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Cory Doctorow, SF novelist, Boing Boinger, advocate for freedom of technology and information and generally all-round good egg has uploaded a free PDF mini-comic of his own short story Printcime from his collection Overclocked, designed and illustrated by former South Park animator Martin Cendreda, who has also created DANG! for Top Shelf and published by LA’s Secret Headquarters comics shop. Cory practises what he preaches, often making his stories and podcast available free under the Creative Commons license, and the Printcrime mini-comic continues this fine tradition, with the added fun that once you print it out you get to put the comic together, as Cory says on BB: “To assemble the mini, download and print the PDF, then follow the directions included to fold it into a no-staple origami 8-page mini-comic — it’s all under a Creative Commons Noncommercial Sharealike license — share it, tweak it, remix it, just don’t sell it.”
Also via Boing Boing comes this link to a comics adaptation of George Orwell’s classic 1984 by Freddy, with the first two chapters already up and ready to read here. More than two decades after that year - and almost six decades since it was published - 1984 still stands not only as a classic of world literature but as a work that seems, sadly, to become more relevant to our society with every year which passes (WAR IS PEACE, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH, YOU’RE WITH US OR AGAINST US - okay, I added in the last one, but you see the point about indoctrinating the masses not to think or question), which makes it all the more important that you read it. If you’re one of those people who has always meant to read the novel (go on, it is quite small!) and never quite got round to it then try Freddy’s comics adaptation (and then go read the book as well); looking through the first two chapters on the site I found it had much of the flavour of Orwell’s dystopian warning, while black and white seems quite appropriate for the story in a way colour just wouldn’t.