Posted in: Comics | Tagged: 2027, dave mckean, Gilgamesh, graphic novel, Johnny Flynn, Robert MacFarlane
Dave McKean, Robert MacFarlane & Johnny Flynn have signed a publishing deal for The Epic Of Gilgamesh graphic novel for 2027.
Article Summary
Dave McKean, Robert Macfarlane, and Johnny Flynn team up for a Gilgamesh graphic novel.
The ancient epic will be reimagined in spring 2027, announced at London Book Fair 2024.
Project intertwines Gilgamesh’s tale and the story of its first modern translator.
Macfarlane and Flynn previously collaborated on a show and album about Gilgamesh.
Announced at London Book Fair 2024, publishers Hamish Hamilton has signed a graphic novel project with bestselling nature writer Robert Macfarlane, actor-musician Johnny Flynn and movie director, photographer, comic book creator, graphic designer, and publisher Dave McKean to retell the Epic Of Gilgamesh to be published in the spring of 2027.
Robert Macfarlane is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, who writes books about landscape, nature, place, people and language, including The Old Ways , Landmarks, The Lost Words and Underland. In 2017 he received The E. M. Forster Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is married to professor of modern Chinese history and literature Julia Lovell.
Johnny Flynn starred as Dylan Witter in the Channel 4 sitcom Lovesick, David Bowie in the 2020 film Stardust and Nicholas Winton in One Life. He is also lead singer and songwriter of the band Johnny Flynn & The Sussex Wit.
Dave McKean has illustrated works by authors such as Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, Heston Blumenthal, Ray Bradbury and Stephen King, and directed the films MirrorMask, The Gospel of Us and Luna. He drew the graphic novels Violent Cases, Arkham Asylum, Signal to Noise, Mr. Punch, and wrote and drew Cages, Pictures That Tick, Celluloid, Black Dog: The Dreams of Paul Nash, and Raptor.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is a poem from ancient Mesopotamia, dating from around 2100 BC. Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, and Enkidu, a wild man created by the gods to stop Gilgamesh from oppressing the people of Uruk, challenges Gilgamesh to a test of strength. Gilgamesh wins the contest but, the two become friends, and plan to slay the Guardian, Humbaba the Terrible, and cut down the sacred Cedar. Enkidu’s death causes Gilgamesh to undertake a long and perilous journey to discover the secret of eternal life.
Publishing director Simon Prosser acquired British and Commonwealth rights to the book from Robert Macfarlane’s agent Jessica Woollard at David Higham, working with Johnny Flynn’s agent Rose Cobbe at United Agents and Dave McKean’s agent Merrilee Heifetz at Writers House (representing McKean),
The Bookseller reports that Prosser said that “the graphic novel would “tell both the tale, then, and the tale of the tale”, with one strand the epic itself of the god-king Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu who journey to the Sacred Cedar Wood; a second strand revolves around George Smith, the auto-didact, working-class genius who in the 1860s taught himself to read the ancient cuneiform script, and became the first modern translator of Gilgamesh.”
The project began with the show, Lost In The Cedar Wood, that Macfarlane and Flynn created in 2021, which also began as an album they released in 2022. Prosser said: “As well as being a superb author in his own right, Robert Macfarlane is a remarkable collaborator with others, across a range of disciplines including art, music and film. With The Lost Words and The Lost Spells, created by him with Jackie Morris, I saw at first hand how extraordinary this collaborative work can be, so I could not be more excited about what this latest collaboration – with two equally exceptional talents in their own fields – will bring.”
Macfarlane said: “Gilgamesh is a story both vastly ancient and ever-new; a ‘fireball that has torn through time’, as Naja Marie Aidt unforgettably put it. Its energy is extraordinary, its power immense, its prophetic abilities uncanny. Johnny, Dave and I are hugely excited now to be working together to find a fresh form for this millennia-old epic, which has been both compass, map and warning for Johnny and me for years now. Each of us brings different experiences of story-telling – of stage, page, ink – and together we hope to honour Gilgamesh’s force and intensity as a myth.”
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