Webcomics: Classics Illuminated
RSSBrigid Alverson -- School Library Journal, 01/06/2010
Graphic novel adaptations of the classics are a venerable genre of print comics, so it’s surprising that so few webcomics artists have jumped onboard. But what the genre lacks in quantity, it makes up for in quality. Some of the following recommendations are faithful to the original works, others are re-interpretations, but all are well executed.
Ian Edginton and D’Israeli’s adaptation of The War of the Worlds is a straightforward rendering of H. G. Wells’s novel about a Martian invasion of England. The story follows the adventures of the narrator as he flees invaders, but Edginton and D’Israeli frequently pull back for long shots showing the effects of the attacks, paying close attention to both the setting and the outlandish invaders—three-legged robots and a parasitic red weed. At 64 pages, this is a quick and economical way to experience Wells’s classic.
Ulysses isn’t exactly fodder for high school students, but curious teens 
who want to understand James Joyce’s masterpiece may find Rob Berry’s webcomic version a welcome companion. In addition to breaking down the action, Berry translates passages that weren’t written in English and provides an ongoing commentary on the events, together with explanations of the more obscure allusions. So far, only the first chapter of this ambitious project is complete.
A few years ago, the Dutch artist Roderick Leermarkers decided to create Captain August, his own take on Moby-Dick. Most of the webcomic follows the story fairly faithfully, and if you can overlook the fact that several of the characters are really space aliens, it’s an excellent visualization of the novel. I wonder what Herman Melville would have made of Leermarkers’s alternate ending: when the crew goes in its final pursuit of the white whale, Ishmael is the first casualty. Seeing the boy killed before his eyes makes Ahab realize the madness of his quest, and he gives it up and heads back to Nantucket. His sanity restored, he returns to his wife and children while Ishmael’s bones molder at the bottom of the sea.
Alexander Danner and Edward J. Grug III’s Gingerbread Houses, a perceptive take on a childhood classic, is a retelling of Hansel and Gretel that takes into account the emotional reality of the children’s situation. Suppose your stepmother did want to kill you, and your father went along with it? How could you continue to live with them? The traditional tale’s text appears below each panel but the accompanying illustrations tell a completely different story.
