Kafka in comics

K never made it to the Castle but he can take some solace in the fact that his struggle will now grace the shelves alongside the battles between caped heroes and masked villains with the publication of the comic The Castle. By way of the Czech Literature Portal I came upon the recent release of the Kafka adaptation by co-creator of comic and animated film Alois Nebel, Jaromír 99. The Czech artist, musician and writer collaborated on the work with David Zane Mairowitz, who previously co-authored a comic of The Trial (reviewed glowingly in The Guardian here). Mairowitz also wrote the well-known book Introducing Kafka illustrated by R. Crumb.

There was a launch party in London a couple days ago, which you and I all missed (unless you went, in which case you didn’t miss it) where the co-creators appeared with publishers SelfMadeHero and there was also the opening of an exhibition of artwork by Jaromír 99.

You can see a few frames of the comic at this Czech-language site. Graphically, it looks interesting, as Alois Nebel did, but I’m not really sure how you can translate Kafka’s text into a comic (and though I love comics and animated films I didn’t think much of Alois Nebel – read a review I wrote of the film here).