Adaptation: From Literature to Comic

Comics as an Autonomous Art Form: Much More Than a Minor Genre

For decades, comics have struggled to find their legitimate place in the pantheon of arts. Unfairly relegated to the category of “minor literary genre” due to their mass appeal, this classification is not only reductionist but fundamentally erroneous. Limiting comics to a simple extension of literature because of their narrative capacity ignores their true essence as an independent and revolutionary visual language.

Panels don’t always follow traditional plot structures. Often, what they offer is an aesthetic and visual experience that transcends the need for a coherent plot. Consider “silent” comics, those that completely dispense with words, demonstrating that the communicative power of comics goes far beyond text. A brilliant example is The Bus by Paul Kirchner, a work that defies traditional narrative conventions.

In this page from The Bus, Kirchner presents a sequence of panels where events seem to lack conventional narrative coherence. These six symmetrical panels don’t tell a story in the traditional sense, but rather invite us to a pictorial, almost surrealist analysis of the passage of time and the creative freedom of the medium against narrative demands. The bus becomes a metaphorical vehicle that transports us through a visual landscape where the rules of everyday logic are suspended.

What we must understand, and the fundamental point I want to establish, is that comics enjoy complete independence from literature because they constitute a unique intermedial language. They are nourished and enriched by contributions from various artistic fields: literature, music, film, photography, painting, and many more. This hybrid nature is precisely what we must keep in mind when we delve into the fascinating process of adapting a literary work to the comic format. Discover here how to master the visual expressiveness that makes comics unique.

The Art of Transposition: Beyond Impossible Fidelity

When facing the challenge of transforming a literary work into a comic, the first crucial consideration is determining which specific aspects we’re interested in rescuing and reinterpreting. This is due to an inescapable reality: since these are fundamentally different languages, the “translation” can never be absolutely faithful. In fact, we should completely discard the notion of “fidelity” as the main criterion.

Just as happens when translating from one language to another—say from English to Spanish—inevitably some things are lost in the process. However, and this is truly fascinating, many others are gained. This dynamic is familiar to those who have experienced adaptations from literature to film, where we frequently hear the phrase “the book was better than the movie.” Faced with this comparison, we must clarify something fundamental: we cannot measure two completely different languages with the same parameters.

Although literature can occasionally use resources from other languages, its essential raw material is the written word. In contrast, both film and comics have a powerful foundation in the visual. Each of these languages presents us with a unique way of interpreting and representing the world, offering extraordinary opportunities for innovation and creative originality.

When embarking on an adaptation, we must reflect deeply on our priorities: where do we want to place emphasis? Are we interested in highlighting the narrative, the dialogues, or the images? Which elements will we decide to cut and which to enhance? How will we express our personal perspective through the panels? But above all these considerations, we must free ourselves from the restrictive imperative to transfer everything exactly as it appears in the original work.

This interpretive freedom does not constitute a limitation nor should it be seen as a negative judgment when sitting in front of our blank page, whether physical or digital. After all, anyone who wishes to experience literature in its pure form can always choose the original novel from their library. What we offer as comic artists is something different but equally valuable: our personal interpretation, our unique vision of a work that has captivated us to the point of inspiring us to reinterpret it with our strokes.

Transposition gives us the wonderful opportunity to offer our audience our own singular reading, a fresh perspective that can illuminate aspects perhaps not so evident in the original work or present them from innovative angles. Want to explore the infinite possibilities of visual narrative? Click here to delve into this exciting world.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Lorenzo Mattotti’s Brilliant Reinterpretation

Lorenzo Mattotti, a renowned Italian illustrator, comic artist, and graphic designer, offers us an extraordinary example of creative adaptation. His work alongside Jerry Kramsky to transfer Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), to comics was deservedly awarded the Eisner Prize in 2003. What makes this proposal particularly interesting is that the Briton’s novel has been adapted numerous times to various media. So, the inevitable question arises: what could Mattotti offer us that was truly novel? The answer, as we’ll discover, is surprising.

A fundamental element in Stevenson’s original work is the darkness that envelops the space in which Hyde moves. The source text develops numerous semantic fields that connote this disturbing character’s lack of ethics and morality, whose intentions are linked to evil and represent the radical antithesis of the goodness and respectability of his antagonist, Jekyll, of whom Hyde is the sinister double. As his name suggests (in English, “hide” means “to conceal”), this character hides himself, moves among the night shadows and takes advantage of the impunity they provide.

The fascinating aspect of Mattotti’s interpretation is that he decides to play with precisely the opposite. Instead of immersing the story in somber and dark tones as might be expected, his pages explode with color and vibrant contrasts, complemented by a powerful play of expressionist-style perspectives that intensifies the psychological atmosphere of the narrative.

From the first page, Mattotti takes a significant creative license. While the novel begins with Utterson and his friend walking through the streets of London, Mattotti and Kramsky choose to start their work with a shocking representation of Hyde projected as a giant shadow threatening the city, invading it with his darkness. With a profile that evokes the vampiric and ghostly, his figure moves among vibrant and colorful architecture in the night, with a chromatic saturation that generates a dramatic contrast between figure and background, intensifying the tension of the scene. This visual decision constitutes a perfect interpretation of the character’s nature, emphasizing his marginality and amoral nature.

The figures created by Mattotti possess an especially distinctive quality: they are stretched, with an anatomy that deliberately departs from traditional canons to achieve an enlargement of the bodies. This is particularly notable in Hyde, who generally projects toward the corners of the panels, occupying them with his threatening presence until almost overflowing them. This visual treatment masterfully reinforces the sensation of invasion and danger that the character represents in the narrative.

In this sequence, the close-up face of the young woman facilitates our emotional identification with her terror and desperation. Later, in the last panel, the positions are reversed, visually establishing the physical superiority and overwhelming power of one corporeality over the other. The spatial composition thus becomes an expressive vehicle that enhances the narrative impact of the scene and the sensation of vulnerability in the face of threat.

From the beginning of the comic, the authors introduce licenses, innovations, and updates regarding the original novel that allow a change in narrative focus. However, they keep intact one of Stevenson’s fundamental interpretive keys: the idea that Evil is an inherent part of our human nature. Are you passionate about creating characters with psychological depth? Enhance your skills by accessing here.

In this striking page, the text boxes convey Henry Jekyll’s voice, while visually we witness both characters in a masterfully constructed sequence. The visual progression takes us from an extreme close-up to a detail shot, allowing us to penetrate one character to emerge through the other. In the central panel, one is reflected in the yellowish eye of his opposite, thus achieving a symbolic metamorphosis without this implying an explicit physical transformation. The difference is maintained in that gaze that not only reflects Jekyll but also directly challenges us as readers, subtly reminding us that we are also formed by that duality between Good and Evil.

Another significant innovation in this adaptation is its decision to dismantle the central enigma of the literary work. In Stevenson’s novel, what is meticulously constructed is a mystery; as readers, we must, like the investigators in a detective story, decipher who is the repulsive Hyde who terrorizes the life of a man of excellent reputation. Mattotti and Kramsky’s adaptation, on the other hand, is not based on this intrigue: from the beginning, we know the relationship between both characters. Thus, the value of the work lies not in maintaining the original plot but in the interpretation and creative re-elaboration that the artists offer us.

This interpretive freedom is also manifested in a significant reduction in text dependency. The comic makes limited use of text boxes and dialogue balloons, shifting the narrative center of gravity toward the visual: perspective, anatomical distortion, the play of light and shadow, the vibrant color palette and its saturation, as well as the general composition of each page, become the true vehicles of the narrative.

In this revealing page, the artists incorporate an element barely suggested in the original novel: the sexual fetishes and violence that Hyde exercised over the women with whom he related. What in Stevenson is barely a brief mention by the narrator, in Mattotti and Kramsky’s version is exposed in detail through visual juxtaposition and the symbolic presence of an identity element: the cane. This decision not only enriches the characterization of the character but updates his perversity for a contemporary audience, adding additional layers of meaning to his evil.

The Art of Reinterpretation: Transforming Texts into Visual Universes

The evolution of comics as an artistic medium has come a long way from its beginnings as popular entertainment to its current recognition as a sophisticated form of expression. Literary adaptations to comics are not just exercises in translation between media, but authentic reinterpretations that can illuminate aspects of the original works from completely new perspectives.

Mattotti’s case and his version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde perfectly illustrates how an adaptation can dialogue with the original work while establishing its own artistic identity. By examining other celebrated adaptations, such as Craig Russell’s of Wagner’s operas or Alberto Breccia’s reinterpretations of Lovecraft’s works, we can appreciate the richness that emerges when a visual artist appropriates a text and transforms it according to their own aesthetic language.

The fascinating thing about these transpositions is that they can function as a gateway for new readers to the original works, but they also offer an autonomous and valuable aesthetic experience in itself. The adaptation does not seek to replace the original but to coexist with it, expanding the interpretive universe of the work.

The adaptive process involves crucial decisions about which elements to preserve, which to transform, and which to omit. These choices are not merely technical but deeply interpretive: they reveal the personal reading that the artist makes of the source work. In Mattotti’s case, his bold chromatic inversion and his anatomical expressionism do not betray the spirit of Stevenson’s novel but reinterpret it for a visual medium, enhancing precisely what words can only suggest: the disturbing duality of human nature materialized in striking visual forms.

Each adaptation thus becomes an act of recreation that can be as creative as the original work. The comic artist who adapts literature is not a mere translator but a co-creator who rereads the text from their own sensibility and reconstructs it using the unique tools of their medium. Explore resources here to develop your own visual and narrative style.

Memorable Adaptations: When Comics Reinvent Literature

The history of comics is replete with notable literary adaptations that have managed to transcend mere illustration to become significant works in their own right. Consider “City of Glass” by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli, based on Paul Auster’s novel, which transforms a complex postmodern narrative into an equally sophisticated visual labyrinth. Or Chabouté’s adaptation of “Moby Dick,” which captures the obsession and oceanic immensity of Melville’s work through a striking use of black and white.

These exemplary works share something fundamental with Mattotti’s work: they do not simply seek to transfer the narrative from one medium to another, but to find visual equivalents for the atmospheres, ideas, and emotions that the original text evokes. True mastery does not consist of faithfully reproducing every narrative detail, but of capturing the essence and spirit of the work while fully exploiting the specific possibilities of the comic language.

The sequential format of panels offers unique narrative resources: simultaneity (we can see several actions at once on a page), control of narrative time through the size and arrangement of panels, and the organic integration between text and image are just some of the exclusive tools of this medium. An ingenious adapter will know how to exploit these characteristics to enhance their interpretation.

Recurring visual elements can function as symbolic motifs that structure the narrative, as we see in the use of the cane or distorted architectures in Mattotti’s version of Jekyll and Hyde. The choice of a specific color palette can convey complex emotional states that in literature require extensive descriptions. The expressiveness of the stroke itself, its fluidity or rigidity, its delicacy or violence, communicates crucial information about the tone and atmosphere of the story.

These expressive possibilities specific to comics allow adaptations not only to reproduce but to enrich the original works, offering new interpretive layers that complement the literary experience. Take the definitive step toward professional visual storytelling by exploring our specialized resources.

Your Turn to Interpret! Creating Bridges Between Literature and Panels

As we have seen through Mattotti’s brilliant example, adaptation goes far beyond a simple mechanical transposition. It is the visual materialization of a personal interpretation, an intimate reading that we wish to share with others. It represents the opportunity to bring our innovations, updates, and revitalizations to the world for an audience that may be different from the one who read the original literary work. In this creative process, we owe our readers the maximum exploration of the unique possibilities offered by the language of comics.

The challenge of adapting a literary work to comics invites us to deepen our understanding of both the original work and the medium to which we are transferring it. It is an exercise that requires literary sensitivity and visual mastery, analytical capacity to identify the essential aspects of the source text, and creativity to reinvent it in a new language. The result, when achieved with mastery, is not a diminished version of the original but a complementary work that can enrich our appreciation of the literary text.

With this in mind, I invite you to reflect on the following considerations when planning your own adaptation:

Guiding Questions for Your Creative Adaptation

• How will you represent the spaces of the story? Each setting can enhance the narrative through its design, perspective, and visual atmosphere.
• What cuts are convenient for a better adaptation to your device? Not all scenes or descriptions work equally well in visual format; knowing how to choose is crucial.
• What licenses and new contributions will you make? This is where you can imprint your personal stamp and offer a new vision of the work.
• What uses of perspectives, colors, and techniques correspond better with the work you want to present? These aesthetic decisions are fundamental to establishing the tone and atmosphere.
• How much text is necessary to use in your comic? Finding the perfect balance between the verbal and the visual is one of the greatest challenges.
• Will you follow the linearity proposed by the source work, or is it appropriate to break it and develop your own? The temporal structure can be reinterpreted to enhance certain narrative aspects.

By reflecting on these questions, you will be establishing the conceptual foundations of your adaptation. Remember that it’s not about making an impoverished copy of the original, but about creating a work that dialogues with its source while establishing its own artistic identity. Turn your ideas into impactful visual realities with our specialized tools.

Conclusion: The Infinite Dialogue Between Words and Images

Literary adaptations to comics represent one of the most fascinating territories of contemporary artistic exploration. In this space of intersection between languages, the creative possibilities are virtually infinite. Each new visual interpretation of a literary text reminds us that great stories are never confined to a single medium, but transform and enrich themselves as they migrate between different artistic languages.

What Lorenzo Mattotti and so many other great adapters teach us is that true fidelity to a work does not consist of reproducing it literally, but of capturing its spirit and recreating it according to the rules of a new medium. Comics, with their powerful arsenal of visual and narrative resources, offer unique possibilities for reinterpreting literary works from fresh and revealing perspectives.

The art of adaptation is, ultimately, an act of deep reading and imaginative recreation. Therefore, when facing the challenge of transferring a text to the language of comics, remember that your task is not simply to illustrate but to reinterpret, not to transcribe but to translate creatively and freely between different sign systems.

With these questions as a starting point, it’s your turn to offer the world a new reading, a personal vision that can illuminate unsuspected aspects of works that we love and admire. In that act of reinvention lies perhaps the greatest tribute you can pay to the texts that have inspired you.