What do you think?
Rate this book
The Last Knight: An Introduction to Don Quixote
A comic book retells the story about the Spanish gentleman, considered slightly mad, and his servant, who pass themselves off as knights in order to fight evil and establish justice.
32 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1999
89 people want to read
About the author
Will Eisner
764 books539 followersWilliam Erwin Eisner was an American cartoonist, writer, and entrepreneur. He was one of the earliest cartoonists to work in the American comic book industry, and his series The Spirit (1940–1952) was noted for its experiments in content and form. In 1978, he popularized the term "graphic novel" with the publication of his book A Contract with God. He was an early contributor to formal comics studies with his book Comics and Sequential Art (1985). The Eisner Award was named in his honor and is given to recognize achievements each year in the comics medium; he was one of the three inaugural inductees to the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 22 of 23 reviews
March 19, 2024
Çocukluğumda en sevdiğim hikayelerden biri, hayalciliğin ve deliliğin ortak noktası Don Kişot.
Atı, yaveri, paslı zırhı, kartondan kalkanı ve tahta kılıcı. Cervantes’in mucizesi.
Orijinali dışında bugüne kadar 10’dan fazla farklı uyarlamasını okumuşumdur sanırım. Geçen yıl tekrar basılan Marmara Çizgi’nin Don Kişot’u ile birlikte en sevdiğim uyarlamalardan biri oldu bu hikaye. Pek spoiler sayılmayacağı için söylemekte beis yok. Finalde hasta yatağında ölümü bekleyen Don Kişot’un yanına bir anda Cervantes’in çıkıp gelmesi ve yunan tragedyalarında ya da bizim orta oyunlarında finalde ortaya çıkan ve her şeyi özetleyen karakter gibi görünmesi bile güzel bir detay.
Bu çizgi romanda da Eisner, hikayenin özüne sadık kalarak bize kendi anlatısını sunuyor. Keyifli, komik, trajik bir hikaye. Brooklyn düşleri kitabında “gerçeklerden daha düzgün yakanlar anlatmak” tabirini okumuştum. Bu kitap sanırım tam olarak bu cümlenin ete kemiğe bürünmüş hali.
Atı, yaveri, paslı zırhı, kartondan kalkanı ve tahta kılıcı. Cervantes’in mucizesi.
Orijinali dışında bugüne kadar 10’dan fazla farklı uyarlamasını okumuşumdur sanırım. Geçen yıl tekrar basılan Marmara Çizgi’nin Don Kişot’u ile birlikte en sevdiğim uyarlamalardan biri oldu bu hikaye. Pek spoiler sayılmayacağı için söylemekte beis yok. Finalde hasta yatağında ölümü bekleyen Don Kişot’un yanına bir anda Cervantes’in çıkıp gelmesi ve yunan tragedyalarında ya da bizim orta oyunlarında finalde ortaya çıkan ve her şeyi özetleyen karakter gibi görünmesi bile güzel bir detay.
Bu çizgi romanda da Eisner, hikayenin özüne sadık kalarak bize kendi anlatısını sunuyor. Keyifli, komik, trajik bir hikaye. Brooklyn düşleri kitabında “gerçeklerden daha düzgün yakanlar anlatmak” tabirini okumuştum. Bu kitap sanırım tam olarak bu cümlenin ete kemiğe bürünmüş hali.
February 20, 2025
After reading and being wowed by 'The Building' a year and change ago, I've been ready to read a lot more books by Will Eisner, both before and after he coined the term "graphic novel". It turns out that I had one on the shelf, so I pulled that down and diced into 'The Last Knight'.
While 'The Building' was an original work, this is one of a series of "light-hearted adaptations" of classic literature, here 'Don Quixote' by Miguel de Cervantes, which has been considered the first "modern novel" and one of the bestselling novels of all time. Some have placed it at the very top of that tree but they didn't have reliable figures back in 1605, so it's hard to come up with close to accurate numbers. Let's suffice to say that it's one of the most important and most read books of all time and yet it remains obscure to the modern generations. I, for one, haven't read it.
As such, I have no idea how effective Will Eisner is at not only adapting a classic of world literature to the format of a graphic novel but also at condensing a book (technically two books) that rack up over a thousand pages of prose into a mere thirty-two pages of admittedly large format hardback. What I can say is that reading this book and comparing it to the little I know of 'Don Quixote' from pop culture and general knowledge and checking out its Wikipedia page, he seems to have nailed the essentials.
It's about a man called Alanzo Quijano, who is a devoted reader of the sort of romances of chivalry that dominated the world of literature before the release of 'Don Quixote'. However, he's read so many of them that he loses his grip on reality and believes himself to be a knight-errant with a mission to restore chivalry to the world; which he promptly attempts to do in a set of episodic and hilarious encounters. 'Knighthood shall no longer be kept imprisoned in books!" he proclaims and hauls out his grandfather's armour to polish.
As such, Eisner draws him as clearly off. He's completely functional but I could be reading this in a different language I don't speak and it would be abundantly clear that Alonzo is not firing on all cylinders. Of course, we can also see what he can't, which plays into that. His trusty steed is an old workhorse. The castle he visits is the local inn. He kneels down so the innkeeper can knight him. I might even suggest that this could be entirely absent text and I'd still be able to tell what's going on without any trouble. All I'd miss are the names.
So he saves a tormented victim, finds a lady love and fights brigands, three events that Cervantes no doubt dedicated long chapters to, but Eisner condenses them down to five pages total. That's a serious compression ratio but the point is clear and the message of the book likewise. At this pace, it doesn't take long before he's tilting at windmills believing them to be dragons, in what is surely the most famous episode in all of 'Don Quixote'. That's done and dusted in only five panels across a two page spread.
One of the joys of 'Don Quixote', as I understand it, is that it isn't just the story of Alanzo Quijano, who becomes Don Quixote. It's also the story of Sancho Panza, who becomes his trusted squire. In the beginning, Panza is under no illusions about his master being batshit crazy. He's the grounded companion who can clean up whatever messes Don Quixote creates. However, the longer they stay together and the more adventures they run through, the more Quijano's romantic nature rubs off on him. Chivalry would appear to be catching.
What's especially priceless about this relationship is that these two characters are on completely different story arcs, even as they travel together and encounter everything as one. Don Quixote is mad but his madness eventually fades and he drifts back into being merely Alanzo Quijano again, back in reality. However, while he's doing that, Panza is getting more and more comfortable with his master's romantic fantasies and adopts them as his own. So, after his master eventually dies, Panza is the one to memorialise him, growing old and telling everyone about how he once served Don Quixote, a noble knight who had such grand adventures.
For Eisner to get all this across in only thirty pages, if we exclude the title page and the copyright page after it, is pretty astounding. His art is in colour here, except for moments in black and white when Sancho Panza is old and thinking back, and it's bright and vivid. He had the cartoonist's skill of condensing complex movement into simple strokes and losing none of their power or meaning. In a way, that's what he did with the story itself, so this artistic style fits it naturally. Given that, it seems entirely appropriate to be so short, even if that feels like the most obvious negative to me. I know there were other adventures for Don Quixote.
All in all, this was a lot of fun, but it's a very quick read indeed and I wanted to keep reading when the pages ran out. 'The Building' resonated with me much more, but this isn't really telling a tale, it's serving as the introduction to one. The point is surely to catch the attention of readers in our world where all fiction older than me is considered to be told in difficult language and show us in quick and effective fashion how universal this story is. It's earthy, it's vibrant and it's hilarious. It carries the message that, fundamentally, 'Don Quixote' is something we'd enjoy, and maybe that eleven hundred page behemoth published by Penguin Classics is something we ought to dive into.
Originally posted at the Nameless Zine in October 2024:
https://www.thenamelesszine.org/Illus...
Index of all my Nameless Zine reviews:
https://books.apocalypselaterempire.com/
While 'The Building' was an original work, this is one of a series of "light-hearted adaptations" of classic literature, here 'Don Quixote' by Miguel de Cervantes, which has been considered the first "modern novel" and one of the bestselling novels of all time. Some have placed it at the very top of that tree but they didn't have reliable figures back in 1605, so it's hard to come up with close to accurate numbers. Let's suffice to say that it's one of the most important and most read books of all time and yet it remains obscure to the modern generations. I, for one, haven't read it.
As such, I have no idea how effective Will Eisner is at not only adapting a classic of world literature to the format of a graphic novel but also at condensing a book (technically two books) that rack up over a thousand pages of prose into a mere thirty-two pages of admittedly large format hardback. What I can say is that reading this book and comparing it to the little I know of 'Don Quixote' from pop culture and general knowledge and checking out its Wikipedia page, he seems to have nailed the essentials.
It's about a man called Alanzo Quijano, who is a devoted reader of the sort of romances of chivalry that dominated the world of literature before the release of 'Don Quixote'. However, he's read so many of them that he loses his grip on reality and believes himself to be a knight-errant with a mission to restore chivalry to the world; which he promptly attempts to do in a set of episodic and hilarious encounters. 'Knighthood shall no longer be kept imprisoned in books!" he proclaims and hauls out his grandfather's armour to polish.
As such, Eisner draws him as clearly off. He's completely functional but I could be reading this in a different language I don't speak and it would be abundantly clear that Alonzo is not firing on all cylinders. Of course, we can also see what he can't, which plays into that. His trusty steed is an old workhorse. The castle he visits is the local inn. He kneels down so the innkeeper can knight him. I might even suggest that this could be entirely absent text and I'd still be able to tell what's going on without any trouble. All I'd miss are the names.
So he saves a tormented victim, finds a lady love and fights brigands, three events that Cervantes no doubt dedicated long chapters to, but Eisner condenses them down to five pages total. That's a serious compression ratio but the point is clear and the message of the book likewise. At this pace, it doesn't take long before he's tilting at windmills believing them to be dragons, in what is surely the most famous episode in all of 'Don Quixote'. That's done and dusted in only five panels across a two page spread.
One of the joys of 'Don Quixote', as I understand it, is that it isn't just the story of Alanzo Quijano, who becomes Don Quixote. It's also the story of Sancho Panza, who becomes his trusted squire. In the beginning, Panza is under no illusions about his master being batshit crazy. He's the grounded companion who can clean up whatever messes Don Quixote creates. However, the longer they stay together and the more adventures they run through, the more Quijano's romantic nature rubs off on him. Chivalry would appear to be catching.
What's especially priceless about this relationship is that these two characters are on completely different story arcs, even as they travel together and encounter everything as one. Don Quixote is mad but his madness eventually fades and he drifts back into being merely Alanzo Quijano again, back in reality. However, while he's doing that, Panza is getting more and more comfortable with his master's romantic fantasies and adopts them as his own. So, after his master eventually dies, Panza is the one to memorialise him, growing old and telling everyone about how he once served Don Quixote, a noble knight who had such grand adventures.
For Eisner to get all this across in only thirty pages, if we exclude the title page and the copyright page after it, is pretty astounding. His art is in colour here, except for moments in black and white when Sancho Panza is old and thinking back, and it's bright and vivid. He had the cartoonist's skill of condensing complex movement into simple strokes and losing none of their power or meaning. In a way, that's what he did with the story itself, so this artistic style fits it naturally. Given that, it seems entirely appropriate to be so short, even if that feels like the most obvious negative to me. I know there were other adventures for Don Quixote.
All in all, this was a lot of fun, but it's a very quick read indeed and I wanted to keep reading when the pages ran out. 'The Building' resonated with me much more, but this isn't really telling a tale, it's serving as the introduction to one. The point is surely to catch the attention of readers in our world where all fiction older than me is considered to be told in difficult language and show us in quick and effective fashion how universal this story is. It's earthy, it's vibrant and it's hilarious. It carries the message that, fundamentally, 'Don Quixote' is something we'd enjoy, and maybe that eleven hundred page behemoth published by Penguin Classics is something we ought to dive into.
Originally posted at the Nameless Zine in October 2024:
https://www.thenamelesszine.org/Illus...
Index of all my Nameless Zine reviews:
https://books.apocalypselaterempire.com/
December 16, 2020
Let's face it... unless I was assigned to read it for a class, I probably would not ever read Don Quixote. Yet, it's still one of the those classics one should be familiar with to recognize references to it in the larger culture.
This book is a wonderful introduction. I read it in about 20 minutes and now have at least a passing familiarity with the tropes from the book. Plus is drawn in a fun style with some humor thrown in here and there. And, of course, Will Eisner... than man who COINED the term "graphic novel."
Fun reading for adults, teens and children. This one is short and uncomplicated enough to be read out loud to children as well.
This book is a wonderful introduction. I read it in about 20 minutes and now have at least a passing familiarity with the tropes from the book. Plus is drawn in a fun style with some humor thrown in here and there. And, of course, Will Eisner... than man who COINED the term "graphic novel."
Fun reading for adults, teens and children. This one is short and uncomplicated enough to be read out loud to children as well.
October 16, 2018
Not a bad way to employ his talents. I don't actually know a lot about Don Quixote - I never read it, never actually seen any movies or shows. I'm familiar with the lore of it and that is all. I think I have a slightly better understanding of the themes of the work after reading this. I will say that the bright colors made me long for Eisner's more traditional black and white (or sepia-toned) work.
December 9, 2021
An excellent children's adaptation of the novel by Cervantes, done by the master of the graphic novel, Will Eisner. There have been many adaptations of this 16th Century novel - not an easy task, as the book is hundreds of pages long. In my opinion, this version is the best I've ever read. Better even than the Classics Illustrated version. While out of necessity, a large portion of the source material was left out. Even the title states that this is just an introduction to Don Quixote.
December 28, 2023
Tudo escrito pelo Eisner tem algo de interessante. Aqui, uma leitura que se faz em uns 20 minutos. Sancho, já velho, se recorda das suas andanças com Alonso Quijano, que se fez cavaleiro após ler livros de cavalaria demais.
Uma história sensível, bastante delicada. Conclui-se a leitura com um sorriso de otimismo. Precisa-se de algo mais?
Uma história sensível, bastante delicada. Conclui-se a leitura com um sorriso de otimismo. Precisa-se de algo mais?
April 7, 2019
Good graphic novel intro to Don Quixote. Shows the irony and sincerity.
June 10, 2019
“The Last Knight: An Introduction to Don Quixote” by
Will Eisner, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Ludicrous characters, almost like a Fawlty Towers script.
Will Eisner, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Ludicrous characters, almost like a Fawlty Towers script.
July 3, 2020
Just a quick, fun read to introduce Don Quixote and his bravery to the masses!
March 25, 2023
Funnier than expected
May 30, 2023
An interesting read but only an ok representation of Don Quixote in my opinion.
March 1, 2025
No creo ni que leyera el Quijote
June 30, 2025
Bonita revisión del Caballero de la Triste Figura, que aunque breve y somera procura resaltar su caracter soñador e idealista en una visión más romántica que satírica.
November 27, 2012
This book belongs in the genre of junior graphic novels.
This graphic novel is a contemporary "introduction" to the classic "Don Quixote".
The area for critique is plot. While the illustrations in this graphic novel are wonderfully expressive, the plot falls flat. This book is marketed as "an introduction" to the classic novel, but because of the underdevelopment of the plot and characters,due to the condensing of a very extensive classic, leaves the readers wanting. Students reading this book will not be inclined to pick up the classic.
This book can be integrated into the curriculum in the following areas:
English/Reading: graphic novels
Art
This graphic novel is a contemporary "introduction" to the classic "Don Quixote".
The area for critique is plot. While the illustrations in this graphic novel are wonderfully expressive, the plot falls flat. This book is marketed as "an introduction" to the classic novel, but because of the underdevelopment of the plot and characters,due to the condensing of a very extensive classic, leaves the readers wanting. Students reading this book will not be inclined to pick up the classic.
This book can be integrated into the curriculum in the following areas:
English/Reading: graphic novels
Art
January 13, 2010
Why I Read This Book: It looked interesting on the library shelf.
This was a fun read, but a bit unsatisfying. I guess that's what you get when you condense a long book (about 945 pages in the Oxford World's Classics edition) to a short comic (32 pages). The art and storytelling are very nice, though.
This was a fun read, but a bit unsatisfying. I guess that's what you get when you condense a long book (about 945 pages in the Oxford World's Classics edition) to a short comic (32 pages). The art and storytelling are very nice, though.
April 20, 2012
It's a nice little introduction to Don Quixote, and Eisner's drawings of faces are very expressive.
Probably the coolest part was reading the book from an archival collection of Eisner material at Ohio State University.
Probably the coolest part was reading the book from an archival collection of Eisner material at Ohio State University.
January 13, 2014
I suppose you can see this as an introduction to Cervantes book, if you want to be generous. I already loved Cervantes before I read this graphic novel, so it really had little chance of impressing me. It seems an ill-conceived project. Eisner's talent comes through, but does the world need this book? It may be more impressive to those who have not read Don Quixote.
May 19, 2015
Though it is incredibly short, I will give Eisner credit where it's due. This is an introduction to Don Quixote, and I got an introduction. A short, simple story with a little commentary on Don Quixote, his books, and his deeds. Decently written, well-drawn (as always), and enjoyable, to say the least.
September 7, 2009
this is the story of Don Quixote retold by Sancho Panza. How Don Quixote becomes a knight and all his adventures. This is a good book to introduce reluctant readers to the original work by Cervantes.
January 4, 2012
It is an okay short version of Don Quixote, but changing the end (compared to the novel) ruins Eisner's interpretation. It is a good book for children and good to get a overview of the novel.
July 23, 2014
Interesting. Looking forward to Don Quixote........
August 12, 2015
I did not like Eisner's interpretation of The Adventure of Don Quixote. He turned him into a person who could not accept reality for the sake of not being able to accept reality.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 23 reviews