Panel Discussion – Graphic novel previews – Time Out New York.

If you’re looking for really subversive takes on the story of Adam and Eve, R. Sikoryak’s Masterpiece Comics (Drawn & Quarterly, $19.95) will do you dandy. Sikoryak mashes up familiar comics-page staples with highbrow literary-canon fodder and comes up with funny pages that crackle with clever resonance. So, in Sikoryak’s Garden of Eden story, put-upon everyman Dagwood Bumstead stands in for Adam, his imperious boss J.C. Dithers plays the part of God, and cute-but-clueless wife Blondie becomes Blond Eve. Many of Sikoryak’s mash-ups are inspired. The author reframes Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment as a 1940s Batman story, revealing both stories to be grim melodramas with central characters who exploit the tension between law and responsibility. Whether it’s The Picture of Dorian Gray as a Little Nemo riff, Ziggy as Candide, or Macbeth done in the Mary Worth style, you can’t dismiss any of the works as simple gags, because Sikoryak consistently fuses the core strengths of each to create a punchy, surprising hybrid.