Isolation and Illusion: Collected Short Stories of P. Craig Russell

    (Dark Horse, 2003)
™ and © Dark Horse Comics, Inc.

Known most recently for his impressive comics adaptation of The Ring of the Nibelung, P. Craig Russell has been at the storytelling trade for a long time. Here is a selective anthology of his lesser-known, older, or out-of-print shorts from the past 20 years, aimed at those illustration aficionados who admire sinuous line quality and good old attention to drawing detail.

Selections range from the monochrome musing on the suicide of the Japanese iconoclast Yukio Mishima to the psychedelic rendering of H.P. Lovecraft’s “From Beyond,” which tells the strange tale of Cyrano de Bergerac traveling to the moon and back again. Then comes the interpretation of O. Henry’s classic Christmas tearjerker “The Gift of the Magi” and the generously ironic love of a husband and wife, plus a handful of additional flights of fantasy.

As proven here and elsewhere, Russell’s skill with the pen is impressive and at times intimidating. By their nature, collections like this are “consistency”-challenged. But the lasting impression is that Russell has covered a lot of ground and, fortunately, has even further to go.

— Oliver Chin / Comics Buyer‘s Guide’s Reading Room
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