Based on the wealth of literature from the 1800s, several artists present their versions of iconic literary figures, including interpretations of "Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, Oliver Twist, Crime and Punishment," and more.

This is the most comprehensive, not to mention the first, anthology of death poetry ever published in the English language and is ultimately life affirming. The book is an unprecedented, vast survey of death in poetry that cuts across time, world cultures and languages. The book covers a range of subjects, from the death of children, lost loves and funeral rites, to serial killers, 9/11, the death penalty, roadkill, war, the Underworld, reincarnation and elegies to famous people.

"THE GRAPHIC CANON" (Seven Stories Press) is a gorgeous, one-of-a-kind trilogy that brings classic literatures of the world together with legendary graphic artists and illustrators. There are more than 130 illustrators represented and 190 literary works over three volumes--many newly commissioned, some hard to find--reinterpreted here for readers and collectors of all ages.
Volume 1 takes us on a visual tour from the earliest literature through the end of the 1700s. Along the way, we're treated to eye-popping renditions of the human race's greatest epics: "Gilgamesh," "The Iliad," "The Odyssey" (in watercolors by Gareth Hinds), The "Aeneid," "Beowulf," and "The Arabian Nights," plus later epics "The Divine Comedy" and "The Canterbury Tales" (both by legendary illustrator and graphic designer Seymour Chwast), "Paradise Lost," and "Le Morte D'Arthur." Two of ancient Greece's greatest plays are adapted--the tragedy "Medea" by Euripides and Tania Schrag's uninhibited rendering of the very bawdy comedy "Lysistrata" by Aristophanes (the text of which is still censored in many textbooks). Also included is Robert Crumb's rarely-seen adaptation of James Boswell's "London Journal," filled with philosophical debate and lowbrow debauchery.
Religious literature is well-covered and well-illustrated, with the Books of Daniel and Esther from the Old Testament, Rick Geary's awe-inspiring new rendition of the Book of Revelation from the New Testament, the "Tao te Ching," Rumi's Sufi poetry, Hinduism's "Mahabharata," and the Mayan holy book "Popol Vuh," illustrated by Roberta Gregory. The Eastern canon gets its due, with "The Tale of Genji "(the world's first novel, done in full-page illustrations reminiscent of Aubrey Beardsley), three poems from China's golden age of literature lovingly drawn by pioneering underground comics artist Sharon Rudahl, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, a Japanese Noh play, and other works from Asia.
Two of Shakespeare's greatest plays ("King Lear" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream") and two of his sonnets are here, as are Plato's "Symposium," "Gulliver's Travels," "Candide," "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman," Renaissance poetry of love and desire, and "Don Quixote" visualized by the legendary Will Eisner.
Some unexpected twists in this volume include a Native American folktale, an Incan play, Sappho's poetic fragments, bawdy essays by Benjamin Franklin, the love letters of Abelard and Heloise, and the decadent French classic "Dangerous Liaisons," as illustrated by Molly
Crabapple.
Edited by Russ Kick, "The Graphic Canon" is an extraordinary collection that will continue with "Volume 2: ""Kubla Khan"" to the "Bronte Sisters" to The Picture of Dorian Gray" in Summer 2012, and "Volume 3: From Heart of Darkness to Hemingway to Infinite Jest" in Fall 2012. A boxed set of all three volumes will also be published in Fall 2012.

NOW A "NEW YORK TIMES" BESTSELLER
"Publisher's Weekly" "Best Summer Books of 2013"
"The Daily Beast's ""Brainy Summer Beach Reads"""
The classic literary canon meets the comics artists, illustrators, and other artists who have remade reading in Russ Kick's magisterial, three-volume, full-color "The Graphic Canon," volumes 1, 2, and 3.
Volume 3 brings to life the literature of the end of the 20th century and the start of the 21st, including a Sherlock Holmes mystery, an H.G. Wells story, an illustrated guide to the Beat writers, a one-act play from Zora Neale Hurston, a disturbing meditation on "Naked Lunch," Rilke's soul-stirring "Letters to a Young Poet," Anais Nin's diaries, the visions of Black Elk, the heroin classic "The Man With the Golden Arm "(published four years before William Burroughs' "Junky"), and the postmodernism of Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace, Kathy Acker, Raymond Carver, and Donald Barthelme.
The towering works of modernism are here--T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "The Waste Land," Yeats's "The Second Coming" done as a magazine spread, "Heart of Darkness," stories from Kafka, "The" "Voyage Out "by Virginia Woolf, James Joyce's masterpiece, "Ulysses," and his short story "Araby" from "Dubliners," rare early work from Faulkner and Hemingway (by artists who have drawn for Marvel), and poems by Gertrude Stein and Edna St. Vincent Millay.
You'll also find original comic versions of short stories by W. Somerset Maugham, Flannery O'Connor, and Saki (manga style), plus adaptations of "Lolita "(and everyone said it couldn't be done ), "The Age of Innocence," "Siddhartha "and "Steppenwolf "by Hermann Hesse, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" by Langston Hughes, "One" "Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Last Exit to Brooklyn," J.G. Ballard's "Crash," and photo-dioramas for "Animal" "Farm "and "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." Feast your eyes on new full-page illustrations for "1984," "Brave New" "World," "Waiting for Godot," "One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Bell Jar," "On the Road," "Lord of the Flies," "The" "Wind-Up Bird Chronicle," and three Borges stories.
Robert Crumb's rarely seen adaptation of "Nausea "captures Sartre's existential dread. Dame Darcy illustrates Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece, "Blood Meridian," universally considered one of the most brutal novels ever written and long regarded as unfilmable by Hollywood. Tara Seibel, the only female artist involved with the Harvey Pekar Project, turns in an exquisite series of illustrations for "The Great Gatsby." And then there's the moment we've been waiting for: the first graphic adaptation from Kurt Vonnegut's masterwork, "Slaughterhouse-Five." Among many other gems.