The King in Yellow is a) Robert W. Chambers famed horror story about a play that dooms all who read it to madness b) a new graphic novel adaptation of the same by INJ Culbard published by SelfMadeHero. (See a preview here.)
It’s also c) a sneaky ripoff by someone on CreateSpace who used the cover to the Culbard book for their own self-published reprint of the prose book. The SelfMadeHero blog has all the details and how to spot the sneaky fake.
The original book is in the public domain, so no issues there. But stealing someone else original artwork for your own book?
Uncool, dude. Uncool. Go back to Carcosa.
And as the end of year lists circulate, Spring catalogs are also making 2015 all the closer. SelfMadeHero has announced their Spring 2015 line, some of which has been listed here before. In recent years, SelfMadeHero has distinguished itself for a line of graphic novels both visually stunning and emotionally compelling. This list sounds equally strong.
The Sculptor
Scott McCloud
February
This will be published in January by First Second in the US. IT’s the long–awaited return to fiction by McCloud (understand Comics) with the story of a dying young artist who discovers that getting the power to create anything he wishes isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Behind The Curtain
Andrzej Klimowski and Danusia Schejbal (The Master and Margarita, Robot).
March
An autobiographical tale of life in communist Poland, as artistic expression flourished amid an impoverished society.
Aama Volume 3: The Desert of Mirrors
Frederik Peeters
March
The third volume of Peeter’s stunningly visual, complex SF tale.
Pablo
Julie Birmant and Clément Oubrerie
April
This biography of Picasso won the Grand Prix at France’s RTL Graphic Novel Awards. Haven’t seen the insides but it’s supposed to be gorgeous.
The Yellow King
Robert W Chambers and I.N.J. Culbard
May
As previously mentioned, fans of True Detective and horror should enjoy Lovecraft exert Colberd’s adaptation of this highly influential series of short stories.
Fans of I. N. J. Culbard‘s work will be thrilled to hear about his adaptation of Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow, which we publish in May. The stories that make up this classic
End of a Century: Nineties Album Reviews in Pictures
Run Wrake
May
A collection of Wrake’s illustrations of musicians from NME. Essential 90s nostalgia—just fire up a little Suede while you page through this.
English artist INJ Culbard has become the resident HP Lovecraft expert at SelfMadeHero with several of his adaptations of Lovecraft (The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Shadow Out of Time and The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath) turning into bestsellers for the Brit Literary Comics house. Well, it seems his next book is one that greatly influenced Lovecraft—and Stephen King, and Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Raymond Chandler and True Detective—namely The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers. The 1895 short story collection centers around a sinister play called “The King in Yellow” and this title character, as well as Carcosa were used in Season 1 of True Detective, and gave the cult book a new life.
Now Culbard, an expert in the unsettling, will adapt the original into a 144-page GN, also called The King in Yellow
and also to be published by SelfMadeHero.
Culbard revealed the book and cover in a tweet
Via Robot 6
I listened to the free audiobook version from librivox a couple of years ago. I loved the first half of the book more than the second. I think the writer must have been unhappily in love to make that kind of meta-textual statement about love.