Customer Reviews

Masterpiece Comics

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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 find himself transformed into a gigantic insect. Good grief!

"Action Camus" -- The Stranger, with cruel words and actions far beyond those of conventional morality, can't bear to live in a world as absurd as this one. The existential anti-hero is drawn to look a lot like Wayne Boring's version of a certain Strange Visitor from Another Planet.

"Waiting to Go" -- Beavis and Butt-head, as imagined by Samuel Beckett. One page, to be re-read ad infinitum.


If you read only one graphic novel this year, make it this one.

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

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

Good God, this is funny stuff. Remember when MAD magazine was really funny, about 55 years ago? (No? Go look up the first four years' worth, you'll see what I mean.) The MAD comics satires were perfectly done, and Sikoryak's book is like a whole smorgasbord of the best of those days. A mix of Dada, deadpan satire, and savage parody for English majors, it really hits the old spot. The idea-- classic lit rendered as classic comics-- would flop if it weren't rendered with a fidelity to/love of the originals. Sikoryak gets it just right. It's laugh-out-loud funny, and wickedly caustic stuff.

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."

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!

My first experience with R. Sikoryak was in a graphic fiction anthology from 2008. I'm embarrassed to say that the point of his entry sailed right over my head. In a review of the book I wrote, "The artist that most caught my eye this time was R. Sikoryak who did some brilliant parodies of 1950's Action Comic covers with an unpleasant character named `The Stranger' in place of Superman." I completely missed the fact that the comic was a brief synopsis of `The Stranger' by French existentialist Albert Camus. Another story I read prior to picking up this book was `Crime and Punishment' featuring Gil Kane's Batman as Raskol. When I originally read the story I couldn't help but see it as some kind of alternate reality Batman or perhaps a merging or characters but it isn't. It really is simply Dostoyevsky's main character drawn as Batman.

What the reader is presented with is a compilation of classic stories using the drawing styles of modern comic artists. The book opens with Genesis featuring Dagwood and Blondie as Adam and Eve and Mr. Dithers playing the part of God. I'm sure that most people's first reaction is that this is being created for a humorous effect after all in `The Tragic History of Doctor Faustus' the part of Mephistopheles is played by Garfield the Cat. However, Sikoryak plays it completely straight. Yes, it's funny seeing Bazooka Joe in Hell but believe it or not I'm not sure this is being played for laughs despite all the reviews that praise its hilarity. To me it feels like a straight homage to classic literature and comics. Mad magazine was notorious for taking popular comic characters and putting them in odd situations but it was all done for laughs. When the characters from Little Lulu act out the Scarlet Letter it stays completely true to the story with nary a joke to be had.

R. Sikoryak's hook is his eerily accurate ability to duplicate other artist's styles. From Dik Browne to Charles Schultz to Joe Shuster, it's spooky. Even Bevis and Butthead are rendered in precise detail. Sikoryak also does a great job of compressing stories down. I read a synopsis of Camus's `The Strange' and he pretty much captures all the major plot points in eight comic covers. This book actually would serve as a pretty good introduction to the Classics. `Wuthering Heights' features no famous characters since it was done in the style of `Tales from the Crypt'. Besides the choice of art style it is pretty much just a straight illustrated version of `Wuthering Heights' (although the author does emphasize certain parts of the story to more resemble an EC Comics horror story).

This one was tough for me rate because Sikoryak does a magnificent job of accomplishing what he set out to do. I just don't think that for me it rose to the level of five stars. The fusion of various artists is amazing but the writing and art are still just emulations even if they are stunningly well done. If you can get past some full frontal nudity of Dagwood and Blondie this is actually I book that could be a good buy for children. After reading Sikoryak's version of `The Stranger' I felt compelled to do a bit of research on Albert Camus and learned a bit about the famous writer. It might be a pretty good way to get children interested in classic literature.

As a 50 year comic collector I was blown away at the how great this book is. Great printing and top notch artwork.
Really good stuff. If you like classic comics, you will like this book.
The art was off the hook.

I first discovered R. Sikoryak quite a number of years ago when he was doing a ongoing strip for Ascent, a Canadian yoga magazine (no longer being published) that featured the Peanuts gang enacting the Bhagavad Gita. Linus was Arjuna, Snoopy, Krishna. I emailed him and asked when he planned to gather all the episodes into one book. He said it was in the works. I'm still waiting! I regret not tearing out and saving the B. Gita strips. Their quality and humor are unsurpassed, and I'm looking forward to reading this collection.

There is no question that R. Sikoryak has done a brilliant job with this book - the parodies of famous comic strips using plots from famous works of fiction and drama are pitch-perfect. It is hard to believe that one artist could so effectively emulate so many disparate styles. There are even informative Q&A sections where the artist explains why he made certain decisions, or what the source material was, for those who are not familiar with it.

The only thing that keeps me from giving this five stars is that I did not come away with any new ideas, despite the enjoyment I had at the execution of the concept. Does simply mixing "Batman" with "Crime and Punishment" really give us new insights into either work? It could, but there would need to be less strict adherence to the plot lines of the literary source, and more creative input, asking questions like, "what would the Batman character do in this sort of situation?"

Despite these reservations, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes the concept - it is very entertaining, and really has to be seen to be believed. There is a lot of potential here.