Graphic Literature

I mentioned yesterday that I should spend more time browsing through Galleycat. In doing just that, I was reminded of something that I meant to mention a couple of weeks ago but that later slipped my mind. Penguin Classics has repackaged some of its classic literature with new covers by comics artists, and they had a soiree Wednesday night at New York's Morrison Hotel Gallery to show them off. Galleycat has some pictures, as does Heidi at The Beat.

A little while ago, I saw a book dump at Barnes & Noble of the first six books, which included Candide with a Chris Ware cover, Paul Auster's New York Triolgy with an Art Spiegelman cover, a Seth cover on The Portable Dorothy Parker, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle with a cover by Charles Burns, Roz Chast on Cold Comfort Farm, and Anders Nilsen on Hans Christian Anderson. They're very striking, and taken together they strike quite a blow for comics as the trend of the moment. Penguin is calling them "Graphic Classics," and you can take a look at all of the ones currently in stores at the Penguin Classics site. Or, you can see all those and more still to come, including a Chester Brown cover on Lady Chatterley's Lover and Frank Miller on Thomas Pynchon at FLOG!, the Fantagraphics Blog. And keeping it all in the family at Fantagraphics, Penguin art director Paul Buckley dropped by the Fantagraphics message board to describe how the series came about (scroll all the way to the bottom). Apparently it's all Chris Ware's fault. They brought him in to do a cover for Candide, and it went over so well with the staff that a series was born.