Back when I was in college, I made the mistake of majoring in English literature. Outside of the education field, English Lit. is fairly useless; the degree basically tells employers that you are capable of learning, and were able to sit in a classroom and listen to burnt-out college professors drone on about dead writers who (outside of Shakespeare) aren’t exactly relevant for literature and writing today. Seeking to find a way to justify his own degree in English, John Troutman started up a webcomic based on the contents of the Norton Anthology of English Literature (which he started to read out of a need to destroy his brain cells, seeing that he had the anthology handy and buying enough alcohol to pickle one’s brain costs money).

The result, Lit Brick, is an amusing look at various literature stories in webcomic form. Troutman proxies himself with a cute scrawny redhead who decides that the Northon Anthology would make a great basis for a webcomic. At least, it would be better than a blog comic about the girl (which is undoubtedly Troutman’s thumbing his nose to the growing number of blog-comics out there (often by fairly attractive young ladies who try to find something interesting about their lives to write about)). From there, we jump into such stories as Beowulf, the Canterbury Tales, and the King Arthur stories.

What makes this fun is that Troutman doesn’t blindly tell these tales. Lit Brick gives us a parody of these stories, often ridiculing and summarizing what goes on in these stories. If you think of this as “crib notes in graphic form” you’re probably not far off the mark. For the most part these are told from the viewpoint of the meta-comic “written” by Troutman’s freckled proxy Molly. But after a bit, he tossed in Deirdre from his previous comic Delusionary State (which sadly I never did get around to reviewing; it’s a shame as it’s a fascinating comic and worth reading for the most part) and has used the two characters to reinterpret such works as The Book of Margery Kempe (which my own English professors never inflicted on me, thankfully).

Much as Troutman did in Delusionary States, he presents short write-ups on the comics and the literature they are based on. These write-ups can often be more amusing and interesting than the comic itself, and it helps reveal little tidbits that the comic doesn’t mention (Deirdre’s identity and where Lit Brick lies in the meta-world time-line being one of those tidbits). They also give us a glimpse into Troutman’s own opinion of these stories; for instance, his belief that King Arthur’s a bit of a dick, and Guinevere a lady of questionable morals and a bit of a moron. I must admit he might have something there. At the very least, it’s an interesting interpretation and it makes for an amusing parody of the original stories.

Nor has Troutman kept his eye solely on early English literature. After several bills reared their head and threatened his livelihood, Troutman opened up commissions where donators could request certain books be reviewed. This has given us such amusing spectacles as The Dragonriders of Pern (which got a bit of hate-mail from readers who think McCaffrey’s a great writer; I must admit once I would have felt the same, but after reading some actually decent science fiction I see her writing as contrived and her early works as amateurish) and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (which, while he enjoys the story, he still takes a playful poke at). It is this mixture of parody and the slow growth of actual character development of the meta-characters that makes Lit Brick so enjoyable and well worth adding to your reading list.