Gulliver’s Travels adapted and updated by Martin Rowson – review
By James SmartDr Gulliver, Oxfam's "mutilations strategy" manager, is driving through a Paris underpass in 1997 when his car crashes, flinging him into a strangely shallow sea. On the horizon is Lilliput, now ruled by a beaming, Blair-like dictator ("t...
The House That Groaned by Karrie Fransman
by James SmartWhen Barbara, new to the city and hoping to go to beauty school, walks up the hill to 141 Rottin Road, it seems a shared house like any other. The other residents soon emerge: Janet, a fearsome fitness instructor; Matt, a lonely man who a...
Tangles by Sarah Leavitt
By James SmartMidge Leavitt begins showing symptoms of Alzheimer's in her mid-50s. Her handwriting starts to wobble, she loses herself in familiar parts of town, and strange, "blankety-blank" headaches shift around in her skull. Losing words and storie...
Nelson edited by Rob Davis and Woodrow Phoenix – review
By James SmartFifty-four cooks create a surprisingly satisfying broth in this entertaining graphic novel, which follows a woman called Nel from her birth in 1968 through 70s powercuts, 80s raves and 90s teacher-training courses to the present day. The ...
Departures by Tony Parsons
By James SmartParsons spent a week at Heathrow this summer, succeeding Alain de Botton as the airport's writer in residence. The seven resulting short stories follow firefighters, drug mules, runway workers, fearful fliers and air traffic controllers. ...
Don Quixote Volume One, adapted and illustrated by Rob Davis – review
By James SmartTurning a sprawling, canonical epic into a graphic novel might seem a deluded enterprise. Yet a self-aware tale that revolves around a hero who dons a silly costume to set the world to rights is in many ways the perfect fodder for a comic...
The Pilgrim Hawk: A Love Story by Glenway Wescott
by James SmartThe bird of the title – a peregrine falcon, the fastest creature on earth – spends most of Wescott's enigmatic 1940 novella in a church-like living room, reeking of blood and honey. It stays still apart from a few moments when, jolted...
The Incal by Alejandro Jodorowsky, illustrated by Moebius
by James SmartFrom its opening panels, in which shambling detective John Difool is thrown through the strata of a great city, passing snipers and copycats on his way to a lake of acid, The Incal is entrancing. Such were this wildly imaginative 80s comi...
Turf by Jonathan Ross & Tommy Lee Edwards – review
Jonathan Ross's debut comic is infectious and gleefulComics often throw familiar figures together – you don't have to look far to find not only Batman battling the Joker and Superman fighting Lex Luthor, but also Superman being ambushed by Batman and...
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, illustrated edition
By James SmartAfter the book came the film, then the play, and now Hosseini's bestselling tale has been made into a graphic novel. The bright panels and abridged dialogue follow bookish Amir and his childhood friend Hassan as they roam the kebab-scente...
Black Paths by David B – review
by James SmartAt the end of the first world war, Fiume, now the buzzing Croatian port of Rijeka, was occupied by a force under Italian poet Gabriele D'Annunzio, who founded a free state that was to last four years. French comics legend David Beauchard'...
