The British Library has announced a new exhibition of the graphic art form, rethinking it as a research tool. DAVID THE BLOGGER Culture rounds up five
smart publications.
The UK’s biggest exhibition of British comics has just been
announced, and it’s no Comic Con. Instead, newly discovered Victorian
comics will be on show alongside more familiar titles like V for
Vendetta this May at the British Library.
More
accustomed to displaying ancient manuscripts, the library is treating
the graphic artform with respect. One of its curators, Adrian Edwards,
said that comics should be “taken seriously as a research tool”, like
great works of literature or “any other primary source”.
Comic books are increasingly taking on weighty themes. Here are five recent examples that exercise the grey matter. Graphic Canon
(Russ Kick)
A trilogy of anthologies
edited by Russ Kick, who has variously been described as “an
information archaeologist” and “a Renaissance man”, this series presents
classic literature as comic strips. Covering everything from epics like
Gilgamesh, The Iliad and Beowulf to Shakespeare, Tolstoy and the Beat
poets, it’s a visual tour of the literary canon. Freud
(Anne Simon)
Covering the life and career of Sigmund Freud in just 60 pages, this graphic biography
features some of the pioneering psychoanalyst’s most famous cases, as
well as walk-on parts from his contemporaries (one image shows him
lounging on a ship’s deck with Jung). Written by psychoanalyst Corinne
Maier, it reflects its subject with dreamlike visions and a naked mother
or two. Its publishers, Nobrow, are about to bring out a pictorial
retelling of Ernest Shackleton's expedition across the Antarctic. Feynman
(Jim Ottaviani)
This reached Number 1 in the New York Times bestseller list, which is no mean feat for a graphic biography
of a quantum physicist. Written by former nuclear engineer Jim
Ottaviani –who has also written about Niels Bohr and early
palaeontologists – it tells the story of Richard Feynman’s life from his
childhood on Long Island to his work on the Manhattan Project and the
Challenger disaster. The book includes a graphic recreation of the
series of lectures Feynman gave on quantum electrodynamics in 1983. A
Nobel Prize-winning superhero comic. Supergatari: History of World Philosophy
(Michael Gertelman)
Philosophy is given a comic book treatment with this eBook
about a cartoon superhero who bends the space-time continuum to discuss
ideas with the world’s most influential thinkers. From roof-jumping
with Kierkegaard to archaeological digging with Foucault, Supergatari
isn’t afraid of big ideas: the character also appears in a video clip about paradigm shifts. Darwin
(Simon Gurr)
Venturing into graphic art, Smithsonian Books published this biography
of Charles Darwin, introduced by a group of wild animals in Madagascar.
It sets the ‘beetling’ expeditions of Darwin’s youth within the wider
context of creationism and the scientific culture that framed his
thinking.
