Philip K. Dick A comics biography

Since his death, in 1982, Philip K. Dick's reputation has swelled, fueled largely by the successful screen adaptations of his darkly visionary sf works such as Blade Runner and The Man in the High Castle. Toiling in the literary pigeonhole of science fiction, Dick wrote prolifically but struggled financially, never receiving the critical respect he sought. His increasingly fragile mental state was reflected in the paranoid, antiauthoritarian content of his stories. Queyssi relates Dick's offbeat life in a prosaic, matter-of-fact fashion, often relying on dialogue-heavy talking-heads sequences for exposition, but the cut-and-dried presentation helps to keep track of the peripatetic writer's many residences as well as his five wives. Marchesi's visuals are equally straightforward, generally sharing his collaborator's stolid lack of flash. There's no shortage of biographical works about Dick, so it's regrettable that this one fails to take advantage of the comics medium other than a few perfunctory psychedelic passages to approach his messy life in a more inventive fashion that would befit its spaced-out but brilliant subject.--Gordon Flagg Copyright 2019 Booklist

Pairing extensive personal narratives with clean visual lines, this graphic bio is an eerily intimate and magnified look into the life and mind of science fiction author Philip K. Dick. At the end of his life, Dick remembers himself growing up as a shy and passionate teen immersed in music and science fiction magazines. Upon his emancipation from a controlling aunt, he dives headfirst into a young marriage, and soon the reality of being a writer fails to keep pace with his lofty ambitions. As deadlines from publishers begin mounting and he struggles with divorce and substance abuse, Dick is caught between worlds, often wondering where reality ends and perception begins. The writing offers an informative view into the author's life, effortlessly emphasizing his personal and business relationships. Cheerful artwork, populated by easily distinguishable characters, marks the most poignant moments of the author's life. Through deeply personal anecdotes and skilled artistic storytelling, this comic reveals the side of Dick's life that is as turbulent and ungrounded as the fictional worlds he is famed for creating. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Legendary sf author Philip K. Dick (1928-82) is acclaimed for novels and stories probing the boundaries of reality, mental illness, and the meeting point of mysticism and technology-all themes present in much of his real, day-to-day life. As a young man, Dick dreamt of success as an author of mainstream literary fiction. Churning out sf helped pay the bills, eventually leading to enough success and demand for his work that he developed a dependency on amphetamines in order to keep up the pace and meet his deadlines. The wilder details of Dick's life are all fairly well known, as at this point there are probably more books about him than he managed to author-his obsession with the I Ching, the strange visions and epiphanies about the true nature of the universe, his obsessive paranoia. But this first-ever, full-length graphic novel biography is impressively propulsive, skipping smoothly across the years. VERDICT While some interesting aspects of Dick's life-in particular, his turn to Christianity-are missing, this is a moving overview of a complex, at times unpleasant life. © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.