The Crypt of Brontë

Next September appears a compilation of several previously published comics by R. Sikoryak with a common topic:

Masterpiece Comics
R. Sikoryak
Drawn and Quaterly (September 1, 2009)
# ISBN-10: 1897299842
# ISBN-13: 978-1897299845
Colour, 64 pages, Hardcover

HILARIOUS PARODIES OF CLASSIC LITERATURE REIMAGINED WITH CLASSIC COMICS

Masterpiece Comics adapts a variety of classic literary works with the most iconic visual idioms of twentieth-century comics. Dense with exclamation marks and lurid colors, R. Sikoryak’s parodies remind us of the sensational excesses of the canon, or, if you prefer, of the economical expressiveness of classic comics from Batman to Garfield. In "Blond Eve,” Dagwood and Blondie are ejected from the Garden of Eden into their archetypal suburban home; Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray is reimagined as a foppish Little Nemo; and Camus’s Stranger becomes a brooding, chain-smoking Golden Age Superman. Other source material includes Dante, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, bubblegum wrappers, superhero comics, kid cartoons, and more.
Sikoryak’s classics have appeared in landmark anthologies such as RAW and Drawn & Quarterly, all of which are collected in Masterpiece Comics, along with brilliant new graphic literary satires. His drawings have appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, as well as in The New Yorker, The Onion, Mad, and Nickelodeon Magazine.

One of the stories included is Crypt of Brontë which is reviewed in High-Low:

In "The Crypt Of Bronte", Sikoryak illustrates the ways in which Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" used a number of the same stock shock twists as 1950s EC horror comics, with characters meeting horrible ends in ironic ways. Beyond the inspired decision to conflate the housekeeper as the Crypt-Keeper as a narrative device, Sikoryak cleverly managed to highlight the most lurid (and scandalous, for the time) elements of the story: fights, overwrought emoting, forbidden romance, long-sought revenge and unexpected reversals of fortune. What better way to tell such an overcooked story than in the style of Jack Davis, one of the most expressive of the EC stable of artists? This story does tend to get a bit bogged down in the sheer Gothic density of detail from Bronte (and at 15 pages, it's the longest story in the book) and at a certain point the uncanny evocation of EC comics is no longer enough to prevent a bit of tediousness from creeping in. It was no easy task boiling down the story to its essential elements, and Sikoryak actually seemed to score more direct hits with the shorter stories.

Categories: Comics, Humour