If you’re asking what the last comic book I read was (and you might just be, or might would have been being if you read the linked post yesterday instead of reading me weekly, in which case we’ll get to the last comic book I read and the significance of my reading comic books, close parentheses–oops, did I say that out loud? I meant), it was a Classics Illustrated version of David Copperfield. Now, you’re saying, “Man, that must have been hard, collapsing a Dickens novel into 40 pages of panels and sentences!”
You have no idea. I am certain the comic did not ruin the book for me when I get around to reading it in prose. As a matter of fact, I think I’ll actually know what is going on and discover the book is not actually a music video cut-scene style collage of characters when I read the book. But as for a last comic book that I might ever read, David Copperfield is pretty hoity-toity.
On the back, there’s a list of other titles available in Classics Illustrated editions.
It’s not a comprehensive list, as the numbers skip wildly. But I took it to be a challenge to my well-readhood, so I’ve identified the books I’ve read in actual book form below the fold.
The books I’ve read are in strong font; if I’ve read them in the last fourteen years or so, I’ve also linked to my thoughts on the book on this blog.
- The Three Musketeers
- Ivanhoe
- The Count of Monte Cristo
- The Last of the Mohicans
- Moby Dick
- A Tale of Two Cities
- Robin Hood
- Les Miserables
- Robinson Crusoe
- Don Quixote
- Rip Van Winkle
- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
- Uncle Tom’s Cabin
- Gulliver’s Travels
- The Deerslayer
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame
- Huckleberry Finn
- The Pathfinder
- Oliver Twist
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
- Two Years Before the Mast
- Frankenstein
- Adventures of Marco Polo
- Michael Strogoff
- The Prince and the Pauper
- The Moonstone
- The Black Arrow
- Lorna Doone
- Mysterious Island
- Typee
- The Pioneers
- Adventures of Cellini
- Jane Eyre
- Twenty Years After
- Swiss Family Robinson
- Tom Brown’s School Days
- Kidnapped
- Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
- David Copperfield
- Alice in Wonderland
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
- The Spy
- The House of Seven Gables
- The Man in the Iron Mask
- Silas Marner
- Toilers of the Sea
- The Song of Hiawatha
- The Prairie
- Wuthering Heights
- Black Beauty
- Western Stories
- Man Without a Country
- Treasure Island
- Benjamin Franklin (I have read The Autobiography of Benjamin Franlin, but there’s no telling if that’s the source for this.)
- The Scottish Chiefs
- Julius Caesar (Assuming this is the Shakespeare play; as other individual plays are listed, I assume it is.)
- Around the World in Eighty Days
- The Pilot
- The Oregon Trail
- The Lady of the Lake
- The Prisoner of Zenda
- The Illiad
- Joan of Arc
- Cyrano de Bergerac
- White Fang
- The Odyssey
- The Jungle Book
- The Sea Wolf
- Under Two Flags
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- Crime and Punishment
- Green Mansions
- The Call of the Wild
- All Quiet on the Western Front
- Daniel Boone
- King Solomon’s Mines
- The Red Badge of Courage
- Hamlet
- Mutiny on the Bounty
- The White Company
- Bring ‘Em Back Alive
- From the Earth to the Moon
- King–of the Khyber Rifles
- Kit Carson
- How I Found Livingston
- The Bottle Imp
- Captain’s Courageous
- Rob Roy
- Soldiers of Fortune
- The Hurricane
- The Mutineers
- Fang and Claw
- The War of the Worlds
- Davy Crockett
- Caesar’s Conquests (although I have read The Gallic and Civil Wars which might be the source material.)
- The Covered Wagon
- The Time Machine
- Romeo and Juliet
- Waterloo
- Lord Jim
- The Little Savage
- A Journey to the Center of the Earth
- On Jungle Trails
- Abraham Lincoln
- Kim
- First Man in the Moon
- The Crisis
- With Fire and Sword
- Ben Hur
- The Buccaneer
- Off on a Comet
- The Virginian
- Wild Animals I Have Known
- The Invisible Man
- The Lives of the Hunted
- The Conspirators
- Master of the World
- The Cossack Chief
- The Queen’s Necklace
- Tigers and Traitors
Some of them are not clear on the actual source material (Abraham Lincoln?) Others might have derived from sources I have read, and I have added a note justifying myself.
In retrospect, it’s only, what, 34 of 121? But I think the 34 I have read are weighted to the more important of the books listed, so I feel secure in my snootiness.
