Review by C.J. Bunce
Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road sees a hardcover graphic novel adaptation arriving next month (available for pre-order now here at Amazon) from Abrams ComicArts, which has brought us several great graphic novels. The 2006 novel by the late writer got international acclaim, yet it is a decidedly befuddling story that does very little for the post-apocalypse subset of the dystopian genre, an over-wrought retread of the writings of a century of great science fiction writers who did the same before–and did it better. If you’re drawn to the dark, dismal original about a father and son in a hopeless, godless, post-apocalypse where nothing ever really happens, it’s French artist Manu Larcenet’s style that will carry you through to the end. Like Snowpiercer, you can attempt to find your own meaning in the story–the graphic novel is certainly less of a commitment than the novel–but this one is for fans of the original and completists of the genre that may also serve as a gateway to better works in the genre.
Mainstream audiences often miss the mark when a book is propelled or noticed by the right individual at the right time. A writer of plain vanilla drama steps over into the science fiction, fantasy, mystery, or horror genres and suddenly the masses who don’t think to try decades or a century of genre works see it as something that hasn’t been done before. It’s a flaw of our era. A story that will draw yawns from regular fans of the genre drowns out seminal works that have long defined it. Full of showing instead of telling, the plot of The Road is frustratingly thin, not cleverly crafted, and the dialogue is awkward and without true literary merit–despite whatever accolades mainstream figureheads have affixed to it.
But post-apocalyptic science fiction has been around as long as science fiction, like H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, and probably even earlier. Scenes in The Road are pulled from Wells’ work, and alert readers can also find it’s all been done before via others’ contributions to the genre. Just look at Charlie Fletcher’s A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World, David Brin’s The Postman, and Walter M. Miller, Jr’s A Canticle for Leibowitz. There’s also Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend and of course George Miller’s Mad Max movies, Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys, and more recently the brilliant Station 11 and The Last of Us HBO Max drama series. We could also get into cautionary tales like The Terminator and Planet of the Apes, but those lean more on other science fiction subsets than we need to tie in here. The Road isn’t a cautionary tale–it’s a depiction of the last days of man after an unnamed, unknown apocalypse. Two people forge ahead… until they don’t. McCarthy’s story offers nothing novel, nothing we haven’t seen before, and it doesn’t approach any of the foregoing with respect to gravity, drama, or entertainment value.
The shock point of the story occurs when the pair come upon a baby on a roasting spit, a scene I had to go back to because Larcenet’s art on that particular panel was hard to discern compared to his work in the rest of the graphic novel. Only later dialogue clarifies what is going on. The artist gets his share of dead bodies to draw, apparently eaten by humans left with no food or technology. It’s full of unexplained bleakness, fueled from some kind of paranoia. And hope is gone. The ending clarifies nothing–it is abrupt and dumbfounding.
For certain Larcenet’s adaptation is a solid visual interpretation of the novel. But like the dead baby scene some of his panels are difficult to decipher. Maybe that is intentional? One quirk of the choice in the lettering: for whatever reason every time a character utters the word “JUST” it looks like it says “OUST” and this happens a few times, which knocked me out of the narrative.
How can a story succeed when it gives no insight into what a character is thinking? This story relies on the reader to come up with his/her own story to fill in so many gaps. That shouldn’t be a reader’s job.
Again this one is for fans of the novel, and fans of modern French comic artists. If that’s you, add The Road: A Graphic Novel Adaptation to your pull list at Elite Comics now, or pre-order it here at Amazon. It’s scheduled for release September 17, 2024.
