Rick Atkinson’s Revolutionary War trilogy to be adapted into graphic editions

Military historian Rick Atkinson, famous for his trilogy about the Revolutionary War, decides to create graphic books.

NEW YORK — Military Historian Prize Winner Rick AtkinsonHaving grown up a comic book fan, he had no idea that his own work was suitable for the illustrated format.

Ten Speed ​​Graphics announced Tuesday that a graphic edition of The British Are Coming, the first volume of Atkinson's acclaimed Revolutionary War trilogy, will be published next June, just before the country's 250th anniversary. Five more graphic books are planned, to be written by Nora Noyce and illustrated by Federico Pietrobon in close collaboration with Atkinson.

“They're completely amenable to my suggestions: 'That's not quite right' or 'I think that needs to be explained,'” Atkinson told The Associated Press. “I pointed out through the drawings that John Adams was a relatively young man when the Revolution began. And they made him look like the pot-bellied, bald John Adams from Vice. And they corrected that.”

Atkinson, a Pulitzer Prize winner for his World War II book Army at Dawn, has been working on his groundbreaking trilogy for a decade and published the second volume, “The Fate of the Day,” this spring. Widely regarded as one of the finest living military historians, he was a noted commentator on Ken Burns “American Revolution” documentary and made numerous appearances with the director. He is currently working on the final book of his trilogy.

The author says that he was initially skeptical about the new project. Having early memories of Superman comics, he wondered how any illustrator could adapt deeply researched books of over 500 pages. But the graphic format has been used in everything from The Odyssey to the drafting of the US Constitution. Atkinson changed his mind after Ten Speed ​​Graphic, an imprint of Penguin Random House, sent him several film adaptations, including a real-life Frederick Douglass and Timothy Snyder “About tyranny.”

“I saw that the comics of my youth had changed significantly, and I was inspired by that,” Atkinson said. “They said, 'We recognize that this is a serious story you're doing. We do not intend to minimize it. Our goal is to broaden the audience, to bring this story of the founding of America to an audience that might otherwise be intimidated by a 560-page book.”