The complete Don Quixote [Volume 1-2] [Volume 1-2] /

He dons a silly costume to save the world. Sound familiar? This antisuperhero, a demented knight-errant-wannabe, charges off into hilarious battles that invariably end with him and his dopey squire, Sancho Panza, getting beaten up. Cervantes's saga became wildly popular in the 1600s, encompassing two volumes totaling a thousand pages. Today, this classic is admired for its slash-and-burn satire of human frailties mixed with tragedy and wistful sweetness. Davis has done a superb job with the adaptation. His loose, active art plays the picaresque plot for laughs and action while varying the drawing style in the numerous secondary tales told by the characters themselves. Drawing on multiple translations plus renderings in other media, he incorporates modern English-language puns and colloquialisms when they serve the story. -VERDICT Many Don Quixote adaptations render only the bare bones of the novel, but Davis gives us a full version in atmospheric color that should entertain readers as much as the original. This excellent work will appeal to students of literature as well as to fans of comedy and historical satire, teen through adult. Plenty of violence and some bawdry but nothing explicit.-M.C. (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.