In John Atkinson's Abridged Classics series, Atkinson shares hilarious "spoilers" of novels like The Catcher in the Rye and 1984. Hs cartoons pare the books down to their witty bones. Atkinson sums up George Orwell's 1984 with the following sentiment: "Vision of a dystopian future (now called Tuesday.)"
A few years ago, Atkinson found some survey results revealed an interesting statistic: "It revealed that around 60% of people pretend to have read books they haven’t and around 40% rely on movies and TV to feign knowledge of classic novels," he said. "That coupled with our ongoing obsession with 'tweet-culture' got me to thinking that it might be a funny idea to help everyone out and provide synopses of classic books suitable for dinner parties and awkward social functions."
In 2018, Abridged Classics was turned into a book. Atkinson continues to draw classic literature cartoons spoiling the likes of Dickens and Shakespeare; he's even broached the topic of artists.