When you think about it, there should be no surprise that Crime and Punishment makes a great comic book. And film. And TV series. So, just for fun, here’s a collection of Crime and Punishment adaptions in myriad mediums that Dostoyevsky probably never foresaw.
 |
| A clean-cut Raskolnikov |
My fave remains the Classics Illustrated edition of Crime and Punishment (No. 89), first issued in November 1951. This brought Dostoyevsky to the masses—masses of prepubescent kids, that is. My dad was a fond reader and collector of Classic Illustrateds; we still have his collection up at the family lake cabin, including rare, exceedingly valuable first editions—all in tatters because they been read literally a thousand times over by three generations now. The way they should be. And thanks to the message in issue No. 89, we do not have any axe murderers in the family. So far.
 |
| A simple moral message for those 1950s boys and girls |
 |
| Post-modern pastiche |
Here’s a more recent adaption, Dostoyevsky Comics, originally printed in Drawn and Quarterly (No. 3) in 2000. Crime and Punishment is adapted here by Robert Sikoryak, giving Raskolnikov some spiffy pajamas and a cape and turning him into Batman. But in retrospect, this has it all wrong: It’s not Raskolnikov that should be turned into Batman. The batty tale of Gotham City’s Caped Crusader—losing his parents at an early age, growing up all alone in a gothic mansion, devoting his life to fitting crime with a secret identity based on a bat—seems somehow tailormade for Russian Literature.
 |
| True crime, true punishment |
In the late 1940s and 1950s during the Golden Age of Comicbooks, there was a Crime and Punishment series of “Illustories” that publisher Lev Gleason promised were “Packed with Thrilling Suspense!” Each told what were purportedly true historical crime stories.
 |
| 2009 Graphic novel with Alain Korkos art |
Crime and Punishment has also been made into a movie at least twenty times over, from France to India, Croatia to Mexico. The earliest was probably a 1913 silent filmed in Russia, followed soon after in 1917 by an American silent.
 |
| Raskolnikov does Mexico |
 |
| Bollywood epic |
 |
| Peter Lorre grabs an axe in 1935 |
 |
| Accused! |
 |
| Film tie-in edition, 1935 |
 |
| Glorious recent Russian theater poster |
 |
| "Porter, what made you do it?" |
My favorite, though, is the 1959 adaption of Dostoyevsky’s tale as Crime and Punishment USA with the characters Sally, Porter, and Debbie bringing the story to the modern-day mean streets of SoCal. And Dostoyevsky’s dialogue was translated into Hardboiled speak à la Raymond Chandler or Mickey Spillane: “Is that how you get your kicks? Out of killing?” Maybe they didn’t quite get the original storyline...
