More masterpieces, R.!

So I read Masterpiece Comics, and it was terrific. I've written about it effusively, even fannishly, at GoodReads:

Masterpiece Comics by Robert Sikoryak

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is a book of short comics depicting stories from classic literature written and drawn in the style of familiar comic strips and comic books, usually with characters from the comics playing the roles of characters from the classics. This is a brilliant idea, but there are two distinct pitfalls Sikoryak has to avoid in order to make it work:

It can't be a wink-wink, nudge-nudge, painfully self-aware exercise in which the characters are constantly saying, "Hoho, we're little cartoon characters putting on Daddy's big literature boots! Aren't we all adorable and intellectual?" That joke gets old fast.

At the other extreme, it can't turn into a Classics Illustrated sort of thing in which the comics characters look like themselves but fully take on the personalities of the classic characters. The novelty value of Batman just rattling off lines from Crime and Punishment would lose its novelty value after about two panels.

But Sikoryak bypasses both of those dangers and instead creates something completely original, something that makes this weird idea live up to its full potential. His hybrid stories remain true to everything that's ridiculous, endearing, and true about the comics, and they illuminate the greatness and profundity (and occasional silliness) of the classics.

For example, take the rendition here of poor Gregor Samsa in Kafka's The Metamorphosis, with his outer insect state reflecting his inner alienation and existential crises. Through Sikoryak's twisted lens, we get a Kafka/Charles Schulz mashup in "Good Ol' Gregor Brown," in which the poor transformed fellow scuttles around in the familiar yellow-and-black shirt. It makes the weirdest kind of sense, doesn't it? Not that Peanuts ever got quite as bleak as Kafka, but it is, at heart, a deeply sad comic about a sincere, put-upon kid who can never get a break. The brilliance of this juxtaposition can be summed up in one line spoken by Lucy as Gregor's sister, Grete: "GREGOR, YOU BLOCKHEAD!"

There are so many other great examples—eleven of them, to be exact—in which material is skillfully matched to other material. Here's Little Nemo as Dorian Gray: "What? The portrait has changed! What a cruel expression! Um! Maybe I should apologize to Sibyl." This is a truly clever book by an artist with the utmost love and respect for works that have lasted and things that were once wrongly thought entirely disposable.



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 So there's that. But now I'm constantly thinking about what other masterpieces of comics and older literature Sikoryak could combine. It's a little tricky because the juxtaposition of each comic and classic has to be compatible and resonant without being too obvious. The least interesting story in Masterpiece Comics was the adaptation of Wuthering Heights as a Tales from the Crypt-style revenge horror tale. It's good fun, but it's less interesting than the rest of the collection because of course there are clear parallels between a ferocious Gothic novel of overheated passions and EC Comics' grotesquerie. So I wouldn't necessarily like to see anything so on-the-nose again. Anything like Heart of Darkness as a Tarzan-style jungle adventure would be plain cheating.

With that in mind, I've come up with a few ideas of my own:

"Something Is Festering in the Filthy Gutter of Denmark." Hamlet and Watchmen, with Rorschach as the prince. I'm not exactly sure how this would work; I just think it's a brilliant idea. There's the shared philosophical pessimism, the constant threat of violence and war, the protagonist's unresolvable parental issues, and the final high body count. Hamlet's antic disposition becomes Rorschach's ever-changing mask. Awesome.

"The Strange Case of Doctor Hobbes and Mister Calvin." I'm sure that a few hundred master's theses have been written by now about Hobbes and the nature of imagination and reality, so this one almost writes itself: just turn the tables and have Calvin be an ingrained but autonomous part of Hobbes's psyche. I really, really want to to see Hobbes as a symbol of Victorian reserve and repression, with Calvin's evil grin representing, as it often already does in the comics, the id run amuck. Yay.

"The Importance of Being Leroy." I'm kind of wincing at this idea, which would mean combining a play I love with a comic I hate. But the combination of Doctor Faustus and Garfield worked so well. And, really, when you strip things down to their essence, aren't the hateful one-liners in The Lockhorns just a neanderthal version of the brilliant ripostes in The Importance of Being Earnest? No, no, they're actually really not. Never mind. Forget about this one. It's a terrible idea. It seemed fascinating for just a moment. But no.

I also have a vague idea that Scott Pilgrim would work well as Tom Jones based on plot summaries and their shared tendency to digress, but I haven't actually read Tom Jones, so I can't really back up that one. I also have this weird impression that there's something Dickensian buried somewhere in Bloom County, but I can't think of anything coherent to do with that either. The solution, of course, is for Sikoryak to furnish us with more Masterpiece Comics and make it snappy. More, I say.