Quick Review

The Graphic Canon, Vol. 1: From the Epic of Gilgamesh to Shakespeare to Dangerous Liaisons by Russ Kick

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Just a wonderful premise, handsomely realized, in a perfect format.  What more could be wanted in an anthology?  The first volume of a projected trilogy, I suspect that this will be the one I like best, funnily enough, because it largely contains the literature I will know least.  I'm not one for epic anything, multiculturalism as a reading strategy, or Gods of any provenance.  No, I've never encountered "Apu Ollantay: an Incan play" before, nor would I ever think to seek such a thing out, yet here it is, as drawn and adapted Caroline Picard -- again unknown to me -- and I loved every weird, crowded and crackling panel.  Likewise here the gorgeously perverse glimpse into The Tibetan Book of the Dead; a swirling darkness of fire and twisted flesh, all peppered with eyes and a beautiful menace, at least as interpreted by Sanya Glisic.  So many, many more: Isabel Greenberg's beautifully blocked Noh play, Vicki Nerino's hilariously dirty little Arabian Nights tale, by way of a Ralph Steadman & a men's room wall, and supremely, Kent and Kevin Dixon's deliciously funny telling of Gilgamesh as a kind of Max Fleischer cartoon; all loosy limbed characters in gloriously thick lines, rolling through dangerous and witty landscapes.  I want more of all that, much, much more.  That being one of the primary functions of an anthology, I'd say this one succeeded in spades.

Of course, one of the inescapable faults in any such eclectic collection will be the flops, misses and or WTF selections to which not every reader will respond well.  Me, for instance.  Even recognizing which among the many these will be, just like my favorites, is very much a subjective judgement, I will just suggest a couple of simple standards for my reading of all this abundance.  I've come to resent a little any selection I like ending too abruptly or too soon, or frankly proving not to be much of a story.  Matt Wiegle's selection from the Mahabharata is just beautifully made, and amusing, so long as it oh so briefly lasts, but as stories go, specially from such a vast possibility as this, this one feels more like an interrupted episode than a discreet unit of narrative.  Mightn't care so much, had Wiegle not drafted such a wonderful, colorful little, multi-tiered world.  Then there are the pointlessly ugly patches.  Ugly can be good.  Ugly can be fun -- I don't think anyone would describe Vicki Nerino's work here, as mentioned above, as "pretty."  Sometimes though?  Ugly is just ugly.  Without pointing them out -- as what would be the point of that? -- there are more than few selections here that are just visually amateurish, not naive, just numb-knuckled, clumsy, witless and crude.  (Since the days when underground comics were an expression of the counter-culture, there has been a very forgiving standard of craft in the comix world.  Lots of people who can't draw, or even write for shit have still managed to produce published work; justified, way back when, by the sincerity of the work, the good intentions of the artist, etc.  Surely to God we must by now be past the point when all that was required to participate was a pure soul?  How about, at minimum, an eye for even the most fundamental anatomy, or scale, or composition, or an ear for narrative or humor?)  Finally, with some of the more familiar material, the literature I do know or at least know something of. there needs to a reason to draw it or why bother about it at all?  A couple of examples here where this works would be, cheek by jowl, Julian Peters funny little Francois Villon, which gives panache of the gallows poem a literal innocence, and the great Seymour Chwast's Wife of Bath, on a motorcycle.  Both manage to comment on the work in a respectful and funny way as well as illustrate it, and both are visually satisfying as well as cleverly composed.

Even with the pieces not to my taste, this is still a banquet, so best not gripe.  It's true, I might have done with fewer had it meant having some of these, like Hunt Emerson's Inferno, or Ian Pollock's Lear at greater length, but I'll take what there is, gratefully, and with thanks to the editor, Russ Kick, for creating and organizing such a splendour.



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