I shall wear my trousers rolled

October 10, 2024 9:41 AM

T. S. Eliot’s Classic Modernist Poem The Waste Land Gets Adapted into Comic-Book Form
posted by y2karl (16 comments total)

For some reason, Cordwainer Smith's Drunkboat came to mind.
posted by y2karl at 10:06 AM on October 10 [5 favorites]

This is amazing, thanks for sharing it.
posted by PussKillian at 10:07 AM on October 10

Is this a digitized version of one which came out around 1990 or so? I'm on the road and can't check my books.
posted by doctornemo at 10:14 AM on October 10

DoctorNemo - it's not the Martin Rowson version from the 90s - searching for that I just found this link to Rowson's annotations of his own copy.
posted by crocomancer at 10:21 AM on October 10 [6 favorites]

That’s Prufrock!
posted by Going To Maine at 10:38 AM on October 10 [14 favorites]

There are two versions of the Martin Rowson version (The Wasteland re-imagined as a hardboiled private eye graphic novel): the US one, where the Eliot text was out of copyright; and the UK one, where it wasn't. The US one makes free use of the original poem while the UK one can't, but has to allude to it obliquely, which if anything makes it even funnier.
posted by Hogshead at 11:20 AM on October 10 [7 favorites]

(nb: the Rowson version is also a film noir. It's excellent, and also I am glad to see a more "straight" illustration.)
posted by clew at 11:23 AM on October 10

All the pedants staring at the post title and muttering wrong poem.
posted by betweenthebars at 12:01 PM on October 10 [12 favorites]

Well, D'oh!
posted by y2karl at 12:16 PM on October 10

Thank you, crocomancer!
posted by doctornemo at 12:27 PM on October 10

I grow old, I grow sick
I shall get my poems mixed
And that has made all the difference.

The Waste Land pops up in all sorts of media. My first exposure, embarrassingly enough, was via Graham Nelson's Curses.
posted by phooky at 2:01 PM on October 10 [4 favorites]

Meh. If graphic artists want to be known as more than a medium for aphantasiacs, then they should try harder and look elsewhere.
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 3:59 PM on October 10

"Did you know T.S. Eliot’s portentous and heavily allusive 1922 masterpiece “The Waste Land” was originally titled “He Do the Police in Different Voices,”

Ya might rabbit, ya might.
posted by clavdivs at 6:27 PM on October 10

This is wonderful.
posted by marxchivist at 7:27 PM on October 10

I have the British version of the Martin Rowson. The need to avoid actual quotes makes it very funny, especially if you are a smug got like me, who kno the poem well. I especially like the cover with the lady being shown fear in a handful of dust.
posted by Fuchsoid at 11:12 PM on October 10 [1 favorite]

So Lit Hub has
'Read Ezra Pound’s extensive revisions to T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.' At the bottom,
"You can view the manuscript in its entirety here."
[via British Library]

("Weialala leia
Wallala leialala")
posted by clavdivs at 2:51 PM on October 11