Now he has taken the adult comic-book format a step further, with a graphic history that applies his dark, 1930's-style illustrations to real events of a century ago.
6.35pm: The forensic examination of America's transport secretary, Ray LaHood, continues as everyone waits for the real event of the day - a quizzing of Toyota's president, Akio Toyoda.
This act is viewed as suicide by the British colonial administration (the text is based on a real event of 1946) and interrupted.
When Delacroix painted his epic landscape portrait of suffering humanity, Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi, he was commemorating a real event of recent history, the exodus of April 22 1826 when 7,000 starving citizens of Missolonghi attempted to break out of the city, then under long-term Turkish siege.
The pair were inspired by an article in the Guardian, about the real events of Able Archer, a little-known military exercise that brought an unsuspecting world to the brink of nuclear armageddon.
"Captain Phillips," which is based on real events, of 2009, poses a problem for Greengrass.
The only real events of note are a trip to perform before the French king, who is not amused, and the growing conflict between Flaminio and Francesco, which gives rise to an aptly stagy, melodramatic ending.
But inspired by real events of the recent past in an English village, the play is homier and humbler than the usual Jacobean fare.
The story (inspired, evidently, by a real event) is of an ordinary shlubby guy named Jerry, a flight school reject who wants nothing more out of life than to fly.
First there are real events of real entities.
