Conrad-s gnarled novella-s shifting and overloaded allegories are distilled down quite neatly in this haunting graphic adaptation by Kuper (Kafkaesque). The story is unchanged, rearing out like a modern-day myth told one night by a sailor, Marlow, to his crewmates. Marlow secured a job with a trading company hunting for ivory deep in an unnamed country and, on a doomed boat manned by tragically maltreated African cannibals and villainously buffoonish Europeans, he follows the river resembling -a snake uncoiled- deep into the wilderness, looking to save the -sick- ivory hunter Kurtz. Kurtz-s time in the jungle has transformed him into a crazed warlord casting a cult-leader spell (-his intelligence was perfectly clear, but his soul had gone mad-). Kuper-s angled figures are drawn with the kind of feverish intensity befitting the tale-s clamorous climactic utterance of -the horror, the horror.- He keeps Conrad-s original plot intact, but in order to -illuminate its heart- (per his extensive introduction, which includes samples of process pages), Kuper spirals out from Conrad-s point of view to view the colonial slaughter from its victims- perspective. This respectful adaptation proves why readers continue to return to trace Marlow-s route down the river and puzzle over the relevance of its message. (Nov.)