NOT YOUR FATHER'S PENGUIN CLASSICS

Recently Penguin books has released a line of spiffy editions of various literary classics with new covers by modern graphic artists (if you call 'em cartoonists I won't mind). Some of them also include new introductions by the likes of Eric Schlosser and Haruki Murakami.

Maybe now the kids will read classic lit-er-a-toor, now that its been made hip, current and exciting. They'll get off the internet, put away their Ipods and Xboxes and get into some deep reading. There will be a literary renaissance that will sweep the nation!

OK, maybe not, but here are a few examples anyway...

















Frank Miller does Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.

Charles Burns does Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.

...and Chris Ware does Voltaire's Candide.

(thanks to FLOG!, the Fantagraphics blog)