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Adapting Cartoons to Comic Books

Henry Atkins
Apr 21, 2018
2 min read

Adapting Cartoons into Comic Books isn't anything new. It's been done for years. In fact I follow the Godzilla Comic Book series from IDW so I usually check out their website and to keep with the particular topic of this post, here's the list:

I would talk about all of these but not only would that take me ages but I already know that these comics capture the essence of all the shows they're based on. Well... there's one more I want to show that I feel a tad dubious about that I haven't read yet:

Super Secret Crisis War!

There are too many things I'm okay with in this comic series except for one, or should I say three things.

As Rolph would say, "The Ed boys".

If this GIF doesn't make it obvious enough even through thorough analysing at all the facial expressions and body parts through how they contort, Ed, Edd, 'n' Eddy revolves around stylised animation and violence. And if nobodies seen the most recent meme (for April 2018), adding Ed, Edd, 'n' Eddy sound effects to a scene has become popular.

Here's my personal favourite:

These staple elements bring up problems if you're putting them in a Comic Book.

The obvious one are the sound effects. Unless you litter the entire page with descriptive words, it doesn't quite work out. However the Artstyle should substitute it well. The best comparison I can think of in a Comic is one Calamity James from the British Comic series, The BEANO:

Calamity James is known for being the most unlucky character in the Comic and of course, is subjugated to horrendous pain in each issue. Whether he's still an active IP in the BEANO is unknown to me. Since they changed the Artstyle of Dennis the Menace (Yes, Britain has one of those too) I stopped paying attention:

If they can at least draw the Ed boys like this then they have a good chance.

The point I'm making about adapting Cartoons to Comic Books are that Artstyle are incredibly important. Even if you put a twist to the original (Note the different Artstyle for Samurai Jack shown earlier in the slideshow) you should still make even the basic outline fit. The thing with Characters like these is they are iconic and changing a design or even how they move (Much like the 3 Ed's Animation) can cause the age old dilemma on keeping faithful to the original.