Thursday, March 5, 2015

Thursday's Three on Literature and Poetry

Today, Thursday's Three spotlights a trio of inspired interactive offerings from Throwaway Horse LLC, a company co-founded by graphic artist Robert Berry with the objective of promoting understanding and appreciation of literary masterworks in the public domain. To realize its objective, the company creates and publishes Web versions that make use of graphic novel concepts.

Ulysses 'Seen' ~ The first project undertaken by Throwaway Horse, this is a serialized, illustrated interpretation of James Joyce's Ulysses (1922). Presented unabridged as a digital graphic novel (comic) on its own Website, Ulysses 'Seen' can be viewed by chapter (there are 18), each with its own reader's guide. Where passages adapted from the novel appear in a language other than English, a "pop-up translation" in English is available. A "How To" and blog also are part of the site. The James Joyce Centre, in Dublin, Ireland, currently has responsibility for the comic, reader's guide pages, and blog forum for Ulysses 'Seen', accessible from the center's homepage.

An app version of Ulysses 'Seen', available on iTunes, is enhanced with discussion groups and links to online resources. (Watch a demo of the app.)

Ulysses 'Seen' on FaceBook and Twitter

The Waste Land 'Seen' ~ Political cartoonist Martin Rowson first reimagined T.S. Eliot's famous poem The Waste Land in 1999; his comic, now "seen" as a film noir murder mystery, was relaunched by Throwaway Horse as the company's second project. Available as an iPad app on iTunes, it, too, includes an interactive reader's guide (topics include poetry, modernism, film noir, and art history); an in-app discussion section; and even games, jokes, and puns further explicated with Web resources.

Sample Pages of Martin Rowson's The Waste Land 'Seen'

Age of Bronze 'Seen' ~ In October 2011, Throwaway Horse released as an iPad app cartoonist Eric Shanower's Age of Bronze, an ongoing comic series about the Trojan War. The company enlisted John Dallaire to produce a color version of the comic, which originally appeared in black and white. The app offers a page-by-page view of the graphic novel, a comprehensive reader's guide by classics scholar Thomas Beasley, character profiles, maps, Web resources (all linked so that users do not have to exit the app), and a built-in discussion section. Issues are released monthly.

Age of Bronze on FaceBook

Throwaway Horse on FaceBook

Bios for Throwaway Horse Founders

Robert Berry at Stoney Road Press (This page includes some of the images of Berry's illustrations for Joyce's short story "The Dead", which Stoney Road co-published with The James Joyce Centre as a limited-edition, handmade book.)

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