A Treasury of Victorian Murder

Rating:
Summary: wonderful graphic novel
Review: A truly great graphic novel. Geary continues his amazing series of "A Treasury of Victorian Murder" with probably what is the most brilliant installment. The story of Jack the Ripper is explained from somewhat of a historically unbiased and objective view without being overloaded with too many sources. The comic contains a documentary side while melding description, assumption, and mystery alongside great graphic images. I have not found a flaw in Geary series other than some dissapointment with "The Borden Tragedy." I would also suggest
Peter Kuper's adaptatation of Kafka's "The Metamorphosis."

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing cartoon style book
Review: I expected more detailed, better drawn images than what the book contained. Coarse grained paper is used for the pages & the overall quality of the project is poor. Several short episodes of Victorian murder are presented in black & white line drawings with little detail. Nothing unusual or particularly interesting in the telling or presentation.

Rating:
Summary: wonderful graphic novel
Review: I expected more detailed, better drawn images than what the book contained. Coarse grained paper is used for the pages & the overall quality of the project is poor. Several short episodes of Victorian murder are presented in black & white line drawings with little detail. Nothing unusual or particularly interesting in the telling or presentation.

Rating:
Summary: A pleasure for the eye and mind
Review: I knew just the basics about Jack the Ripper when I picked this up in a used bookstore. The drawings were so detailed and clarified logistics (maps, diagrams, plans) in a way that text cannot. The text is extremely straightforward and reality-based, giving them an authority that hyperbole would've ruined. I had no intentions of buying this, but I had a hard time putting it down.
Years later, this has turned out to be one of those purchases that I pull out over and over again. It is never far from my bed and sits with two other (soon to be three) volumes in the series. All of them lay out conundrums that leave you chilled and uneasy. You go to bed a little less sure that all is right in the world.

Once I was flipping channels on cable and the image of an alley with a distinct bend to it flashed by. "...looked like an alley from the the Ripper killings..." I thought and changed back. Sure enough, it was a documentary on the Ripper. That's how accurate this books visuals are. I correctly associated a photo I had never seen before with the crimes just from viewing Geary's drawings. His illustrative style is fastidious and engrossing.

True to it's title I do treasure these volumes.
Best of luck and much success to you Rick!

Rating:
Summary: Disappointment
Review: If I had wanted a picture book, done in a comic book format, this would have been fine. It was not what I was looking for - I expected a more intellectual treatment. Will NOT but Geary again.

Rating:
Summary: Just the facts
Review: Jack the Ripper is a fact based comic. The story is told in the form of excerpts from an unamed Victorian man's journal. He says on this day this occurred on this day this body was found here, etc. The idea is to lay out just the facts and not to try to read into them. Theories on who the killer is etc are presented very briefly as they come up and no one theory is endorsed.

The visuals: The drawings here are done in a style that simulates wood cut prints. This lend itself to descriptive diagrammatic illustrations. It also keeps the gore from being so disturbing. This book isn't dwelling on the gore, but it isn't totally possible to avoid it in this case. The drawings of crime scenes etc here are very accurate, so the illustrations add to the information presented.

This is a good clean and straight forward telling of the Jack the Ripper stories. It lays out the facts and does this clearly and concisely. If you have already read lots about Jack the Ripper then this won't add anything new. It is also pretty expensive for a black and white comic book, since it is only 64 pages. The best use for this book is perhaps for families or school libraries that want a book about Jack the Ripper. It does tell about a slasher who kills prostitutes, but it is a clean treatment considering the subject.

Rating:
Summary: drollery
Review: Victorian era crimes have an oddly enduring appeal for folks of every literary taste and political predilection. For liberals, the dark underbelly
of that prim and proper age seems to demonstrate the notion that moral repression breeds violence and hypocrisy; for conservatives, the fact that
evil and sin lurked even beneath such a blessedly restrained surface, confirms a view of the world as old as the story of the Garden of Eden.
Fans of the great detectives take comfort in the idea that the mysteries of human behavior must yield to reason, science, and rigorous
procedure. Fans of the criminals revel in the impenetrability of the darkest recesses of the human heart and mind. But regardless of your own
personal views, there's no gainsaying the hold that Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes and company continue to exert on our imaginations.

Illustrator Rick Geary has been tapping into this lurid fascination for over a decade now, and NBM Publishing is reissuing some of the earlier
works in his acclaimed "Victorian Murders" series, beginning with the first, A Treasury of Victorian Murders. Mr. Geary accompanies three
brief tales of deliciously bloody (or poisonous) mayhem and murder with an introductory section that sets the Victorian stage and provides some
background on the times and the more famous personages of the day. His black-and-white drawings--which might owe something to Edward
Gorey but are nonetheless distinctive and original--provide a winsome, tongue-in-cheek contrast to the horrid events that he relates. As he
mentions in a 1987 introduction, one of the things that makes the cases so much fun is that even though the society maintained a veneer of
respectability, it coincided with the rise of mass daily papers, all intent on out-sensationalizing each other. So when such ghoulish crimes did
occur, they gave free reign to the newspapers to engage in the most outrageous speculations about peoples backgrounds and behaviors. He
takes evident delight in casually dropping such rumors into the midst of the ornate and fusty little sitting rooms and the forbidding courtrooms
in which his stories occur. It all makes for a delightfully droll good time.

GRADE : B+

Rating:
Summary: drollery
Review: Victorian era crimes have an oddly enduring appeal for folks of every literary taste and political predilection. For liberals, the dark underbelly
of that prim and proper age seems to demonstrate the notion that moral repression breeds violence and hypocrisy; for conservatives, the fact that
evil and sin lurked even beneath such a blessedly restrained surface, confirms a view of the world as old as the story of the Garden of Eden.
Fans of the great detectives take comfort in the idea that the mysteries of human behavior must yield to reason, science, and rigorous
procedure. Fans of the criminals revel in the impenetrability of the darkest recesses of the human heart and mind. But regardless of your own
personal views, there's no gainsaying the hold that Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes and company continue to exert on our imaginations.

Illustrator Rick Geary has been tapping into this lurid fascination for over a decade now, and NBM Publishing is reissuing some of the earlier
works in his acclaimed "Victorian Murders" series, beginning with the first, A Treasury of Victorian Murders. Mr. Geary accompanies three
brief tales of deliciously bloody (or poisonous) mayhem and murder with an introductory section that sets the Victorian stage and provides some
background on the times and the more famous personages of the day. His black-and-white drawings--which might owe something to Edward
Gorey but are nonetheless distinctive and original--provide a winsome, tongue-in-cheek contrast to the horrid events that he relates. As he
mentions in a 1987 introduction, one of the things that makes the cases so much fun is that even though the society maintained a veneer of
respectability, it coincided with the rise of mass daily papers, all intent on out-sensationalizing each other. So when such ghoulish crimes did
occur, they gave free reign to the newspapers to engage in the most outrageous speculations about peoples backgrounds and behaviors. He
takes evident delight in casually dropping such rumors into the midst of the ornate and fusty little sitting rooms and the forbidding courtrooms
in which his stories occur. It all makes for a delightfully droll good time.

GRADE : B+