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I had some deep thoughts, but now I don't anymore! So have some rambling about comic books instead.
I spent this evening reading Captain Trips, the first arc of Marvel's Stephen King's The Stand. Now, I love the novel and was incredibly dubious about the transition that something so dense and detailed could possibly make to a simplified format like a comic book, but so far I've been pleasantly surprised.
That said, I wonder if I'm not just enjoying it because I have read the novel. I'm not at all unbiased. I can't tell if the comic is good as a standalone, or if it only makes sense to me because my Stephen-King-soaked hippocampus can fill in the multitude of little bits that aren't there. In that respect, it's rather like a graphic companion to the book instead of a work of its own, and I don't know if that's what was intended. It's incredibly sparse compared to the source, I really can't see someone becoming attached to the characters if this is their only exposure to the story. There's just so much there, and I don't know if the jumping-around style of narrative prose (focusing on one character, then rapidly shifting to another) works with the comic so well as it worked in the text.
So basically I can't decide if it's good or not. I think it's good, but I don't know what someone unfamiliar with the source would make of it. I like it. I hope it gets more people to read the book.
(The art, incidentally, is fabulous. I have absolutely no complaints about the visual elements. Many of the settings and characters are very close to what I saw in my head the first time I read The Stand, especially the astonishing portrayal of Flagg. Mike Perkins has totally knocked it out of the park and I'm going to pick up some of his other work.)
That said, I wonder if I'm not just enjoying it because I have read the novel. I'm not at all unbiased. I can't tell if the comic is good as a standalone, or if it only makes sense to me because my Stephen-King-soaked hippocampus can fill in the multitude of little bits that aren't there. In that respect, it's rather like a graphic companion to the book instead of a work of its own, and I don't know if that's what was intended. It's incredibly sparse compared to the source, I really can't see someone becoming attached to the characters if this is their only exposure to the story. There's just so much there, and I don't know if the jumping-around style of narrative prose (focusing on one character, then rapidly shifting to another) works with the comic so well as it worked in the text.
So basically I can't decide if it's good or not. I think it's good, but I don't know what someone unfamiliar with the source would make of it. I like it. I hope it gets more people to read the book.
(The art, incidentally, is fabulous. I have absolutely no complaints about the visual elements. Many of the settings and characters are very close to what I saw in my head the first time I read The Stand, especially the astonishing portrayal of Flagg. Mike Perkins has totally knocked it out of the park and I'm going to pick up some of his other work.)