Apostrophe S

I picked up this graphic novel months ago and it got buried beneath a pile of other unread magazines, comics and graphic novels. Finally I got through the stack and picked this one up and read it in two sessions.

I was excited about the release of the film version of this story from the moment I’d heard about it. What’s not to like? Sci-fi? Rachel Weisz? Stunning visuals and music always present in an Aronofsky’s picture? But then I read about how the production was going south. Brad Pitt decided it was beneath him or something and the studio decided to shut down the production. It looked like the end of a very promising project. But then Aronofsky took the story to Vertigo comics and they reinterpreted the story as a graphic novel with haunting paintings by a fellow named Kent Williams.

But then what? Aronofsky decided to rewrite the script into something he could make on a shoestring (by Hollywood standards, anyway) budget and hire actors who were willing to do the project for not a lot of money. The result was an extraordinary film and an extraordinary graphic novel, both born from the same seed story but developed in different ways. The back of the book declares it to be “the ultimate ‘director’s cut.” And it really feels like it at times. At other times it feels like the shooting storyboards for the film that eventually was made. In any case, both the film and the novel are worth the hour or two it takes to get through them.

This book is part of the Open Books project I’m working on.