Stately, plump Buck Mulligan

A reader sent this link to a graphic novel version of James Joyce's Ulysses. This sprawling, dense, linguistic fruitcake of a novel thwarts most people who try to read it. Some make their way through with Spark or Cliff notes. Robert Berry's' graphic novel adaptation, Ulysses Seen not only clarifies the first chapter, but helps us visualize (and thus keep track of) this complicated story.

The first sentence introduces "stately, plump Buck Mulligan," a golden-tongued medical student who seems to exist mostly as a foil to the introspective, melancholic, and oversensitive protagonist Stephen Dedalus. Below the cut are some of the drawings; one is NSFW.





From the first sentence, "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed."






Stephen Dedalus is highly sensitive, and Mulligan goes out of his way to try to "toughen him up."






Gratuitous belly shot.







He cooks, too. Apparently the "melting candle" remark is a wisecrack about female masturbation.






But he can't pay the woman who brings the milk.






Dedalus accompanies Mulligan to his morning swim. I think Mulligan's lost a little weight since breakfast ... :D