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Underground > Comic Books >

Tragic Plays in Comic Form

Bard: One-Man Humaton Hoedown

05:47 / 27.10.05

Other than the obvious (Understanding Comics, Comics & Sequential Art, and all my trusty scriptbooks), does anyone have any suggestions? Are there any tragic plays, or even just classical Greek myth stories (like the works of Homer) out in comic form? Has anyone done any work along these lines before, and would like to offer a few pointers?

ONLY NICE THINGS

09:12 / 27.10.05

Surely Greek tragedy is already in script form?

Otherwise... hmmm. In terms of stuff you might find in a regular comic store, how about Age of Bronze? It's not directly referencing anything, but it does have a lot of men in sandals.

admiral sausage

09:52 / 27.10.05

Hmm, there was a story called Homonculus, that was about greek myths.It was serialized in a comic called zero zero, i dont know if it was ever collected into a single volume.

Frank Millers 800 ?

10:24 / 27.10.05

Erm... that would be "300." And agin, like Age of Bronze, it's not a direct adaptation of anything but uses a conglomeration of myths & legends as a jumping-off point.

admiral sausage

11:46 / 27.10.05

sorry

16:12 / 27.10.05

Marvel did a comic version of the Odessy way back in the late 70's. I rememebr becasue my 7th grade shop teacher caught me reading it and tossed it in the trash... of course I recovered it at the end of the trash and got my revenge later.

16:15 / 27.10.05

Epicurus The Sage goes through a fair few Greek myths, but not plays per se - outside of that Sandman borrows as much from greek myth as anywhere else...

20:03 / 27.10.05

What about Eddie Campbell's Bacchus?

It's got quite alot of Greek myth in it.

A fall of geckos

21:36 / 27.10.05

Not Greek, but in terms of straight tragedy, there were some Shakespeare adaptations in the early 1980s (I think Eddie Campbell mentions them in How to be an Artist).

They were in a number of different styles and covered the main tragedies. I think they varied in quality. If I recall correctly the Macbeth was fairly realist in terms of the art/adaptation and worked well. The King Lear was drawn in an expressionistic manner which was interesting but sacrificed readability for style.

Let me know if you're interested & I'll see what I can dig up about them.

Bard: One-Man Humaton Hoedown

04:23 / 28.10.05

DEFINITLY, Geckos. That'd be wonderful. I wonder if one of my local comic stores might have some of that. It'd be great reference material.

One of the things that I'm struggling with is trying to figure out page layout, since Greek tragedies are just so damn wordy. I could spend three pages at a time on a single speech without it going anywhere, so I might be forced to edit some things down a bit, or play with panel structures in ways that I haven't thought of before.

First, and probably only, university paper I'm ever going to write with "Understanding Comics" and "Comics & Sequential Art" in the bibliography.

A fall of geckos

10:21 / 05.11.05

Bard -

Sorry about the delay in replying. I've dug up copies of King Lear, Othello and Macbeth. They were all originally published between 1982 and 1984 by Oval Projects ltd. The Othello is marked as a joint production with the BBC, but I'm not sure about the rest.

The King Lear has an introduction by was David Gibson (possibly Dave Gibson of Halo & Jones) and was illustrated by Ian Pollock - an image of the cover can be found here.

The Othello was Illustrated by Oscar Zarate (who did A Small Killing with Alan Moore). I think it's definitely the best of the one's I've seen. It's an adaptation rather then an illustration of the play - by this I mean the comics form is utilized to adapt the play in ways that are impossible using other mediums. I've scanned a page below, which shows a simple example of this.

Here we've got the introduction to Act 3 Scene 3 played out from above, allowing the artist to bring together two encounters in one large panel.

I believe that in addition to these there were adaptations of Romeo and Juliet, and Twelfth Night. In my copy of King Lear it lists The Tempest, The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer Night's Dream as forthcoming projects, but I have a suspicion that these may not have all been completed.

Anyway, I've got the three adaptations with me now so if there's anything specific you want to know, or if you want any particular speeches scanned, let me know.

ONLY NICE THINGS

10:35 / 05.11.05

And agin, like Age of Bronze, it's not a direct adaptation of anything but uses a conglomeration of myths & legends as a jumping-off point.

Dude, the battle of Thermopylae is hardly a myth, although I agree that the 300 took on legendary status. Nobody ever talks about the Thespians...

Bard: One-Man Humaton Hoedown

05:04 / 06.12.05

Finished the four pages yesterday. Its Euripides' "Iphigenia in Aulis", lines 300-370 or so, roughly. Came out at 4 pages, or about 1500 words of text. Its actually pretty nifty.

...now I just need to explain it, lol.