This famous novel by Oscar Wilde appears to have suffered considerably at the hands of Culbard and Edgington during their illustration and adaptation to GN format for publication by the Sterling Publishing. Before going into greater detail, I would briefly say that Culbard's artwork -- described elsewhere as 1920's Gothic style -- appears to this eye as drab, unimaginative and grotesque; Edgington's adaptation of the text seems to have had the purpose of including as many of Sir Harry's (Oscar...

This post is currently under construction and will be changing. It may change.

My favorite 'graphic novel' of all time is Prince Valiant by Hal Foster even though it seems to be counted as a comic strip. My father read it to me every Sunday morning from the comics section of the newspaper, beginning in around 1937 when it first appeared. It had serialized multi-week episodes set in King Arthur's time and had glorious color illustrations and detailed naturalistic pencil work for...

Six Levels of Internet Conversation

Coversation on the Internet runs a wide gamut from placid to heatedly adversarial, as usual polite norms of face-to-face personal conversation are set aside in greater or lesser degree. The following is my summary based on observation and personal experience after a number of years. I hope nobody is personally or specifically offended -- moderators and admins especially. It is a dangerous topic to write about and no insult or criticism is intended,...

Must-reads for the coming year are already stacking up here:

Possession by A. S. Byatt. Finished in January.
Your Face Tomorrow (3 vols) by Javier Marias
The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa
The Original of Laura by Vladimir Nabokov
Verdun by Jules Romains
Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner
Who Killed Jesus? by John Dominic Crossan

So, we begin:

January
1/3 Possession by A. S. Byatt
1/18 2666...

Nightmare

Two nights ago I was sitting in my office at work, whiling away the minutes, when the receptionist rang and said the applicant had arrived.
I went down to the reception area and met the most stunningly beautiful young woman I had ever seen. She was sleekly dressed in an exquisite business suit, had designer-cut and coiffed hair, and was beautifully made up with eye-shadowed doe eyes, blusher, the works. She looked as if she had come straight from the cover of Vogue...