Comics Alternative

The Two Guys with PhDs Talking about Comics are back with another fun conversation, this time with artist I. N. J. Culbard. They talk with him about his latest book, The King in Yellow (SelfMadeHero), a graphic adaptation of Robert W. Chambers’s macabre collection of stories originally published in 1895. To be more specific, Culbard actually takes the first four stories from Chambers’s original work, the ones that reference the notorious fictional play referenced in the title — “The Repairer of Reputations,” “The Mask,” “In the Court of the Dragon,” and “The Yellow Sign” — and adapts those. As Ian reveals, he attempts to stay true to the spirit of the original, while at the same time making creative changes that will more fully bring out the stories’ tone and present them in more of a thematic whole. In fact, Derek suggests that Ian has actually made The King in Yellow better by giving it more structural cohesion, using the four stories in such a way that the book becomes short-story cycle, or more appropriat