Masterpiece Comics

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.

I never thought I would buy into the idea that comics and classic literature could exist on the same wavelength. For most of my life, I wrote off comics as pandering to the illiterate masses with brightly colored illustrations and a disconcerting lack of periods (that puts the rise of text language into perspective, doesn’t it?). In the few years since I’ve realized I was being an idiot about comics, I’ve tried to read more of them. That’s why I enjoyed Masterpiece Comics so much more now than I would have those few years ago. Or maybe I would have enjoyed it anyway; R. Sikoryak’s pun-infested comic celebrates all kinds of literature, with pictures or without.We start off the game with one of the best-known works of literature in American culture: the Genesis creation story. Except here, Blondie and Dagwood are curious Eve and clueless Adam (the guy gets a rib sawn out of him and doesn’t think to file a complaint? Why should we expect less from the creator of the Dagwood Sandwich?), and their post-Eden abode is not the desert of Canaan, but suburbia. More mash-ups ensue: Garfield as a feline Mephistopheles, Charlie Brown waking up one morning as a bug, Dante’s Inferno showing up on the insides of gum wrappers. Some issues are longer than others; “The Crypt of Bronte” covers over half of Wuthering Heights, and “Hester’s Little Pearl” zips through all of The Scarlet Letter, albeit with 95% fewer synonyms for the color red. All the comics and their literary counterparts are identified and summed up by the author in a wry letters-to-the-editor-type section. This is where some of the wittiest writing pops up, like this bit on the durability of chewing gum: “In this writer’s experience, novelty bubblegum has seemed impervious to age, foul weather conditions, and occasionally, human mastication.”This is more of a “me” problem than a problem with the book itself, but I’m still not enough of a comics fan to be familiar with every comic featured here. (The letters section does help out with this, dropping some not-so-subtle hints about which works match up with which.) Also, in the longer issues, I wished the comics would poke a little more fun at their literary subjects instead of just telling the stories with pictures. (Again, this complaint might be a byproduct of my ignorance about anything to do with comics; a true comics fan might understand more comic references and find more to laugh at.) But any comic that uses the word “mastication” is a comic worth reading. Lots of fun for the truly well-read of literature both with and without brightly colored illustrations.

Are these truly Masterpieces? Are they brilliant? No, but what it does make you realize is that neither is a lot of what is called “great” literature! There’s more than one clunker we had to sit through in High School English and if you want to sit through them again this is the best way to do it. It’s a brilliant concept in making the stories look like some of the best known artists of comics bygone days and the adaptions are really fun. I have bought three copies of this, two I gave as gifts, one to a literature fan who also happens to be a big old comics collector and another to a Advanced English Teacher at a private school and both enjoyed it immensely. Back when I was teaching art lessons I used this for a tool to have students produce a book report in graphic novel form and they loved the project!

Robert Sikoryak is a comic book artist who specializes in making comic adaptations of literature classics, producing a mashup of high and low cultures. This book collects several of his comics. His technique is to draw literary classics in the style of a particular comic. For example, the first story here is Adam & Eve starring Dagwood & Blondie (with Mr. Dithers as God). The artwork is expertly drawn in the style of the comics that are being referenced. My favorite is  The Scarlet Letter  starring the characters from Little Lulu. This book is quite amusing, but you really have to be familiar with both the works of classic literature and the comics being parodied to appreciate it.

Would love to read more of this type of work. Great literary works retold through well-known cartoon characters. Favorite: The Metamorphosis with Charlie Brown!

Après plus d'une dizaine d'années à travailler sur ces incroyables mixages entre littérature classique et comics de type classique ( les E.C., Action Comics, Little Lulu...), l'auteur regroupe enfin tout son travail pour une somme d'humour décalé et un festival graphique époustouflant!