Masterpiece Comics

Masterpiece Comics

Only in comics could something this creative and unusual happen this brilliantly.

Classical literature is mashed up with the lowest popular culture in Masterpiece Comics, and the result sheds a new light on both. R. Sikoryak has an amazing ability to mimic whatever art style is needed to make these stories work with familiar comic characters. Stories here include:

Masterpiece Comics

  • Adam and Eve as Dagwood and Blondie. This kicks off a strip-oriented section which also includes Dante’s Inferno with Bazooka Joe, Faust with Garfield, and Macbeth with Mary Worth.
  • Wuthering Heights told as if one of the Tales From the Crypt.
  • The Little Lulu cast acting The Scarlet Letter, my favorite of the pieces because of how well it works when it shouldn’t at all.
  • Batman starring in Crime and Punishment.
  • A combination of Little Nemo in Slumberland and The Picture of Dorian Gray.
  • If Kafka wrote Peanuts.

While readers may have seen some of these pieces before in various anthologies, this book also includes fake letter pages that make explicit some of the allusions. Sikoryak clearly knows his material, both literary and comic, which is why these pastiches work so well. And the oversized thin hardcover format, like a picture book for adults, only contributes to the unusual feel of the bizarre combinations.



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