is adapted by a woman artist and is not prurient in its presentation, but is graphic. Only Noah Pfarr's adaptation of Donne's "The Flea" makes any attempt to heat things up. Even Crumb's take on Boswell's London Journal in quite tame by his standards, so there's little if anything to get incensed about here. It's more or less an issue of where to draw the line agewise. We'd recommend holding off on this to any readers under 13; it's probably too much for them in any case, regardless of sexual content.
<<•>> edited by Russ Kick <<•>>
The mammoth sized (542 pages) third and final volume of the Graphic Canon has arrived; chock-a-block with comics adaptations, illustrations and illuminations of 20th classics of literature. Highlights among the dozens of featured teamings of artists and writers are: Milton Knight & Zora Neale Hurston; Mardou & Anaïs Nin; R. Crumb & Jean Paul Sartre; R. Sikoryak & Franz Kafka; Ted Rall & Sherwood Anderson; Lauren Weinstein & W.B. Yeats; Onsmith & J.G. Ballard; Aidan Koch & Ben Okri; Jeremy Eaton & Flannery O'Connor; Robert Goodin & William Faulkner; Lance Tooks & Somerset Maugham; Dame Darcy & Cormac McCarthy; CMU alum, Juliacks & Hubert Selby, Jr.; and many more!
Here in The West, and particularly The United States, many – perhaps most – mistakenly identify Iran as a whole with the policies and actions of its Islamic leadership. This is a mistake. Readers of Woman, Life, Freedom will be fully disabused of this notion by the time they get to the last page – and likely well before. Iran is a diverse nation comprised by a intermingling of peoples – Persians, Kurds, Arabs and more – with long and rich histories stretching back thousands of years, making for a multi-faceted culture with many traditions predating Islam. The story of Iran today is a tragic – and complex – tale, and one in which The West is complicit in bringing about through its self-interested actions (read: access to oil; cold war proxy fight) taken at the expense of the Iranian people.
As readers of Woman, Life, Freedom will clearly see, the Iranian people are now striving to regain the self-determination that had been taken from them. This striving is taking the form of a rebellion against the stifling and repressive, theocratic patriarchy of the Islamic Republic and their grotesquely vindictive enforcers, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The courage and bravery on display in these pages will be as humbling to Western readers as the savage responses of the Islamic regime will be horrifying. But there is also much humor, joy and celebration to be found here, as well as plenty of satire, some of which is quite scathing.
And, yes, this is a comics anthology. The twenty-four comics that fill this softcover volume's 268 pages have been created in black in white, duo-tone and full color, and in style and approach they vary as far and wide as called for by the nature of the contents, with each creator well matched to the story they have to tell. Standouts for us here at Copacetic include the fantastically cartooned story by Coco, as well as those by Bahareh Akrami, Paco Roca and Mana Neyestani, each of whom produced two tales, but every artist brings their all to the tale(s) they tell, and all are effective as well as affecting.
Woman, Life, Freedom is a project initiated and led by Marjane Satrapi (the creator of the wildly successful two-part graphic novel, Persepolis). It takes its title from the name of the movement that it is documenting and supporting. Anyone interested in learning more about this movement can access a PDF of the 2023 Brown Democracy Medal winning study, Woman, Life, Freedom: Our Fight for Human Rights and Equality in Iran by Nasin Sotoudeh, HERE.
The international aspect of this work led to translations from multiple languages into the French of the original edition, which has been in turn translated in its entirety into the English of this edition by Una Dimitrijevic. The lettering of the English language text blends so seamlessly into the artwork that one would not guess that it wasn't the original. Kudos to the art director(s) who managed this feat!
