Salon.com > Graphic Novels

“Walking Dead” author is OK with AMC’s creative liberties

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 20:00:00 +0000

There is a lot of tension between creators and those who adapt their work into TV and film. Stanislaw Lem was twice disappointed that filmmakers tossed important scientific plot points from his work "Solaris." Alan Moore hated the film version of his strip "Watchmen" — though Moore hates everything. Stephen King said he would "do everything different" on "The Shining," even though it was rendered by one of the great filmmakers of all time -- Stanley Kubrick -- into, arguably, a master work.

Robert Kirkman, the co-creator of "Walking Dead," makes no such claims of AMC's adaptation of the comic book that made the flesh-eating undead fashionable again. In fact, he embraces the vast differences between "Walking Dead" the television show and "Walk Dead" the comic book.

"Oftentimes, I'm the one driving it," Kirkman told me.

The differences between the TV show and the comic were apparent as soon as the show debuted on Oct. 30, 2010.

Great graphic novels from 2012

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 01:00:00 +0000

While connoisseurs of the graphic novel form will undoubtedly be reserving most of their comics budget for "Building Stories," Chris Ware's enormous, years-in-the-making boxed set of 14 miscellaneous paper items, not everyone with a yen for visual storytelling wants to tackle broadsheets, pamphlets and charts in order to get it. This year saw the publication of an ever wider and richer array of graphic "novels" -- some of the best of which are not novels at all, but nonfiction. The success of Alison Bechdel's "Fun Home" has spawned a bunch of quirky graphic memoirs by women who like to label their drawings with little arrowed explanatory labels, and there are still plenty of square-jawed heroes punching their way through this or that hellscape between bouts of stagey despair. Look further, and you'll find books like the 10 stand-out gems included here, a mix of ancient tales and the latest news, private lives and public problems, the beautiful, the horrifying, the wondrous and the melancholy. Why not dive in?

Chris Ware: “Everything makes me feel alone”

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 19:00:00 +0000

There simply will not be a more beautifully packaged book this year than Chris Ware's "Building Stories," the latest from the master graphic novelist. It even surpasses the mind-blowing issue of modern cartoon art that Ware edited for McSweeney's almost a decade ago.

The 14 pieces in "Building Stories," which must weigh a couple of pounds, include a game board, a newspaper, two hardcover books and all varieties of other stories filled with lonely, frustrated people aching for connection -- like this one. We suggest viewing the slide show in full-screen mode to experience the panels in their full glory.

Not the Harvey Pekar graphic novel you’d expect

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 13:39:00 +0000

Harvey Pekar had been collaborating with the comic book artist JT Waldman on a book project, one that charts the journey from his Zionist upbringing to his questioning of Israel's role in the world. But Pekar died in July 2010. Still, Waldman continued to work on it, and now it's about to be published. Peter Kuper describes Not the Israel my Parents Promised Me as "an insightful look at one of the burning topics of our time. With Pekar's scholarship and humor and JT Waldman's stylistically varied art, this graphic book is both visually entertaining and highly informative."

War goes graphic

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 11:57:00 +0000

When you first glance at writer/artist Eric Shanower's graphic novel series "Age of Bronze," it's hard to guess when it was drawn. It's actually a current work in progress, but Shanower's a classicist, in several senses. His meticulous, fine-lined pen-and-ink work owes a lot to the nearly photo-realist cartooning of the 1940s and '50s, and to the minutely rendered textures and details of early-20th-century book illustration. The subject of "Age of Bronze," though, is literally classical: It's an enormous, all-inclusive history of the Trojan War, the decade-long conflict between the Achaeans and the residents of Troy that's inspired countless artworks over the last few thousand years.