Well, feh – have cast aside Plummer’s ‘Condemened to Live’ – you can imagine it making a fun radio-play, along the lines of Paul Temple.  I suppose I’m not too fond of the Fifties style of murder/mysteries. What  must have seemed exciting and new then, now often comes across as stylized brashness, and may passages, at least in Plummer’s book seem to shout in italicized “quote marks”.

Seeing as I’m trying to gee myself up for the B.C.C. I’ve picked up Hesse’s ‘Wandering’, which is less a book about walking and more a search for a nomadic lifestyle, but it’s accompanied by charming poems, and B&W reproductions of watercolours (the colour originals sadly being destroyed before the book was re-published).

Whilst I’m reading that, here’s a quick comic catch-up. I’ve had to resort to reading the versions of ‘proper’ literature that have been turned into comic form, as I’ve read all the other comics the library has. ‘Classics’ comics are getting better tho – originally they seemed to be very plain and layman like abridged retellings, but now they are rather coming into their own…

Sadly, the excellent version  of  ‘The Master & Margarita’  by Klimowski/Schejbal has been nicked by some rotter, which is doubly annoying, well, because I  wanted it. It’s not often a comic really does justice to the original, actually what do I know, I’ve not read the original, always mean to, but it’s one of those good intentions the road to hell is paved with, but this is a superb graphic/comic whatsit, and really shows how an artist can collaborate imaginatively with the novelist’s words and create something outstanding in its own right.

Another good effort is Culbard and Edginton’s versio of Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’. Culbard does great justice to the seediness of underworld characters, and the same justice to the sometimes seedier ‘society’ characters such as the goading and immoral Lord Henry Wooton who is the real villain of the piece, I reckon. Unfortunately however, Culbard has an unfortunate way noses, drawing the base of the nose where it goes into the lip and chin as one continuous too thick line. This often serves, especially in Gray’s case, to make him less than divinely handsome, and more like he has a worm dangling from his nostril…But this is a mere quibble, and the rest of the artwork very much complements Edginton’s telling of Wilde’s cautionary tale,and can be seen, none more so in the contrast of before and after portraits of Gray himself. Also, reassuringly, it sticks to the story of the book, unlike the good looking, but erroneous recent film muck-about effort.

Another notable mention is Mairowitz’s and Korkos’ version of Dostoyevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’, whose style and telling is a little, flat, but does a very good job of marking the salient points in Dostoyevsky’s long, but probably most accessible, and certainly most famous novel.

Last and leastly – have also read a not bad at all version of the story of Robin Hood, ‘Outlaw’ which again sticks to a more ‘accurate’ historical version of this legendary figure, and is ably illustrated by Sam Hart.