Kafka Comics

The most recent edition to the Penguin Graphic Classics range is Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis and Other Stories, in the new Michael Hofmann translation. (An aside: pretty much any book with Hofmann credited as translator is going to be worth your while--use him as your guide to a wealth of Germanic masterpieces).



This cover is by comics artist Sammy Harkham, editor of comics anthology Kramer's Ergot; Harkham's web presence is, sadly, a nest of dead links, so there's not much more I can tell you about him. The book looks great, though.

It's not the first time Kafka's had this sort of treatment. Peter Kuper, a comics artist influenced by the sort of German Expressionism I keep banging on about on this blog, has adapted both Metamorphosis and a collection of other Kafka tales into graphic editions. Here are the covers, along with some sample inner pages (click for readable versions):






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Kafka's life has also been interpreted by another great comics artist, the uniquely odd Robert Crumb, working with David Jane Mairowitz.





And here are a few covers from earlier editions:






Going back to Kuper, he has also adapted Upton Sinclair's depressing muckraking masterwork The Jungle.





You may also remember an earlier comics/Jungle experience, with this Graphic Classics cover by Charles Burns: