Robert Luis Stevenson’s book is some solid 19th Century horror, Shakespeare didn’t really write horror in the conventional sense, and reading Hawthorne is torture, so I guess that you can call this a #HorrorComicsMonth entry?

Anyway, I’ve been finding more and more of these prestige format Classics Illustrated issues in the bins at my LCS and they all wind up being about $1.99 a piece. At that price, I can’t pass them up on occasion and I’ve already got a nice collection going. Hamlet and The Scarlet Letter are the two most recent pickups and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was a last-minute purchase at the Baltimore Comic-Con because the people at the Hero Initiative booth had a signed copy for a few dollars. Each of them had creators that I knew, which was one of the appeals in addition to the novel they were covering. I have a feeling that’s going to be how my decision process goes from here on out, especially since I start to get to the of 19th Century adventure novels that the original Classics Illustrated covered, few of which I’m fond.

John K. Snyder III, who also did an outstanding adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, adapted Jekyll and I thought it was a solid read. Truth be told, I don’t think I’ve ever read that particular book and may have only seen bits and pieces of an adaptation or some sort of animated version with Disney characters or Scooby-Doo or something. We have copies of it at the school where I teach, so I probably could just grab one and read it if I feel like it. This was interesting in that Snyder III, who back in the late 1980s did some outstanding work on Grendel and also drew one of the all-time greatest Who’s Who in the DC Universe entries with his Count Vertigo, took a less direct and more … well, I don’t know if it’s a surrealist approach or what, but he certainly went for the mood of the book. I gather that he was staying as faithful to the plot and dialogue of the source material as possible because there seems to be a lot of talking about what has been going on as opposed to seeing what’s been going on. But it’s worth it for the artwork.

Also worth it for the artwork is P. Craig Russell and Jill Thompson’s adaptation of The Scarlet Letter, a novel I loathed in college and still don’t think very much of now. Hawthorne, to me, is good in small doses. Give me “Rappacini’s Daughter” or “The Birth Mark” over his novels any day. And the problem that I have always had with The Scarlet Letter is that it’s all aftermath and effect. Yes, Hester Prynne is shunned by her community and has to wear the titular “A” on her chest for years, but we never really get to see what led to it and are simply expected to care about it. Russell, who wrote and did the layouts on the book, sticks to that and doesn’t add any tawdry sex scene or anything, and to his credit makes what is on the page interesting, but what had me going through the entire book is the artwork that he started and Jill Thompson finished with a water color wash. It’s absolutely gorgeous and bright and brings the novel to life in a way that I never thought the original author could.

On the opposite end–at least as far as lighting is concerned–is Steven Grant and Tom Mandrake’s adaptation of Hamlet. And it’s here where I yet again risk having my teaching license revoked by telling you that I’ve never actually read the play nor seen any adaptation of it (save for, I think, The Lion King). So while I am familiar with some of the characters and some of the more famous lines, this is the first time I am interacting with any version of Shakespeare’s masterpiece. I’ll also tell you that I wasn’t willingly avoiding Hamlet all of these years; I was never assigned to read it in school and then simply never got around to it.

Anyway, I picked this up because Tom Mandrake did the art and he’s a favorite of mine. In fact, I regret not getting this before I met him at the Baltimore con because I definitely would have had him sign it and would have asked him about it. Maybe if he’s back next year? He is great for this book, and even though Grant preserves significant portions of Shakespeare’s dialogue, they turn it into a good comic book. It even makes me want to go read the play or see one of the movie versions. And it makes me wish that Mandrake had drawn an adaptation of Macbeth. Shit, can you imagine a Jon Ostrander/Tom Mandrake Macbeth comic or graphic novel? That would be awesome.

But these “newer” Classics Illustrated issues continue to be worth getting (especially since they’re so cheap) and continue to be worth their place on my bookshelf.

Keep, Sell, Donate, or Trash?

Keep.