Good stories last forever. With that in mind, it's not surprising that iconic works of literature have influenced and inspired generations of later artists in multiple mediums from painting to big-budget Hollywood blockbusters. Of course, classic books have also inspired comic book writers and artists. Numerous iconic works of literature have gone on to serve as the basis for comics that have become iconic in their own right.
Here's our list of comics based on books that every fan of either comic books or classic literature should read.
Age of Bronze explores the real history of the Trojan War
The Trojan War is generally dated to around 1184 BC and there is archaeological evidence that Bronze Age Greek warriors from the Mycenaean civilization did invade the region at the time period. Eric Shanower's sprawling long-running retelling of the Trojan War, Age of Bronze, attempts to disentangle the historical Bronze Age from the mythological accounts of the war.
While ultimately based on mythological story related by Homer and other ancient authors and following recognizable heroes like Odysseus, Achilles and Hector, Shanower's version of the story does away with the explicitly mythological and supernatural elements of the stories. The characters worship the ancient Greek gods and understand them to be involved, but the gods never actually appear and their intervention boils down to natural phenomena that the characters merely attribute to the gods. On the other hand, by cleaving closer to documented real-world history than mythology, Shanower presents one of the most accurate depictions of the Greek Bronze Age when drawing the armor, weapons and architecture of Age of Bronze. Shanower has clearly done his homework when researching the time period and he isn't afraid to show it off.
Running since 1998, Age of Bronze has shifted to an all-digital distribution as of 2019.
Conan the Barbarian has been a mainstay of comics for decades
The history of Conan in comic books goes back more than 50 years. Fantasy literature's most famous barbarian hero first stepped onto comic pages in 1970, in the long-running Marvel series that put out nearly 300 issues between 1970 and 1993. Notably, Marvel had to contend with the strict censorship enforced by the Comics Code Authority for most of this time. However, The Savage Sword of Conan, which also ran during this period was published as a magazine, so it wasn't regulated by the Comics Code Authority.
Despite the constraints of the Comics Code Authority, Marvel did their best in translating Conan to comic books, adapting Robert E. Howard's original stories (including several that weren't orginally Conan stories) and inventing new adventures for Conan. With the decline and eventual disestablishment of the Comics Code Authority, later Conan comic runs — including those from Dark Horse (2003-2019), Marvel's second run (2019-2021) and Titan Comics — have been able to emulate the vivid style and tone of the original Howard pulp stories much more faithfully.
The ongoing Conan the Barbarian (since 2023) comic series and The Savage Sword of Conan (since 2024) magazine are currently available from Titan Comics. Titan is also re-releasing omnibus versions of the original Marvel-era versions of Conan the Barbarian and The Savage Sword of Conan.
Fairy tales take Manhattan in Fables
After being forced into the mundane human world by a villain known as the Adversary, characters from fairy tales and folklore have been forced to live secretly in our world, doing their best to blend with regular humans. Living in a community called Fabletown, well-known fairy tale characters like the Big Bad Wolf, Snow White and the Three Little Pigs end up facing storylines running through everything from murder mysteries to heists.
With an overall similar premise to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Sandman, the depiction of public domain characters in Fables is never quite as dark or cynical as either of those series at their most subversive but it does have moments that are dark and even genuinely disturbing. Ultimately, that makes sense. The original versions of a lot of these fairy tales can be shockingly dark compared to the most familiar versions that have been sanitized into children's bedtime stories.
Fables was the basis for The Wolf Among Us from Telltale Games, which was intended as a prequel to the comic series. A sequel was announced following the closure of the original Telltale and the revival under new ownership. News about The Wolf Among Us 2 has been pretty sparse, but the latest information is that the game is still being developed and slated for release at an as-yet-unannounced date. On a similar note, the current status and the future of Fables have been uncertain since original creator Bill Willingham declared the series to be in the public domain, a claim which publisher DC has disputed, while continuing to claim the series as IP under its ownership.
The comic version of The Hobbit is a beautiful take on a classic story
Although his full-time job was Oxford professor, J. R. R. Tolkien is known today as one of the most important writers in history and regarded by many as the father of the modern fantasy genre. Although The Hobbit began life as a bedtime story he was telling his kids — in fact, he only started writing it down when his son Christopher noticed that he'd gotten some details wrong between nights — it has gone down as one of the most popular children's books of all time, as well as the serving as the introduction to an even bigger classic in The Lord of the Rings.
The best-known adaptation of the source material is the Peter Jackson movie trilogy, but that wasn't the first adaptation of The Hobbit. It wasn't even the first movie adaptation — there was a cartoon version in 1977 from Rankin/Bass and featuring animation work from a precursor to the legendary Studio Ghibli. Although it's been largely overshadowed by Peter Jackson's version of Middle-earth, the comic book adaptation of The Hobbit that was originally published from 1989-1990 is a classic in its own right.
Unlike the Jackson trilogy, the comic version with art by David Wenzel and a writing by Chuck Dixon and Sean Deming is a straight adaptation of the original story. Nothing is added and no major changes are made to the story other than those necessitated by comic book storytelling being a different medium than prose fiction. The art is gorgeous, with vivid colors and brilliant designs for the characters and places of The Hobbit. In some ways the designs are probably better than in Jackson's versions — standouts include Beorn, the Goblins and the Spiders of Mirkwood.
Record of Ragnarok is world mythology meets Mortal Kombat
In the cosmos of manga series Record of Ragnarok, not only do the gods of all the world's mythologies disputably exist, they've run out of patience with humanity. When the council of the gods decides they're ready to just wipe out humanity, the Valkyrie Brunhilde demands that humanity be given a chance to prove itself worthy, leading to the declaration of a tournament pitting 13 mortal champions from across human history against 13 gods with the very fate of the world hanging in the balance.
Fittingly, "Ragnarok" is the word for the apocalyptic battle at the end of time in Norse mythology…
The premise driving Record of Ragnarok is straight out of Mortal Kombat. In fact, there are several ways beyond the basic premise of "martial arts tournament for the fate of the world" that feel like Mortal Kombat. The series boasts eye-catching character designs and super-powered fight scenes between larger than life combatants. That also extends to the level of violence on display. Not for nothing, the anime adaptation is rated TV-MA on Netflix and contains subject matter that some viewers may find disturbing.
The English version of the Record of Ragnarok manga series is published by Viz Media and is available from various online retailers. The anime adaptation streams on Netflix as a Netflix Original series.