Review: The King in Yellow

The King in Yellow

by Robert W.Chambers and I.N.J. Culbard

Self Made Hero

142 pages

I.N.J.

Culbard's rendition of Chambers's "The King in Yellow" is an excellent primer into weird fiction, and is true-to-source. Collecting the four main stories from the original collection that reference the Yellow King or the Yellow Sign <"The Repairer of Reputations", "The Mask", "The Yellow Sign", and "In the Court of the Dragon">, this graphic novel brings to life the legend of the mythical play. 

The stories are all tied together not just by the recurring appearance of the "The King in Yellow" book or by the characters sharing some artistic occupation, but the characters are related in one way or another as acquaintances, by family ties, or by professional means. It is never explained in the work how the initial story takes place in the future, yet its ending ties it to the next story directly, which somehow takes place in the past. For readers not familiar with the original short stories, this may be attributed to the madness of the characters, or it could be a supernatural cycle of some sort, but it seems like a plot hole to those familiar with the unrelated nature of the original.

The general gist of the stories is that there is a book - a play, in fact - titled "The King in Yellow" that begins in a benign way, but once a reader begins the second act, not only can they not put the tome down, they become insane. The book is rumored to have been written by an evil entity who rules over a city called "Carcosa", and is destined to return to our world and take over.

The characters in each story have somehow or other come in the possession of the book, and each eventually ends up reading the play, with dire results.Artistically speaking, the book has a bit of a British comic strip style which seems ill-fitted to this type of work; but after a few pages I didn't mind it so much. The dialogue at times also seems a little strange, with statements and questions that remain unanswered or receive a response that leaves the reader a bit baffled. All in all, I did like it, although it wasn't exactly what I was expecting. I give it 4 out of 5 stars. <NOTE: contains brief nudity>

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