When my father was in high school, my grandfather became convinced that comics were a communist plot, and so he burned all my dad’s Ditko/Kirby/Lee era Spider-Man and Fantastic Fours.
Sure, everybody has that story about parents throwing away their comics, but this one seems particularly relevant now that George Rigakos has written a graphic novel version of The Communist Manifesto, quite a few years too late for my grandfather to use in justifying his actions.
From the Toronto Sun:
“We’ve barely started advertising and there have already been requests from England and Germany,” said Rigakos, who is also head of the editorial collective for Red Quill Books, a new peer-reviewed publishing house.
We’d like to nominate this project as the topic most likely to cause people who are unfamilar with comics history to reveal their unfamiliarity. Â For example, Â in that group of people requesting the book, there are at probably at least a few who are outraged that someone would make a book about communism for children (because ALL comics are for kids, of course). Â Just listen to how the Sun describes it:
A local university professor is taking theory – the staple of a university classroom – and blending it with colourful pictures – the staple of elementary school books.
The Sun also helpfully mentions that “Shakespeare has also been turned into a comic,” as if the adaptation of classic literature was a new development in the graphic novel world and not, in fact, something that’s been going on since the 1940‘s.
I leave you with the somewhat unnecesarilly dramatic video preview for the four part comic:
(via Bleeding Cool.)
