the thrilling adventures of lovelace and babbage by sydney padua

In many ways, the text defeats simplistic categories and genres: it is a fiction, an autobiography and a history.įun with history’s greatest geeks. Spiegelman began writing in 1978, telling the story of his father, Vladek Spiegelman, a Holocaust survivor. Like From Hell, Art Spiegelman’s Maus was originally published in serial form. Partly fictional and partly factual, the book is a wonderful parody of the dark tourist interest in the murders, with the careful reader becoming increasingly self-conscious of their own uncomfortable complicity in the narrative. Gull’s murder spree, seeking to suppress an illegitimate heir to the throne and filtered through a lens of masonic imagery and misogyny, takes us through a psychogeographic tour of London.Įddie Campbell’s exquisite illustrations contrast the privileged suburbs in which Gull lives with the poverty-stricken degradation of Whitechapel’s citizens. Twentieth Century Foxįrom Hell is not for the squeamish: it retells in gruesome detail the Whitechapel murders of the late 19th century, speculating Jack the Ripper was Sir William Gull, Queen Victoria’s royal physician.

Grandville, famed for his satire of French politics and society.įrom Hell was made into a film with Johnny Depp and Heather Graham. The city of Grandville takes its name from the pseudonym of a French artist, J. The Grandville of the title is an alternative history Paris, lovingly characterised with steampunk details and Belle Époque style. In this anthropomorphic universe, humans feature in servile roles as an underclass, with some critical comparisons to post-9/11 racial stereotypes. Grandville is the first volume in a series of five, which tells the investigative story of a badger detective, Detective Inspector LeBrock, accompanied by his trusty sidekick, Roderick the Rat. Grandville (2009)Īuthor Bryan Talbot is well-known to comic and graphic novel fans, having penned The Adventures of Luther Arkwright in the 1970s and 1980s. So, in no particular order – and with that caveat in mind – here are my top five literary reads in graphic novel and comic book genres. Author Alan Moore has rejected the term “graphic novel” (along with the film versions of his work), suggesting it is nothing more than a marketing term.

That said, they share many artistic and literary characteristics. The word “comics” usually refers to serialised publications – whereas “graphic novels” are issued as books.

The thrilling adventures of lovelace and babbage by sydney padua