Let’s face it: Even if they deserve to be considered a medium of expression in their own right, graphic novel adaptations of existing texts often serve as shortcuts for people lacking the time or ambition to engage with the original novel. Such is certainly one of the uses for Stéphane Heuet’s adaptation of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, a dense and complicated work that cast its spell over modernist authors of the 20th century. Perhaps the compression of Proust’s marathon sentences into a series of speech balloons and captions might actually be beneficial—especially in an attention-deprived era such as ours? Robert W. Chambers was a contemporary of Proust, but the American author worked in a different register altogether. The King in Yellow is a classic of weird fiction, an inspiration for H.P. Lovecraft and Neil Gaiman, set in a near future where a strange book brings madness to all who read it. Woe to all who look at I.N.J. Culbard’s illustrated version!
