Dixon EpicofGilgamesh

i n t r o d u ctio n b y r u ss k ic k
The Epic of Gilgamesh
dixon
T he most complete
G i l g a m e s h i n t r a n slatio n
i n cl u d es the n e w
d isco v e r ies f r om ta b let V
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As arguably the oldest work of literature in
the Western world, it’s most fitting that
dixon
THE EPIC OF GILGAMESh appears in the
Graphic Canon series, an exploration of
literary classics in graphic novel form,
associated with Russ Kick’s
successful anthologies.

THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH is the Ur-epic—the hero’s journey,
quest, and education—inscribed onto damp clay tablets several mil-
lennia before Odysseus or the priest of Ecclesiastes found their voices.
Sumerian versions of the epic date back almost five thousand years. It
is a bildungsroman of a bad king learning to become a proper human
being and therefore a wise king. To do so, besides defeating lions and
monsters and surviving great physical and emotional suffering, he
must face, and answer, the first (and last) great question: mortality.
Translated into English and presented here in its entirety as a
graphic novel, this version of THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH is a
father-son project by scholar, writer, and translator Kent H. Dixon and
his son, the comix artist Kevin H. Dixon, who bring a fresh take on
this great work. The reader is slowed down by the artwork and visual
jokes and the artist’s wry hat-tippings to various masters (Crumb and
Gilbert Shelton alongside Schulz and Capp, Popeye and Krazy Kat,
Uderzo’s Astérix and Hergé’s Tintin). Then, once the reading pace has
shifted into lower gear, having all of these aspects complementarily
drawn out makes for an especially satisfying counterpoint to the low-
key, the wise and cynical and morally sophisticated and sometimes
sublimely Olympian humor. wor l d l i t e r a t u r e / gr a p h i c no v e l / p oe t r y
$19.95 us / $25.95 can / £15.99 uk

A G R APHIC CANON BOOK isbn: 978-1-60980-793-1
Series editor: Russ Kick
se v e n
sto r ies
p r ess tr a nsl ated by illustr at ed by i n t r o d u c t io n b y
www.sevenstories.com
front cover art: Kevin H. Dixon kent h. dixon kevin h. dixon russ kick
“The Epic of Gilgamesh succeeds in revitalizing humanity’s most
ancient tale with a fresh take on the original text, enlightened
by Kent H. Dixon’s impeccable scholarship and brought to life by
Kevin H. Dixon’s skillful graphic storytelling techniques. Readers . . .
will delight in discovering the creators’ wry touches of humor and
imagination as they reinterpret this classic saga in comics form.”
—Matthew J. Smith,
co-author of The Power of Comics: History, Form, and Culture
“This comic take on Gilgamesh offers readers a playful,

action-packed, eminently readable new spin on this oldest of
stories. Kent and Kevin Dixon imbue the ancient quest with a goofy,
good-natured sense of fun, even as they evoke
the subtleties of its timeless themes.”
—Rolf Potts,
essayist and author of Vagabonding and Marco Polo Didn’t Go There
“An ancient tale refashioned in the style of underground comix

from the 1970s, The Epic of Gilgamesh by the Dixons is the best kind
of scholarly comic; one that is authentic, surprising, and accessible.
Bringing contemporary readers to long forgotten lands and tales of
adventure, The Epic of Gilgamesh is a welcome
addition to the Graphic Canon.”
—J.T. Waldman,
author and illustrator of Megillat Esther
and Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me (with Harvey Pekar)
“[A] monumental work, as well as a timely and therapeutic

reminder that horrible flesh-eating monsters, great sex, and
gargantuan egos have always been nestled comfortably within our
collective DNA—and at 5,000 years old, the epic feels positively 21st
century. I was blown away by what they have achieved.”
—David Catrow,
author and illustrator of the Max Spaniel series
and When God Made You (with Matthew Paul Turner)
The
Epic
of
Gilgamesh
kent h. dixon
t r a nsl at e d b y
kevin h. dixon
illustr at ed by
S e v e n S t o r i e s P r e ss
New York • Oakland • London
Copyright © 2018 by Kent H. Dixon and Kevin H. Dixon
a seven stories press first edition
All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by
any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
SEVEN STORIES PRESS

140 Watts Street
New York, NY 10013
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file
ISBN 978-1-60980-793-1 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-60980-794-8 (eb00k)
design
Stewart Cauley and Abigail Miller
Printed in the United States of America
135798642
Contents
xv introduction
Russ Kick
xix translator’s note
Kent H. Dixon
xxi artist’s note
Kevin H. Dixon
t In which we meet the randy young king and demi-

a god Gilgamesh and his equally untamed future
b
l friend, Enkidu—a wild man of the steppe.
e We meet the two heroes. King Gilgamesh, who built the great walls
t
i of his city, is yet too hard on his people, who complain to the gods,
who in turn create a wild man of the steppe, Enkidu, to keep the
1
randy young king in check. Enkidu is first civilized by the priestess
Shamhat: one week of sex, followed by some beer, and then she
leads him to Uruk, to meet the king.
t In which Gilgamesh and Enkidu fall into a

a terrible fight over Gilgamesh’s abuse of power.
b
l En route to Uruk, Enkidu learns of Gilgamesh’s abuse of power,
e claiming first night rights with all new brides in his kingdom. He
t
ii is incensed, and introduces himself to Gilgamesh by blocking his
way to a wedding chamber. They fall into a fearsome fight that
11
Gilgamesh just barely wins, after which they become fast friends.
vii
t Now fast friends, the two heroes decide to seek
a out the monster of the Cedar Forest, Humbaba,
b
l and slay him—just for the fame of it.
e The young heroes are looking for trouble. And fame. Gilgamesh
t
iii proposes traveling to the Cedar Forest to slay its guardian, the
monstrous Humbaba. Enkidu balks; he knows this giant, but
20
Gilgamesh persuades him. Gilgamesh’s mother adopts Enkidu
and prays to Shamash. The city’s elders advise them, the armorers
outfit them, and the brothers set out.
t In which the heroes journey to Humbaba’s lair,

a through good omens and bad.
b
l The journey is arduous, not the least because of Gilgamesh’s dreams.
e But Enkidu interprets these favorably—as good omens and not
t
iv premonitions of the fire-breathing, intestine-swirling face of Humbaba.
At the gate of the forest Enkidu’s hand is momentarily paralyzed.
31
Gilgamesh heals it, and they enter the beauteous Cedar Forest.
t The heroes, with help from the sun god Shamash,

a defeat the monster Humbaba, and speed their
b
l raft home with his gory head mounted high.
e The monster appears, promising to grind them into fishfood.
t
v Gilgamesh quakes, Enkidu spurs him on. With help from the sun
god they gain the upper hand, and Humbaba now pleads for his life.
37
Enkidu says he must not live. Humbaba then curses them: their lives
will be short, and Enkidu’s the shorter. Nonetheless, they kill him
and also cut down a magnificent cedar from which Enkidu would
fashion a temple door. Astride this great tree trunk they raft back
down the Euphrates, with Humbaba’s gory head mounted high.
t The goddess Ishtar propositions Gilgamesh, who

a rejects and insults her, as does Enkidu; in revenge,
b
l she leads down the Bull of Heaven to crush them.
e They defeat it, but Enkidu has a dream.
t
v1 The goddess Ishtar spies Gilgamesh naked, bathing off the gore, and
propositions him. He reminds her of the fates of all her previous
51
viii gilgamesh dixon & dixon

lovers and rejects her. Seeking revenge, she borrows the Bull of
Heaven from her father Anu. It causes great devastation, but the
heroes eventually slay it. Ishtar fumes; Enkidu throws the Bull’s
thigh in her face. The heroes are celebrated into the dawn, when
Enkidu has an ominous dream of the gods.
t For their arrogance, ‘‘One of the heroes must

a die.’’ Enkidu falls sick, curses everyone, is repri-
b
l manded by Shamash, and, after 12 days, he dies.
e ‘‘One of the heroes must die,’’ the gods decide. Humbaba, the
t
v11 Bull of Heaven, Ishtar . . . they have overstepped. Enkidu falls sick
and curses everyone and everything that brought him to Gilgamesh.
68
Shamash reprimands him for his ingratitude and he relents somewhat,
but terrifying visions continue, of Anzu and the Netherworld. After 12
days, lamenting he is being denied a heroic death, he dies.
t In which Gilgamesh laments, at great length,

a the loss of Enkidu.
b
l Gilgamesh is inconsolable. He calls on all the people, and all of
e nature, to mourn his friend. He recites their adventures; he blames
t
v111 himself. He tears his hair and rends his clothes; he commissions a
great statue and concocts a funerary banquet for the gods.
86
t ‘‘If Enkidu can die, so can I,’’ reasons Gilgamesh

a and sets out across the desert to seek remedy
b
l of the only mortal to have beaten death,
e encountering lions and Scorpion men en route.
t
ix He even traverses Shamash’s tunnel.
While mourning his friend, it occurs to Gilgamesh that he, too, will
92
die, so he decides to seek remedy from the “Faraway,” Utnapishtim,
the only mortal ever to have been granted immortality—the
Babylonian ‘‘Noah,’’ in fact. There are obstacles: a pair of lions
attack—Gilgamesh now wears their skins. He comes to the sun god’s
tunnel, and must face down its guardians, the terrifying scorpion men.
He traverses the tunnel and at the ‘‘12th double hour’’ he stumbles into
Shamash’s garden, all of jewels: ‘‘an entirely gemnified garden.’’
dixon & dixon gilgamesh ix

t Gilgamesh comes upon Siduri, who tries
a to convince him the secret of life is not
b
l immortality. But Gilgamesh forges on and with
e Siduri’s directions, and some wrong moves, he
t
x finally finds Utnapishtim, the Babylonian Noah.
He comes upon Siduri, the solitary ale-wife at the edge of the sea.
118
She fears him at first, but he tells her of Enkidu, and his own quest
for immortality. She tries to dissuade him, but he is adamant, so
she directs him to Urshanabi, the boatman who will ferry him
to Utnapishtim. Muscling his way through, Gilgamesh destroys
the ‘‘magic stones,’’ the only means of crossing the Waters of
Death. But with Urshanabi’s guidance, he poles across to reach
the Faraway, who advises him on death at some length before
Gilgamesh recognizes who he is: “And I, Utnapishtim, am not
dead.” How so, asks Gilgamesh.
t Utnapishtim relays the story of the Flood and his

a unique survival. But this is not for Gilgamesh,
b
l who can’t stay awake for even a week. Utnapishtim
e does direct him to a plant of enduring youth, but
t
xi a snake steals it. Gilgamesh is left boasting of his
great deeds and the wall he built around Uruk.
138
Utnapishtim relays the story of the Flood (the same as in Genesis,
but predating it by a millennium): the ark, the animals, the raven
and dove, etc. The storm rages a week and wipes out the rest. The
god who sent the flood is annoyed that one has escaped, but he’s
outnumbered, and Utnapishtim and his wife are rewarded with
eternal life. But this can’t be for Gilgamesh. As proof, Utnapishtim
challenges him to stay awake for a week. He fails, but accepts their
gift, a plant at the bottom of the sea that will make him young again,
lifelong. Gilgamesh retrieves it (rocks tied to his feet), and sets out
for home. But while he is bathing, a serpent steals away with the
plant. For immortality, Gilgamesh can only boast of his great deeds,
as he and Urshanabi approach the massive walls of Uruk.
x gilgamesh dixon & dixon

t Dream-like, Enkidu reappears, to help Gilgamesh
a retrieve his stick and his puck from the
b
l Netherworld. But he becomes trapped; finally
e Gilgamesh persuades a god to let him out and
t
xii Enkidu’s ghost returns to teach his friend the
secrets of the Netherworld.
172
Gilgamesh is old and has a curious dream: he has dropped his
stick and puck (his mekku and pukku) through a crack into the
Netherworld, and can’t reach them. Enkidu appears, willing to go
down to fetch them. Gilgamesh gives him lengthy advice on how
to negotiate any descent to the Underworld; Enkidu ignores all of
it, and is trapped. Gilgamesh pleads to various gods to bring him
back; finally Enki asks the sun god to make a rent in his tunnel,
so Enkidu can return. He does, but he’s a ghost, as Gilgamesh
discovers when he tries to embrace him. Still, they can talk, and at
Gilgamesh’s request Enkidu teaches him about the Netherworld,
who fares well there and who does not.
195 bios
dixon & dixon gilgamesh xi

Dedicated to
Renée Barat Fannon
our mom & grand mom
Reverse side of the newly discovered Tablet V of the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Babylonian period, 2003–1595 BCE. It is currently housed in the Sulay-
maniyah Museum, Iraq. It narrates how Gilgamesh and Enkidu entered
into the Cedar Forest and how they dealt with Humbaba. (Photo by Osa-
ma Shukir Muhammed Amin. CC BY-SA 4.0.)
xiv gilgamesh dixon & dixon

introduction
W
hat we have here is the world’s oldest story retold through one of the
world’s newest art forms. It’s a meeting of the minds across the millennia. “From
cuneiform to comix,” as artist Kevin Dixon puts it.
Early versions of The Epic of Gilgamesh—an action-filled adventure that wrestles with life’s
big questions—were inscribed on clay tablets in Sumer as early as 2700 BCE. The fuller version
that we’re more familiar with was set down circa 1300–1000 BCE by a priest/scribe named Sîn-
lēqi-unninni in Mesopotamia.
Some short works of literature were around earlier (such as maxims, spells, and brief poems
from Egypt and Mesopotamia), but this is the first long work, and the first sustained written
narrative, produced by the human race.
Meanwhile, comics are a relative newcomer to the world. Though there are some intriguing
precursors, what we think of as comics sprang on the world in the early 1800s and didn’t become
widespread until late that century. In the history of art, this makes comics a toddler.
Gilgamesh follows the adventures, travails, and transformation of arrogant, insatiable god-
king Gilgamesh of Uruk (modern-day Warka, in Iraq) and the wildman Enkidu. It’s so visual—
so brimming with monsters and gods and goddesses and bizarre landscapes and fight scenes and
passion and emotion—it’s a wonder that it hasn’t been made into dozens of comics and movies.
Into this gap steps the father-and-son team of the Dixons.
Until his recent retirement, Kent Dixon was a professor of literature and creative writing at
a private liberal arts college, Wittenberg University, in Springfield, Ohio. His fiction and essays
have been published in TriQuarterly, Georgia Review, Antioch Review, Iowa Review, and The American
Prospect, among many other prestigious outlets, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize
xv
four times. Kent is also a literary translator, having brought Sappho, Baudelaire, Rilke, and other
poets into English. When he decided to have a go at Gilgamesh, he went all in. By taking a distance-
learning course from the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago—with the oxymoronic
course title “Cuneiform by Mail”—he learned about one third of the Akkadian syllabary in
cuneiform symbols, the “alphabet” that Sîn-lēqi-unninni used to inscribe his Gilgamesh onto
clay tablets.
Kent also worked with 30 previous English and French translations, creating a rendition
in which he selected and modified from the best of the previous English editions, putting his
emphasis on the humor and physicality of Gilgamesh. These aspects are plain in the original version,
but scholarly types tend to sterilize ancient literature by putting it on a pedestal and cluttering it
up with elaborate scholarship. Kent has given us a smooth and vibrant new translation/rendition
with all the jokes, irony, raunch, action, and fun intact.
But instead of releasing this new, authentic version in the usual fashion, Kent asked his son
Kevin to adapt it into comics form. With Kevin’s specialty being vibrant, earthy, humorous
comics, it was an obvious fit. Kevin Dixon is a 30-year fixture of the DIY underground comix
scene, publishing much of his work, penning long-running strips in alt-weeklies, and scoring a
Xeric grant in the process. He’s risked the Man’s wrath many times, from his early days printing
his comics on the sly while working at Kinko’s to taunting a certain corporation with Mickey
Death in the Winds of Impotence. His well-known penchant for elaborate, perfectly rendered sound
effects and homages to comics history serve the ancient epic well.
This ten-year Gilgamesh collaboration is a monumental project of comics adaptation, as well
as a unifying experience for father and son. (I like that the original tale of male bonding has been
turned into a comic by another male duo. But I won’t try to figure out which Dixon is Gilgamesh
and which is Enkidu.)
I found out about the existence of their ongoing Gilgamesh comic while assembling the original
Graphic Canon trilogy. Part of my M.O. was to search online to see what was already out there. I
would Google the name of a classic work of literature with the terms “comics” or “graphic novel”
or “illustrated.” When I did this with Gilgamesh, I was stunned to see that someone was already
working on a faithful, unabridged adaptation.
Kevin was self-publishing Gilgamesh in installments. The available issues illustrated more
xvi gilgamesh dixon & dixon

Photo caption / credit TK
Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

(Photo by Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin. CC BY-SA 4.0.)
dixon & dixon gilgamesh xvii

than half the tale, and he was getting close to drawing the entire thing. I nonchalantly bought
two issues just to make sure it was as fantastic as it seemed. It was, and I immediately emailed
Kevin. Deciding which portion of the epic to put in Volume 1 of The Graphic Canon was an agonizing
decision (one of many for that project), but I finally went with the “Bull of Heaven” episode, and
a cosmic panel from it became the book’s cover. I knew this was a masterpiece in the making, and
even then I was hoping that Seven Stories might publish the entire thing as a stand-alone work.
And here it is. Part Odyssey, part Hercules, part Ponce de León, part Power Man and Iron Fist,
part On the Road, part bromance, part buddy movie . . . eons before any of those things existed.
russ k ick
xviii gilgamesh dixon & dixon

translator’s note
M
y translation of the Gilgamesh epic is actually what is called a rendition,
which is a translation made from other translations and not from the original. About
half the “translations” out there of Gilgamesh (of the more than fifty in print, just
in English) are renditions—including John Gardner’s wild one, or the recently much-touted
Stephen Mitchell’s. That said, I did take a course in cuneiform taught by an Assyriologist at
the University of Chicago’s famous Oriental Institute, and I attempted to check my renditions
against the original Akkadian (in cuneiform) wherever possible.
The institute’s holdings are astonishing—actually awesome (some of the artifacts are 20
to 30 feet tall)—but the course itself transpired by email and snail mail, and in it I learned to
read about a third of the 600 to 800 symbols that constitute the Assyrian syllabary, enough to
allow me to hunt down individual words and even phrases in the 26-volume Chicago Assyrian
Dictionary: does the wind “howl like an army passing over,” or “scream like a woman in labor”?
(Either is valid; I think I used both. The verb can also refer to trees rubbing each other, volcanoes
rumbling, and Gargantuan fingernails grating across a blackboard (though that one’s not in the
CAD)). I also consulted more than two dozen translations in English, three in French, and one
each in Italian and German.
I wanted a translation that would appeal to my college students and general readers, so
my rendition tends to emphasize the story’s sensory dimension. Hence, I call this “an enriched
rendition,” doing my best to dope it with a diction and vocabulary that evoke the most vivid
sensory world. See Alexander Heidel’s 1946 translation for something in English closest to the
original Babylonian and Akkadian, and if you do that and compare it with other translations, you
will see how much latitude scholars and poets take with this first piece of great world literature,
both of necessity (the language is difficult, leaving much room for interpretation, and mistakes),
xix
and also oftentimes willfully: surprising how many hobby horses can dance on the edge of a
tablet. My own effort, I maintain, while unabashedly biased toward the sensory world, is still
one of the more accurate literally. Then, add the fun and insights of my son Kevin’s drawings,
and I propose we’re giving a reader something like what the original audience experienced when
it was read to them (and even possibly performed), capturing the range and sophistication of
Sîn-lēqi-unninni’s humor, pathos, horror, violence, and extraordinarily modern and candid
“adult content.”
We’re thousands of years before Augustine’s Confessions (and plenty of others, but he’s the
guy that screws us up the most about sex), and that time gap allows the overall tone of this work
to be refreshingly natural, honest, and deeply, exquisitely human.
I would like to confess to one major fudge in my enriched rendition. In the original, Tablet
XII begins with events that appear to be out of place after Tablet XI: Gilgamesh has returned
home defeated but perhaps reconciled, while Enkidu is once again alive and seems more like a
servant than any bosom-buddy. Scholars mostly agree that Tablet XII was a later addition to
the epic, to give us a tour of the Netherworld, in which Gilgamesh eventually becomes a god.
This twelfth tablet has been famously dubbed “the inorganic appendage,” and the majority of
translations simply leave it out!
But I had the great honor, when I was totally immersed in all things Gilgamesh, of meeting
Sîn-lēqi-unninni himself (albeit in a dream), and he told me succinctly, and with great authority
and patience, how to make the inorganic appendage organic. Quoth the ancient priest and scholar:
“It’s a dream, stupid.”
Oh, and why not? The epic is rife with dreams. Tablet XII moves like a dream, plays with
time like a dream, and, I’ll tentatively propose here, it overlays and underpins—like Freud’s
concept of a dream’s “latent imagery”—the epic tale that it concludes. I went to the actual tablet:
the first nine or ten lines are either missing or are too damaged for even scholarly guesses. So, I
supplied three of the missing lines from out of my own pocket. But who’s to say they aren’t so?
Only Sîn-lēqi would know for sure.
k ent h. dixon
xx gilgamesh dixon & dixon

artist’s note
I
was my father’s second choice for this project. He originally wanted Julie
Taymor to turn his rendition of Gilgamesh into a Broadway spectacle like The Lion
King, with giant puppets and imaginative costumes and sets. After Taymor missed
out on her big chance, making it into a comic book with me was the next best option. But
maybe he should ask her again.
Back in 2000 CE, we began by sending copious notes, sketches, and rough page
layouts back and forth through the mail. This took forever. Also, there were the
agonizing decisions the artist has to make before embarking on a project of this
scale. Once you commit to certain details, you can’t change them one hundred pages
in. Would I use Zip-A-Tone? I had only a limited stash, and it was becoming scarce
and pricy on the black market. Now was not the time to graduate to the tools of the
old masters, the brush and dip pen. I was too ham-fisted. A long way to go before
developing something like a skill. Nor was it finally time to embrace the labor-saving
technology we take for granted today. I didn’t even have a computer! No, I would
just carve this thing out on the cheapest Bristol board I could find, with my crappy
unreliable Rapidographs and that maddeningly inconsistent nightmare in a bottle,
Liquid Paper. Any shading in the art would be achieved by cross-hatching, a choice
that just about cost me my eyesight.
I had grandiose plans to be historically accurate with the images, but was quickly
disabused of that notion. You have to remember this story is told, re-told, revised, and
enlarged across a couple of thousand years, by a procession of conquering civilizations.
An Assyrian war helmet, which I like for its Smurf-like qualities, isn’t necessarily going
to look like the Sumerian-issue brain bucket from a millennium earlier. Oh, and here
xxi
you’ve used a distinctively Akkadian hair style, yet the character is clearly riding an Old
Babylonian chariot—which didn’t even exist yet, so which is it?
The only contemporary visual references you get of the time are the monumental stone
carvings and artifacts like those found in the tomb of Sargon II. Few are your glimpses
of how the little people lived. Nobody commemorates what a toilet looks like on their
Ziggurat of Triumph. I cribbed as many details as I could from art books and museums.
I relied heavily on some pictures from things my dad sent, and especially on the images
in a collection I found of old National Geographic articles from the 1940s and ’50s, Everyday
Life in Ancient Times, illustrated by H.M. Herget (who has to be doubly awesome for the
hidden Tintin reference in his name). A trip to see the Art of the First Cities exhibit at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art was an emotional experience for me. Not only was seeing
the famous bull-headed lyre in person like meeting Pelé or Rod Stewart, but I felt deeply
connected to the Ur-artists who had made this stuff. Hey man, I like your Gilgamesh.
I’m working on a Gilgamesh, too! I wondered if these ancient colleagues of mine would
enjoy working with Sculpey. I got a little choked up.
In order to get an exciting semi-self-contained episode to show around while I worked
on the epic, I broke ground with the Bull of Heaven tablet. This would be fun to draw—it
is one of the funniest tablets—and would let me hit the ground running for the long task
ahead. I was most fortunate: the editor Russ Kick discovered it online, and included it
in the first volume of his Graphic Canon series, leading to a long and fruitful relationship
with Seven Stories Press.
There was, however, one drawback to starting in the middle of the story: wanting to
change the middle once I finished drawing the beginning. The look of cartoon characters
always evolves in the course of a long project. It used to drive me crazy, how weird Tintin
and Astérix looked in their earliest appearances. Think of how different the Simpsons
look in their first season, compared with the characters we know today. The Incredible
Hulk, rivaled in his greenness by only Kermit the Frog and the Jolly Green Giant, was a
sickly shade of gray when he made his debut.
You have to draw these characters hundreds of times before they achieve their classic
streamlined look. I didn’t do that. As a result, you get characters that look one way at the
xxii gilgamesh dixon & dixon

beginning, and fine for that, but then just as it appears the artist is finally working out the
kinks in the design of his own cartoons they suddenly devolve into even rougher, more
primitive proto-Gilgameshes and Enkidus than they were at the outset. Then, even more
abruptly, while Enkidu is supposed to be sick and dying, the characters look healthier
than ever. So the gradual morphing of refinement is out of order. It’s like watching Mickey
Mouse in Fantasia change into Steamboat Willie, and then instantly transform into
today’s fully-fledged corporate overlord rodent.
For a time, my dad and I considered the idea of a backstory, a sort of “Making of
Gilgamesh” to weave into the epic. This would be an entertaining way to add footnotes,
and some historical information, but would also parallel the story of Gilgamesh and
Enkidu. My dad would be the cranky long-winded professor, Noah K. Samuelson,
named in honor of the eminent Assyriologist Samuel Noah Kramer. I would be Lucky,
the cranky degenerate cartoonist, named after Sîn-lēqi-unninni, the ancient scribe
who gave us the most complete version of the epic. Hilarity ensues, but in the quest to
achieve their great work, Enkidu’s analog, Lucky—i.e., me—has to die. Eventually, in
the surprise twist ending you never saw coming, we’d reveal that Noah K. Samuelson
actually is Noah, as in Utnapishtim, the one man granted immortality by the gods. So
my dad gets to be Gilgamesh AND Utnapishtim, while I get to be Enkidu, condemned
to a dark and inky Netherworld? No fair! This “Making of” concept obviously needed
some major revisions. But “Lucky” for me, the epic and all its characters ended up
speaking for themselves. So my dad and I don’t have to argue over which one of us is
Enkidu and which one’s Gilgamesh. (Trust me, nobody wants to be Enkidu.)
Besides, there are so many other characters we could identify with: Urshanabi the
Boatman, who has the worst job in the whole epic, and gets yelled at and fired for doing
it. Or Puzur-Amurri, the hardworking carpenter who helps build the ark, thinking he’s
hit the jackpot when he’s given the “opulent palace and everything in it” for his labor by
Utnapishtim, who in turn knows full well the whole thing will be twenty feet underwater
before the weekend.
Or the one character who really seems to get it right: the tavern-keeper Siduri, who
advises the Gilgamesh in all of us to slow down and enjoy the simple things in life, as
dixon & dixon gilgamesh xxiii

they are meant to be enjoyed, and to not worry so much about stuff like immortality and
whether or not your cartoon characters look too weird at the beginning. Hopefully this
book straddles the line between Gilgamesh’s ambition and Siduri’s sensibility, by staying
true to this oldest, greatest, and most human tale, and, more importantly, providing a
simple pleasure in life—something you can enjoy.
k ev in h. dixon
xxiv gilgamesh dixon & dixon

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bios
KENT H. DIXON is primarily a prose writer, but has published in all genres, including poetry
and screenwriting. His fiction and nonfiction have been published in Iowa Review, TriQuarterly,
Shenandoah, The American Prospect, Georgia Review, and Antioch Review among others. Recent translations
include Mallarmé’s L’Après-midi d’un faune and Rilke’s “Leichen-Wäsche.” In collaboration with
Japanese students, he has translated previously unpublished hibakusha (A-bomb survivor poetry) in
Luna: Journal of Poetry and Translation, Wittenberg Review, and elsewhere. With his artist son Kevin,
he created the opening graphic novel excerpt of The Epic of Gilgamesh in editor Russ Kick’s 2012 three-
volume anthology The Graphic Canon. Kent was educated at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill,
with graduate degrees from Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. from University of Iowa—the
Writers’ Workshop. He teaches Creative Writing at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio,
where he lives with his writer wife. To read more of Kent’s work, visit www.kenthdixon.com.
KEVIN H. DIXON is known for the autobiographical series . . . And Then There Was Rock,
“ . . . true stories about playing in a crappy loser band.” With collaborator Eric Knisley, he produced
Mickey Death in the Winds of Impotence, for which they won a Xeric Award. Kevin has done cover art for
small presses in Chapel Hill, NC; run comic series in local newspapers; hosted “underground” talk radio
shows; and contributed the cover to the first volume of The Graphic Canon, an Oliver Twist for the second
volume, and a Brothers Grimm tale for The Graphic Canon of Children’s Literature. Kevin lives in Chapel
Hill with his wife and their three cats. To see more of Kevin’s work, visit www.kevinhdixon.com.
russ kick is the originator of the Graphic Canon series, for which he has commissioned new
work from over 350 artists and illustrators, now going into its sixth volume. NPR described it
as “easily the most ambitious and successfully realized literary project in recent memory.” Kick’s
previous anthologies, You Are Being Lied To and Everything You Know Is Wrong, informed a whole
generation of Americans with the hard truths of American politics and created a media frenzy for
being the first to publish suppressed photographs of American flag-draped coffins returning from
Iraq. The New York Times dubbed Kick “an information archaeologist,” Details magazine described
him as “a Renaissance man,” and Utne Reader named him one of its “50 Visionaries Who Are
Changing Your World.” His popular website, thememoryhole2.org, is active again and getting
national media coverage for archiving documents that the Trump administration has been deleting.
195
the graphic canon series
series editor : russ kick
P R A I S E FO R TH E G R A P H I C CA N O N , VO LU M E S 1 , 2 , & 3
“Great literature leaves us not just with extraordinary stories; the language also
leaves an image—a rich and expansive painting of the world written on the page.
In The Graphic Canon, the world’s literature is reimagined as comics and
visual art, and with it the editor, Russ Kick, has struck a chord.”
—The New York Times, Editor’s Choice
“[The Graphic Canon] is easily the most ambitious and successfully realized literary
project in recent memory, and certainly the one that’s most relevant for today’s readers.”
—National Public Radio
The Graphic Canon, Vol. 1 The Graphic Canon, Vol. 2 The Graphic Canon, Vol. 3
From the Epic of Gilgamesh to From "Kubla Khan" to the Brontë Sisters From Heart of Darkness to Hemingway
Shakespeare to Dangerous Liaisons to The Picture of Dorian Gray to Infinite Jest
The Graphic Canon of The Graphic Canon of The Graphic Canon of

Children's Literature Crime and Mystery, Vol. 1 Crime and Mystery, Vol. 2
The World's Greates Kid's Lit as From Sherlock Holmes to A Clockwork From Salome to Edgar Allen Poe to
Comics and Visuals Orange to Jo Nesbø Silence of the Lambs

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i n t r o d u ctio n b y r u ss k ic k

The Epic of Gilgamesh

The Epic of Gilgamesh

$19.95 us / $25.95 can / £15.99 uk

“This comic take on Gilgamesh offers readers a playful,

“An ancient tale refashioned in the style of underground comix

“[A] monumental work, as well as a timely and therapeutic

a seven stories press first edition

All rights reserved.

SEVEN STORIES PRESS

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file

ISBN 978-1-60980-793-1 (pbk)

Printed in the United States of America

t In which we meet the randy young king and demi-

t In which Gilgamesh and Enkidu fall into a

t In which the heroes journey to Humbaba’s lair,

t The heroes, with help from the sun god Shamash,

t The goddess Ishtar propositions Gilgamesh, who

viii gilgamesh dixon & dixon

t For their arrogance, ‘‘One of the heroes must

t In which Gilgamesh laments, at great length,

t ‘‘If Enkidu can die, so can I,’’ reasons Gilgamesh

dixon & dixon gilgamesh ix

t Utnapishtim relays the story of the Flood and his

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Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

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The Graphic Canon of The Graphic Canon of The Graphic Canon of

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