I've been really hung up over The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, which is a hard read, so I took a break and went to the library and found a graphic novel that looked pretty interesting.
The Book of Ballads is a graphic novel (GN) with multiple authors and every story is illustrated and penned by Charles Vess. To be honest, the font of the title is the main thing that caught my eye, and then reading a little about it got me to borrow it in an instant.
This GN takes songs and folk-tales from England, Ireland and Scotland and turns them into comics with beautiful illustrations to accompany them. Because I'm not from England, Ireland or Scotland, I had never heard any of these folk-tales before. There were 13 tales by 11 authors, some among them being Neil Gaiman (a popular GN and fantasy/sci fi author), Jane Yolen (a Young Adult fantasy author) and Charles de Lint (an author I've heard of but never read; he writes fantasy).
At the end of each of the comics they placed the whole song or folk-tale, and the authors do stick really close to the originals. The spoken parts are always verbatim, and the illustrations tell the rest of the story, sometimes accompanied by a narrator-esque paragraph to help.
My favorite is a ballad from England titled "Sovay". It tells the tale of a man and woman in love; she gives him a diamond ring as a token of her affection right before he has to go on a trip. Another woman talks to Sovay as he's leaving, sowing seeds of doubt in her head as to if he's faithful or not. She decides to follow him from a distance to see if he really is faithful. A man comes at her as she's following him, so she kills him with her pistol and uses his clothes to disguise herself. She then robs her lover, demanding gold, which he gives her gladly, and then demands the diamond ring. He refuses, not afraid to be killed, because his love gave that ring to him. She lets him go, and he arrives after a time to a tavern for the night. A wench offers to keep him warm for the night, but he again refuses. As he enters the room he's to sleep in for the night, he sees the burglar again, but this burglar only wants to return him his money, as he's revealed to actually be Sovay. His faithfulness is confirmed, and they celebrate... In bed.
This GN is a perfect starting point to jump into comics, and I highly recommend it!
Charles de Lint is another YA fiction writer. I think "The Blue Girl" was the big one that people talked about in my YA class.
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