The Best of Ray Bradbury: The Graphic Novel

Rating:
Summary: Good stories, good art
Review: Bradbury, more than most well known SF writers, put a human face on his tales of maybe-if and far-away.

Here, some of comics' best artists put faces on Bradbury's tales. On the whole, the matching of artist to story was brilliant. Jon J. Muth's watercolors illustrated an eerie, atmospheric experience within another mind. Harvey Kurtzman's geometric, brash figures walk through a noir murder mystery, narrated by the deceased. Richard Corben's piece opens the book, showing not a hero or has-been but a never-was, who screws up 65 million times over. P. Craig Russell's pictures give life to two stories, both that want the kind of majesty he puts into visual storytelling. All that, and lots more.

These are good comics - masterful artists rendering a master's storytelling. Good for anyone who like narrative comics or who likes Bradbury. I have the good fortune of being both.

//wiredweird

Rating:
Summary: second edition corrects page order of first edition
Review: hey! ibooks has reprinted ray bradbury graphic novel with the pages of 'the city' corrected. the book is now a bargain!

Rating:
Summary: second edition corrects page order of first edition
Review: I bought this at lunchtime and sat in the car to read the first two stories. I found both Thunder and The City rather confusing and in fact began to think The City had the pages printed out of order (although there are no page numbers). So I though I'd the web! Sure enough, daveydooski saw it too.
The occasional typo I can understand, but this kind of screw up is unforgivable!
But I love Bradbury, and having some stories interpreted visually in this way is a treat. Only for the completist probably.

Rating:
Summary: Misprints!
Review: I bought this at lunchtime and sat in the car to read the first two stories. I found both Thunder and The City rather confusing and in fact began to think The City had the pages printed out of order (although there are no page numbers). So I though I'd the web! Sure enough, daveydooski saw it too.
The occasional typo I can understand, but this kind of screw up is unforgivable!
But I love Bradbury, and having some stories interpreted visually in this way is a treat. Only for the completist probably.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty good
Review: I love Ray Bradbury, and I love comics, so I was hoping that a combination of the two would be excellent. It wasn't. Don't get me wrong; I enjoyed this graphic novel. It just wasn't perfect. One of the major issues I had with it is that in several of the stories (most notably Dark They Were With Golden Eyes) the pictures and text had a tendency to run off the edge of the page, as though the page was not in quite the right position during the printing. Usually it was not more than a letter that was missing, and I had no trouble in determining what was meant to be said, but it was still annoying. There were also several typos in the brief intros to each story.
The art is wonderful, and fits each story very well. The writing, of course, is Bradbury and I don't think I need to say any more about that. Each story stays very true to the original, and I believe that every line of text is directly from the text of the story, which is nice. Of course, a lot is missing as well, but that's what the pictures are for.
I do think that it helps to have read the stories before reading this. There was one story that I was unfamiliar with, and I don't feel that I got quite as much out of that one as I would have liked. Familiarity with the stories definitely seemed helpful in my appreciation of the renditions of them in this graphic novel.
All in all, an interesting experiment that worked out fairly well. It's enjoyable, but I would recommend it mainly to Bradbury fans, as I don't think others will appreciate it as well.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty good
Review: I love Ray Bradbury, and I love comics, so I was hoping that a combination of the two would be excellent. It wasn't. Don't get me wrong; I enjoyed this graphic novel. It just wasn't perfect. One of the major issues I had with it is that in several of the stories (most notably Dark They Were With Golden Eyes) the pictures and text had a tendency to run off the edge of the page, as though the page was not in quite the right position during the printing. Usually it was not more than a letter that was missing, and I had no trouble in determining what was meant to be said, but it was still annoying. There were also several typos in the brief intros to each story.
The art is wonderful, and fits each story very well. The writing, of course, is Bradbury and I don't think I need to say any more about that. Each story stays very true to the original, and I believe that every line of text is directly from the text of the story, which is nice. Of course, a lot is missing as well, but that's what the pictures are for.
I do think that it helps to have read the stories before reading this. There was one story that I was unfamiliar with, and I don't feel that I got quite as much out of that one as I would have liked. Familiarity with the stories definitely seemed helpful in my appreciation of the renditions of them in this graphic novel.
All in all, an interesting experiment that worked out fairly well. It's enjoyable, but I would recommend it mainly to Bradbury fans, as I don't think others will appreciate it as well.

Rating:
Summary: Hmmm...
Review: Ibooks continues to amaze me with their selection of reprints, but this one didn't impress me quite as much as others. THE BEST OF RAY BRADBURY: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL is a softcover reprinting of selected tales from Topps Comics' excellent early-90s RAY BRADBURY CHRONICLES series. RBC combined classic EC adaptations of Bradbury's work (by Jack Davis, Johnny Craig, and others) with modern adaptations by top comic and fantasy artists (Corben, Moebius, Muth, VanFleet, P. Craig Russell, & Wayne Barlowe, to name just a few). The problem with this particular release is that iBooks seems to be doing this as a one-shot with just a few select tales, instead of reprinting the entire series. What a loss! Additionally, it appears that one of the included stories ("The City", adapted by Mike Mignola) is a misprint. I could make no sense of the story as presented, so I had to flip some panels/pages around in my head in order to make it work. I would love to see a thorough reprinting of this entire RBC series, so I'll keep waiting.

Rating:
Summary: Hmmm...
Review: Ibooks continues to amaze me with their selection of reprints, but this one didn't impress me quite as much as others. THE BEST OF RAY BRADBURY: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL is a softcover reprinting of selected tales from Topps Comics' excellent early-90s RAY BRADBURY CHRONICLES series. RBC combined classic EC adaptations of Bradbury's work (by Jack Davis, Johnny Craig, and others) with modern adaptations by top comic and fantasy artists (Corben, Moebius, Muth, VanFleet, P. Craig Russell, & Wayne Barlowe, to name just a few). The problem with this particular release is that iBooks seems to be doing this as a one-shot with just a few select tales, instead of reprinting the entire series. What a loss! Additionally, it appears that one of the included stories ("The City", adapted by Mike Mignola) is a misprint. I could make no sense of the story as presented, so I had to flip some panels/pages around in my head in order to make it work. I would love to see a thorough reprinting of this entire RBC series, so I'll keep waiting.

Rating:
Summary: Good but missing some things.
Review: Its great to see classic Bradbury stories adapted into graphic peaces. Only one compliant; the book description mentions HOMECOMING illustrated by Steve Leialoha, this is not in the book. Homecoming is a favorite of mine, and I imagined it would be great illustrated. But nonetheless I enjoyed the book for the great stories, and beautiful art.

Rating:
Summary: from the publisher, ibooks
Review: please note that the second printing FIXES the error that inverted two mike mignola pages accidentally.