Masterpiece Comics

by Robert Sikoryak

Book Overview

HILARIOUS PARODIES OF CLASSIC LITERATURE REIMAGINED WITH CLASSIC COMICS

Masterpiece Comics adapts a variety of classic literary works with the most iconic visual idioms of twentieth-century comics. Dense with exclamation marks and lurid colors, R. Sikoryak's parodies remind us of the sensational excesses of the canon, or, if you prefer, of the economical expressiveness of classic comics from Batman to Garfield. In "Blond...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1897299842
• ISBN13: 9781897299845
• Release Date: September 2009
• Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
• Length: 64 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 9.2" x 12.1"

Customer Reviews

form follows function

great idea well executed, using the style and characters of various cartoon and comic books and strips, the artists reveals the underlying archetypes that link great literature and great comics. The "Good Grief" of Charlie Brown echoes Kafka's Human Cockroach Gregor in railing against an unfair world, Dostoevsky and Batman collide over the concepts of Crime and Punishment, and the true meaning of Gothic is highlighted when Jane Austin gets the EC Horror treatment. Highly recommended

ROFL

What a great mix of two wonderful genres: comic books and classics. The author maintains and merges both forms with equal veracity. I have been laughing on every page, whether Dagwood and Blondie as Adam and Eve, or the Tales of the Crypt version of Wuthering Heights. Marvelous fun. The book also includes all of the wonderful back of comic ads that enhance comic book experience, tying them into the stories told within. A lovely find

Hilarious and Astute

This work manages to comment cleverly both on the classic works of literature and on the comic strip / comic book characters used to illustrate the classic stories. I liked every one of them, but my favorite was the one page "Waiting for Godot."

Classics Illustrated

I have been waiting for this book a long time. I'm glad that someone has finally collected the bulk of Mr. Sikoryak's work in one place and under one cover. This is the way the 'Classics' should always be portrayed in comics versus those dense and dullish Classics Illustrated I and others grew up with. I love good parody and this book has it in spades. I'm nuts about the story of Adam and Eve done with the characters from Blondie, and that Wuthering Heights ala EC Comics is pure GENIUS. Thank you D & Q for making this tome available and I hope there is more of this in the future from the great Mr. S. This may be my favorite comic book related title of the year because it's like a dream come true. And as a bonus it a very large book so all the art can be experienced in bold glory. Wish I could give it 6 stars!

Parody & Profundity

R. Sikoryak is so good an artist, it's frightening, but now he's my new hero. Comic book parodies of literary classics are nothing new, but no one has ever made the source and its comic variation cut as deeply into each other as Sikoryak does in his graphic re-imagining of the Western canon. Perhaps the creative fuse that lead to this collection was lit in response to Harold Bloom, who credited the creation of modern self-consciousness to the shock effect that works of literary genius, particularly Shakespeare, have had upon our concept of ourselves. Or it could just be that Sikoryak finds it funny as hell that Dante's moralistic allegory of the wages of sin works just fine when condensed to the size of a bubblegum wrapper. That's only one of the formal strategies on display in this collection. Sikoryak, clearly a man who enjoys a challenge, not only finds astonishing parallels between characters from highbrow literature and pop culture, but he paintstakingly draws each cartoon parody in a line-perfect recreation of the original's style, right down to the flat, four-color palette that comics were stuck with in the pre-computer era. It's a virtuoso performance. Nothing will give you a better idea of what Sikoryak is up to than the table of contents: "Blonde Eve" -- Mr. Dithers creates the world and appoints Dagwood and Blondie caretakers of the Garden of Eden. Things don't go very well. "Inferno Joe" -- Bazooka Joe tours the nine circles of Hell in thirty-one bubblegum-wrapper-sized panels. "Mephistofield" -- Jon Faustus makes a deal with the devil to become lord of all the Earth. His constant companion is a fat, lazy, unflappable feline demon who's clearly the brains of the operation. "MacWorth" -- Mary Worth advises her husband, Rex (Mac) Morgan, to murder his boss, Mr. Duncan, and take his place at the head of the firm. No one counted on Mac's feverish imagination working overtime. "Candiggy" -- Voltaire's innocent nebbish trudges through a world of horrors while clinging to his indefatigable optimism. "The Crypt of Bronte" -- The wildly melodramatic tale of Heathcliff and Cathy and their doomed love is given the EC horror comics treatment, complete with narration by "the House-Keeper." "Hester's Little Pearl" -- Little Lulu is cast as the all-seeing innocent at the heart of America's weirdest allegorical novel, with her mom and pop in the roles of Hester Prynne and the Rev. Dimmesdale. "Dostoevsky Comics" -- The arrogant, impoverished student Raskol dons his cape, cowl, and hatchet to take the law into his own hands. He is aided on the arduous road to redemption by Sonny, the boy prostitute wonder, and Commissioner Porfiry Petrovich, all drawn in Dick Sprang's noir-influenced style. "Little Dori in Pictureland" -- Oscar Wilde meets Winsor McCay. Cruelty, selfishness and murder make up the dream life from which Little Dori will awake...at a cost. "Good ol' Gregor Brown" -- The little round-headed guy awakes from uneasy dreams to f