Zombies, Dylan and the Bible

BY RICHARD PACHTER

The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks. Max Brooks and Ibraim Roberson. Three Rivers.
Brooks' silly and self-important "historical'' zombie vignettes serve as illustrated back-stories to his popular series of expository zombie prose novels. It's a decent enough gimmick, and this graphic treatment might be entertaining and important to acolytes and fans of his other undead work. But the only redeeming feature for the unconvinced is the lithe and imaginative illustrations and vivid storytelling of Ibraim Roberson, whose craft and skill far outclasses Brooks' moribund material.

Bob Dylan Revisited. Various artists. Norton.

This French collection of illuminated Dylan lyrics, illustrated by an international, non-American team of artists is a mixed bag. Some of the selections seem odd choices for graphic retelling; others represent missed opportunities. But when things click, like in Dave McKean's Desolation Row, Gradimir Smudja's Hurricane and Zep's Not Dark Yet, you can see the promise of the concept. But most of the interpretations are a bit too serious and austere to justify the effort.

 
The Spirit: The New Adventures. Will Eisner and others. Dark Horse.

Reunions are usually iffy, which is why Eisner wisely resisted revisiting his creation, The Spirit, except for a few brief encounters. But he finally acquiesced to publisher Denis Kitchen's entreaties to allow other creators to play with his most famous character. The result was an eight-issue series that's gorgeously reproduced in this volume. Artists and writers alike were canny enough to resist slavish mimicry, bringing a new energy to the strip while retaining the original noir-ish blend of innovation and tradition. Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, Eddie Campbell, Kurt Busiek, Tom Mandrake, John Ostrander, Paul Chadwick and others clearly had a ball with their stellar homages to The Spirit of Will Eisner.

 
The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb. R. Crumb. Norton.

The good news is that Crumb tackles the Bible -- but that's the bad news too. While his draftsmanship and composition have never been better, the material is, frankly, weak, hackneyed and disjointed. Unless readers allow their own transcendent faith and suspension of disbelief to make it more than what it is, Crumb's visual tour de force is for naught.

 
Masterpiece Comics. R. Sikoryak. Drawn & Quarterly.

Sikoryak's astonishing mashups take classics from Shakespeare, Camus, Bronte and the Bible and combines them with the hoary comics motifs of Batman, Superman, Mary Worth, Blondie, EC, Garfield and more. He's a terrific artist, and his awesome mimicry and maniacal imagination will startle and delight litt'rateurs and fanboys alike.

 
Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth. Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos H. Papadimitriou, Alecos Papadatos, Annie Di Donna. Bloomsbury. 

This amazing and rewarding book presents a portrait of Bertrand Russell -- of all people -- and his quest for meaning in logic and romance. The book's creative team also appears as characters in their resonant and interesting evocation, using of the graphic format in an imaginative and engaging way.

Originally published in The Miami Herald

Batman returns?

(click twice for readable image)

Ha!

From Wednesday Comics.

Before Watchmen

Dave Gibbons' unpublished cover for a proposed new weekly comic that would feature the Charlton hereoes — and Superman.

I'm not at Comic-Con

But here's a note from Tom Green (not that one) of Titan Books.

Hey Richard. Is there any chance you could mention our new Comic-Con site on your blog? We’re heavily promoting our Watching the Watchmen title there with an interview with Dave Gibbons and a contest to win signed artwork.

http://comiccon.titanbooks.com/

Watchmen Trailer

Who Watches

The movie version of "Watchmen," the Citizen Kane of comics, is coming out next March, directed by Zack Snyder, whose last film was Frank Miller's "300." (Miller, of course, is directing the big screen version of Will Eisner's strip, "The Spirit").

A story in The New York Times revealed that in addition to "Watchmen's" main tale, an animated version of the sort-of subtextural narrative that was part of the original graphic series, "Tales of the Black Freighter," will come out on DVD about a week after the main film's theatrical release. Another feature to be included on the DVD, "Under The Hood" (which was the title of yet another fictional subcomponent of the original series — a tell-all memoir by one of the characters — will be a "making of" documentary on the DVD, according to the Times piece.

A few months later, the theatrical version of "Watchmen" will be released on DVD, then an "ultimate" version of the film, with "Tales of the Black Freighter" integrated into the story, as in the comic series and graphic novel compilation. There will also be online webisodes that will offer side-by-side frame-by-frame comparisons of the original story and the film(s), also according to the Times.

"Cloverfield" created a larger framework of a game with multiple online components that added to the anticipation of the film (and functioned as a powerful marketing tool) but was optional insofar as enjoyment of the movie was concerned.

The "Watchmen" producers, if the Times story is accurate, are using different media to tell a fuller and richer story, and the marketing and commercial aspects of the project — though a bit of a gamble — are also being served. In fact, they're making the telling of "Tales of the Black Freighter" commercially viable and, as a result, ensuring that the adaptation of "Watchmen" is even closer to the original than was thought possible.

"Watchmen" writer Alan Moore has pointedly disavowed the project, and given the artistic failures of the film versions of his other graphic stories, notably "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," who could blame him? He's declared on numerous occasions that he writes comics, not movies. But artist Dave Gibbons has been publicly supportive of the "Watchmen" film, and his imprimatur may be justified by the final result. Or results.

(text cross-posted at Review RAP)