"It looks like a comic book, and it is a ton of fun. But Sabrina Jones' graphic depiction of the life of Isadora Duncan is also a serious work of biography. It synthesizes much of what we know about the bold and sometimes bizarre doings of one of the great dance innovators of the 19th and 20th centuries, from her bohemian California childhood to her artistic conquest of the cultural capitals of the world, to her macabre death (she was strangled when her long scarf got stuck in the wheel of an open roadster she was riding in). But it also points out the parts of her story that are contradictory or unknowable. Most remarkably, in just 125 fluidly drawn pages, Jones (one of the originators of Fantagraphics' Girl Talk) brings Duncan's astonishing creativity, revolutionary fervor and romantic disasters to life."?Lynn Jacobson, The Seattle Times

"To articulate the intricate story of a maverick, any real maverick, is no easy feat. And to tell the story of Isadora Duncan would be hard for even the most ambitious of biographers, but Sabrina Jones chose a good medium in which to attempt it. In her debut graphic biography, Jones captures Duncan's dramatic story in an impressive fashion. Who knew plain black and white illustrations could come so alive, so full of movement and feeling? Romance, politics, tragedy, and art twist and whirl together in the pages of Jones' book as she recounts Duncan's life in chronological order, beginning with her childhood in San Francisco where she was raised by a free-thinking, single mother. We follow her on her travels to several European capitals, where she felt her performances were far more appreciated and understood than in her native America. After all, it was in her home country that she got in trouble for a Janet-Jackson-at-the-Super-Bowl-like performance at the Boston Symphony Hall. The book ends with her tragically famous and crazy death on the French Riviera in 1927. Like her dancing, Isadora Duncan was modern beyond her time. Her radical views about education, woman’s independence, marriage, and single motherhood drew the scorn of some and the admiration of others. She led an intrepid life, and rightly knew that we take nothing with us when we go. She wasted little time with the rarities of society, and while she might not have always been happy or right, she unquestionably ruled her mind, her body, and her spirit. Most importantly, she knew the fundamental difference between living and existing."?Laura Koffler, Feminist Review

"Sabrina Jones is a designer, artist, and cartoonist whose work has appeared in a variety of radical and underground publications. She also paints scenery for film, theatre, and television, as a member of United Scenic Artists Local 829. She co-founded an anthology of women's autobiographical comics, Girltalk, that was published by Fantagraphics in the 1990s, and she is a longtime editor of World War III Illustrated. Her comics are featured in Wobblies! A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World (2005), and in the forthcoming The Real Cost of Prisons Comix, which addresses the war on drugs, the economics of the prison boom, and the impact of incarceration on women and children. Sabrina's first complete book, Isadora Duncan: A Graphic Biography, has just been published by Hill and Wang. The book offers a graphic art celebration of one of the founders of modern dance. [Isadora Duncan] is one of a number of recent graphic books on nonfiction subjects that are helping to redefine and even reinvent comics for a new century."?Kent Worcester, Words and Pictures magazine

"Not too long ago, the term 'graphic nonfiction' might have referred to how-to manuals, editorial cartoons or field guides to flora and fauna. But recently, Farrar, Straus and Giroux has released several works by nonfiction writers using pictures to help tell a story?to leaven a dense topic or to help the information flow. The topics are as varied as the U.S. Constitution, modern dancer Isadora Duncan and the human genetic code. Brooklyn artist Sabrina Jones is not new to graphic nonfiction. She's worked on several issues of the political comic book World War 3 Illustrated and on nonfiction comics for Wobblies! A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World, The Real Cost of Prisons and other projects. In Isadora Duncan: A Graphic Biography, she sets the record straight on myths and legends surrounding the great modern-dance pioneer, some of which Duncan created herself. In an introductory essay of quotations and pictures, Jones observes that Duncan's own account of her life, placed alongside other sources, doesn't add up?prompting the author to draw one of those little speech bubbles above the head of a girl who is reading both: 'She lied!' She debunks Duncan as a Communist revolutionary, noting that 'she was as proud to dance for the Romanov dynasty as she was for Lenin'?leading the author to quip, 'Revolutionist or opportunist?' These disparities between myth and reality are amplified by the fact that there is no film of her dancing, so impressions come from her contemporaries, whom the author quotes. Dancer Ruth St. Denis described her as 'the ecstatic liberation of the soul.' The evangelist Billy Sunday is quoted as saying, 'That Bolshevik hussy doesn't wear enough clothing to pad a crutch.' After that introduction, the author begins the story with the dancer's childhood. Her black-and white drawings are mostly functional, except for the flowing and voluptuous treatment of the dancer in motion, which seems to capture something of her spirit. It's an effective and surprisingly economical portrait of one of the seminal figures in dance and culture of the past 100 years."?Michael Gill, The Cleveland Free Times

"In Isadora Duncan: A Graphic Biography, a writer and illustrator named Sabrina Jones has certainly come up with something different, capturing the highlights of Duncan's life in memorable images. And as Lori Belilove points out in a foreword to Duncan, there is no reason to question the accuracy of what Jones has written. The book's bibliography includes 11 mostly scholarly works. Duncan can be viewed as either a good crash course on Duncan's life or a similarly useful refresher. Before I came across Duncan, I had never read a graphic novel, much less a graphic biography . . . The book's drawings, particularly of Duncan, are expressive, aided by a flowing tunic that Duncan wears whether she is dancing or not. The writing is full of the kind of sassy irreverence that characterized much of Duncan's personality and outlook. Marriage, for example, is dismissed as enslaving to women. There is humor?as when, for example, Duncan describes labor in these terms: 'The Spanish Inquisition was mild sport in comparison.' And the scene documenting how Duncan and her lover, Raymond, sailed to London is priceless. They made the journey on a cattle boat. The reader/viewer gets a real appreciation of how far Duncan traveled in her life. Her artistic journey began in San Francisco, took in several United States cities and covered much of Europe. That she found success at all in Europe seems miraculous in retrospect, what with all the differences in language and customs with which she contended daily. Duncan's life was larger than life. Still, I was often struck by how closely it paralleled the struggles that many artists face today. She was often hurting for money, and much of the public found her work either baffling or scandalous or both. Bu...