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  • Published: 1 December 2012
  • ISBN: 9789380028224
  • Imprint: Steerforth Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 88
  • RRP: $24.99

Moby Dick

The Graphic Novel



The initial 16 Campfire series titles scheduled for the Fall 2010 list will launch a graphic novel line that will see significant growth in 2011 and beyond.

It was an obsession that would destroy them all...

On a cold December night, a young man called Ishmael rents a room at an inn in Massachusetts. He has come from Manhattan to the north-east of America to sign up for a whaling expedition.

Later that same night, as Ishmael is sleeping, a heavily tattooed man wielding a blade enters his room. This chance meeting is just the start of what will become the greatest adventure of his life.

The next day, Ishmael joins the crew of a ship known as the Pequod. He is approached by a man dressed in rags who warns him that, if he sails under the command of Captain Ahab, he may never come back. Undaunted, Ishmael returns early the next morning and leaves for the high seas.

For the crew of the Pequod, their voyage is one of monetary gain. For Captain Ahab, however, it is a mission driven by hatred, revenge, and his growing obsession with the greatest creature of the sea.

  • Published: 1 December 2012
  • ISBN: 9789380028224
  • Imprint: Steerforth Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 88
  • RRP: $24.99

About the author

Herman Melville

Herman Melville was born on August 1, 1819, in New York City, the son of a merchant. Only twelve when his father died bankrupt, young Herman tried work as a bank clerk, as a cabin-boy on a trip to Liverpool, and as an elementary schoolteacher, before shipping in January 1841 on the whaler Acushnet, bound for the Pacific. Deserting ship the following year in the Marquesas, he made his way to Tahiti and Honolulu, returning as ordinary seaman on the frigate United States to Boston, where he was discharged in October 1844. Books based on these adventures won him immediate success. By 1850 he was married, had acquired a farm near Pittsfield, Massachussetts (where he was the impetuous friend and neighbor of Nathaniel Hawthorne), and was hard at work on his masterpiece Moby-Dick.

Literary success soon faded; his complexity increasingly alienated readers. After a visit to the Holy Land in January 1857, he turned from writing prose fiction to poetry. In 1863, during the Civil War, he moved back to New York City, where from 1866-1885 he was a deputy inspector in the Custom House, and where, in 1891, he died. A draft of a final prose work, Billy Budd, Sailor, was left unfinished and uncollated, packed tidily away by his widow, where it remained until its rediscovery and publication in 1924.

Also by Herman Melville

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Praise for Moby Dick

In this slender graphic adaptation of Melville’s magnum opus, Ishmael, Queequeg and the rest of the uniformly burly, steely-eyed whalers are strong presences in Singh’s art — at least until their pale, gargantuan nemesis shows up to scatter them and their ship as flotsam across the waves. . . . The biographical introduction and closing pages on whaling ships and sperm whales provide a nice veneer of historical context. — Kirkus Reviews

"I highly recommend Campfire’s comics. They do what they are intended to do and do it in  a way that excites kids about classic literature." — Chris Wilson, The Graphic Classroom (a resource for teachers and librarians) 

"Stahlberg and Singh understand that the kids of today don't want to be talked down to. . . . The comic reads as a full story; there isn't really much that seems as if it's missing.  Lalit Kumar Singh can stand up to any artist working in the Big Two today. He has a style reminiscent of Andy Kubert, or even, dare I say, early Marc Silvestri. The angular, realistic style expertly captures the dark nature of the story without going so dark as to possibly turn off younger readers. . . . If you have a kid whom you'd like to get into reading comics, and if you have a kid whom you'd like to get into classic literature, Moby Dick comes highly recommended." — The Comics Cube!

"Campfire Graphics has condensed [Melville's original work] to a mere 88 richly illustrated pages. And done quite a decent job too.... [Condensing] helps the action packed story move along at a brisk pace." — Emma, No Flying No Tights