He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. “…I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. It is the closing lines of this last page to end all last pages that this drawing seeks in part to illustrate : I was particularly struck this time around by the degree to which the novel’s ultimate emotional payoff seems so much greater than what would appear to be warranted by the emotional entanglements of its caricaturish, at times almost cartoonish characters (Gatsby himself occasionally comes off a little like an older, hopeless-romantic version of Richie Rich). That Fitzgerald achieves this feat is due in large part to the novel’s magisterial, sweepingly poetic and universal last page. Prompted by the release of its umpteenth cinematic adaptation, I have just reread The Great Gatsby for the umpteenth time. I can’t help wondering sometimes how much more advanced my comics-making skills would be now if I hadn’t had that “lost decade” to catch up on. Until the age of twelve I churned out all kinds of comics on the most disparate subjects, but then when I hit adolescence –and this is one of my great regrets- I gave up drawing comics entirely, and didn’t really begin again until I was in my early twenties.

In my earliest stories, featuring Speeder the Struthiomimus (an ostrich-like dinosaur), I would dictate the dialogue to my dad, who would fill in the dialogue balloons I had left blank for him. I have been drawing comics since before I could write. I am an illustrator, comic book artist, graduate student and language instructor living in Montreal, Canada. Julian, who are you, where are you, and how long have you been a doodling fool? I was really impressed with the results, and it made me wish all my poetry comics could be given a similar treatment.Ĭlick on the link below to view other “poetry videos” on Renée’s No Water River website, along with a whole slew of other resources aimed at presenting poetry to children: Īlso included with the video is an interview by Renée with yours truly, which I have copied below: The immensely talented Renée Latulippe has created a video featuring her interpretation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee” that incorporates the drawings in my comics adpatation of the poem.

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