Literary Classics Made Better as Comic Books~

Sometimes (nearly all the time) I hate it when books and comics are turned into movies. It's the nit picker in me who sits though movies such as Wolverine Origins and complains that nearly all of it is wrong. However, a book turned into a comic book? I think it improves the visually feel of something, without taking away the literature aspect. We can all appreciate cross cultural media.

Frankenstein (Mary Shelly):



Boris Karloff may have immortalized the image of a bumbling monster on the silver screen, but Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is far more than a B-movie punch line. Adapted by Jason Cobley and illustrated by a team of five artists, this graphic variation captures the novel’s moral subtext and satirical underpinnings with detailed, colour rich images that emphasize its haunting realism more so than its pop culture touchstones. And the "monsters" name is Adam, something I need to suggest every Halloween. Adam. Not Frankenstein.

I Am Legend (Richard Matheson):


Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend might not seem like an uplifting read — a story about the last man on Earth is hardly an optimistic premise, after all — but it offers a moral that none of its numerous Hollywood adaptations has successfully captured since. Writer/artist collaborators Steve Niles and Elman Brown, however, manage to convey Legend’s literal and figurative disorientation in scratchy, woodcut-like illustrations that guard the story’s surprising conclusion in a way that most movies have failed to do.

Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde) :


Oscar Wilde’s biting humour has never needed much help being translated beyond the page, but perhaps it’s such accessibility that makes successful alterations all the more entertaining. Graphic Classics’ Oscar Wilde features various authors and artists’ adaptations of selections from the Irish writer’s collection. The effectiveness varies from story to story, but Alex Burrows and Lisa K. Weber’s pitch-perfect version of The Picture of Dorian Gray is brilliant.