An adaptation that thrives in its new medium.
Heavyweight comic book publisher Marvel envisions Stephen King’s seminal apocalyptic epic The Stand as six five-issue miniseries, collected here alongside a companion volume of creator interviews, production notes, script pages and original and supporting artwork.
Upon the release of The Stand’s expanded edition in 1990, Kirkus suggested King’s tale of good versus evil writ large (for the first time complete and uncut) had sprung from an imagination fed on comic books, and this new graphic homecoming (based on that 1990 edition) is a feverish wonder. Aguirre-Sacasa (Archie Meets Glee, 2013, etc.) divvies King’s sprawling novel into poetically economic blocks of text woven seamlessly across narration that gallops from the accidental release of a militarily engineered bioweapon known as Captain Trips, through the resulting phantsamagoria of plague, national decimation, widespread clairvoyance, crosscultural roadtripping and shaky-legged civil rebirth. The sprawling events crystalize into everyman Stu Redman’s damned love triangle with pregnant Fran Goldsmith and disturbed Harold Lauder; the Bildungsroman of rock star Larry Underwood, feauring Nadine Cross, the devil’s betrothed; deaf, mute and one-eyed wunderkind Nick Andros’ friendship with simpleminded secret weapon Tom Cullen; the anarchic inferno of Trashcan Man; the righteousness and inescapable humanity of Mother Abigail; and the ageless menace of Randall Flagg, aka the Walkin Dude, aka the Dark Man. As with much of King’s work, the story aches with the pathos of the damned, desperation and despair (and glimmers of hope) pulsing from a web of tortured relationships, so the swift pace of this visual translation is all the more impressive, thanks in no small part to how Perkins (House of M: Avengers, 2008, etc.) twists the creamy fullness of his figures and faces so that even conversations crackle with animation and silent expressions tremble with emotion. Of course, the story also provides ample opportunity to illustrate in engrossing detail decimating gunflights, prolonged decomposition, naked crucifixion, devastating explosions, demonic wolf and weasel attacks and Flagg’s overworldly abilities, including levatation and looking appropriately badass in a jean jacket. The overall effect is akin to operatic yet finite series such as Preacher, but without the zaniness and iconoclasm.
An adaptation that thrives in its new medium.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7851-5331-3
Page Count: 768
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2013
The author of Why I Hate Saturn, best known for his long-running strip “Bad Publicity” in New York magazine, attempts an “urban romantic comedy——but his disparate influences and preposterous plot suggest something altogether different. Visually, Baker brings together a noirish, hard-boiled look for his foregrounds (one bad guy looks just like Robert Mitchum in “Cape Fear—), with backgrounds that would make the animators at Disney proud—full of cute animals, pretty trees, and stunning sunsets. The two “looks” reflect the convergence of narrative lines: Noel, a former Manhattan jewel thief, has spent the past year living upstate in bliss with his trippy, sensual girl friend, an “aura cleanser” by trade, who knows nothing of his checkered past and who loves to commune with nature. When she follows Noel back to the city, she finds herself in the middle of a nasty revenge tale, resulting in the death of Noel’s buddy Oscar, who bears a striking resemblance to the father in “Bad Publicity.” Baker, no gritty realist himself, mocks the street cred of a nameless movie director (read: Tarrantino), but would better attend to his own implausibilities, though a clever epilogue almost redeems the sillier aspects of the narrative. Baker’s computer-generated backgrounds—while cinematic in style—also result in much visual murkiness: his heroine has a mush of red hair and a smudge of lips. Warts and all, though, this full-color production deserves attention for DC’s effort to entertain adults for a change.
Pub Date: Jan. 19, 1999
ISBN: 1-56389-442-4
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Vertigo/DC Comics
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
French comics artist Juillard, best known for his graphic novel, The Blue Notebook, here picks up a few characters from that work, and spins off a full-color narrative that’s best when he relies strictly on wordless frames. Juillard’s cinematic simplicity and his amazingly detailed backgrounds overwhelm the intrigue in the foreground—a commonplace thriller with few surprises. Abel Mias, a chubby Parisian schoolteacher, spots in a local gallery a photographic portrait of his old friend Tristan, a sculptor who disappeared a year earlier. The recent photo confirms that Tristan has indeed run off with the stunning Clara, an enchanting—and married—beauty whose desperate husband enlists her sleazy brother in an ill-fated plot to find her. Abel spends his vacation near Florence, tracking down the slim leads, and proves more efficient than the police. The final violent sequences, with murders and an attempted rape, display Juillard’s stunning visual skill. Elsewhere, he enhances his story with thugs straight from the film Diva and a splendid sequence worthy of Hitchcock—Abel witnesses a crime through binoculars. Only the final, wordy denouement detracts from this otherwise taut and sophisticated tale.
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-56163-223-6
Page Count: 56
Publisher: NBM
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
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