Voyage Into the Deep: The Saga of Jules Verne and Captain Nemo [Hardcover]

Francois Riviere (Author), Serge Micheli (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2004

This imaginative graphic novel presents a fictionalized history of Jules Verne's experience writing the legendary 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Through strange encounters with such characters as an orphaned boy with a mysterious package, an Indian princess on an obsessive search, and an eccentric artist of fantastical creations, Verne discovers and immortalizes the most compelling character of his writing career: Captain Nemo. Weaving together details of Verne's own life with events aboard the infamous Nautilus, Francois Riviere tells a powerful - and cryptic - tale of art, science, and the dangers of passion.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Knowing something about Verne and his classic 20,000 Leagues under the Sea will help readers get the most from this graphic novel "prequel that leads up to Verne's writing of his masterpiece." Here, Verne is a tortured author whose jottings for what he's sure will be his masterpiece are interspersed among his imaginings and the oddly fascinating stories of "ravishing" Princess Mikah, searching for her lost father; an orphan boy who brings Verne a strange package; and an artist whose bizarre creations spring from his nightmares. Riviere's vision is a moody, compelling, dreamlike one, well represented and extended by the artwork. The full-page pictures and comic-book panels pull readers into the story. Their dark, brilliantly rich colors viscerally evoke the stream of events and the troubled spirits of the strange characters, who exist in a weird visual realm where reality and imagination and Verne and his creation Nemo seem to merge. Stephanie Zvirin
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

...moody, compelling, dreamlike...brilliantly rich colors ...evoke the stream of events and the troubled spirits of the strange characters. -- Booklist, February 15, 2004

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 80 pages
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams (April 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810948303
• ISBN-13: 978-0810948303
• Product Dimensions: 12.5 x 9.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,237,242 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Pretty Art, Mess of a Story, December 1, 2005

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Voyage Into the Deep: The Saga of Jules Verne and Captain Nemo (Hardcover)

First of all, this is a stunningly produced book. Absolutely beautiful, rich, popping color inside and out, printed on lovely paper, great endpapers, all as one might expect from art publishers Abrams. However... the actual story is a haphazard postmodern deconstructivst mess -- so much so that the best advice one can give readers is not to bother reading, but to simply absorb Serge Micheli's art for its own sake.

The book was born from co-creators Riviere and MIcheli's childhood love for the works of pioneering science-fiction author Jules Verne -- especially 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. In his afterword, Riviere talks about the influence of another pioneering work of science-fiction, Ian Watson's 1973 debut The Embedding, which explored linguistics and posited language as a means to bridge the gap between human consciousness and the otherness of the objective world. Somehow these two fascinations, along with a memoir by Verne's niece, resulted in this unfortunate blend of the fictional characters and world of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea with the real world of Jules Verne as he was writing the story, along with a few other fictional characters. This isn't the worst premise in the world, a certainly successful examples of such a concept exist, however in this case the creators agreed that "above all, some kind of demiurgic madness was what [we] felt should be given paramount importance in the narrative we imagined".

Well, some people's madness is other people's mess. You get Verne as the tormented artist figure, a mysterious orphan, an Indian princess, a little demon, and a few other assorted weirdoes. There's occultism, weird green luminescent fluid, and drugs to spice things up further. You know you're in for a rocky ride when the back cover even admits that it is a "cryptic" tale. And if you haven't read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, it'll all be that much more confusing. This is the kind of free-form non-storytelling that probably would have gone over really well in the late '60s or early '70s (especially with some pot or mushrooms), but has little to offer the average graphic novel reader. It's doubtful it would have ever been translated and published outside of France, expect that Abrams is owned by a French media conglomerate...

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully done!, March 7, 2007

By 

Nathaniel Napierala "N. Napierala" (LA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Voyage Into the Deep: The Saga of Jules Verne and Captain Nemo (Hardcover)

A truly great graphic novel. Amazing visuals, beautiful use of color, fantastic action, and a classic story.