David Zane Mairowitz

This is an excellent adaptation of Franz Kafka's The Trial that captures the essence of Kafka's work. Yes, the story itself is still dark and deep, and sometimes very difficult to understand, but I think the visuals really help with this kind of story. The illustrations fit perfectly with the dark and absurd elements of The Trial, and I loved the symbolism in every panel – whether it be the recurring symbolic images of the skeleton, the clock, or the candle, or the symbolic images unique show more to each part of the story. I found the illustrations made The Trial much more riveting and I had a harder time putting down this version than the original. I'd highly recommend this graphic novel for any Kafka fans, anyone who has read The Trial, or anyone who is interested in the darkly absurd. show less

Part illustrated biography, part comics adaptation, R. Crumb's Kafka is a vibrant biography that examines this Czech writer and his works in a way that a bland textbook never could! R. Crumb's Kafka is a work of art in its own right, a very rare example of what happens when one very idiosyncratic artist absorbs another into his world view without obliterating the individuality of the absorbed one. Crumb's art is filled with Kafka's insurmountable neuroses. They are all there: Gregor Samsa's show more sister, the luscious Milena Jesenska, the Advocate's 'nurse' Leni, Olda and Frieda, and the ravishing Dora Diamant drawn in that mixture of self-command, tantalizing knowingness and sly sexuality that Amazonian randiness and thick-limbed physicality that is Crumb." show less

A necessarily simplified version of Dostoevsky's classic, this was a good adaptation within the confines of a graphic novel.
Mairowitz and Korkos set the action in modern Russia to draw parallels between the corruption and inequality of Tzarist Russia and Putin's Russia. Worth an hour of most people's time, I think.

A very good introduction -- in graphic novel format -- to the life and work of Wilhelm Reich, a brilliant psychoanalyst and a man who attempted to reconcile the teachings of Freud and Marx. His later years were characterised by some very crazy ideas, but his earlier work is of great interest. In my view, Reich remains relevant to understanding how the far Right in the USA and elsewhere, obsessed as it is with sexual repression (opposition to gay marriage, abortion, etc), manages to win show more support from millions of working people. show less