To celebrate the 18th anniversary of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Abrams ComicArts has teamed up with French cartoonist Manu Larcenet to adapt the Pulitzer Prize-winning post-apocalyptic story into a new graphic novel—and wow is it a stunning work of art.
Like the acclaimed 2009 film adaptation, The Road: A Graphic Novel Adaptation captures the atmosphere of McCarthy's bleak wasteland is stunning detail. Larcenet uses immaculately detailed line work to turn this ugly world into something strangely beautiful, carefully smothering his fine inks beneath a grey and dusty haze. This visual feast creates the feeling that there really is an intricate world buried somewhere deep beneath the wreckage. It's technically a full-color book, but you'd be forgiven for thinking it was in black & white or sepia. I mean this in a good way; it's a deliberate and meticulous choice that serves as a clever complement to McCarthy's similarly deceptive prose.
The end result is a book that reminds me of the best parts of the early days of The Walking Dead—the creepily landscapes, and the silent sentiments shared between survivors—if it was made by Mœbius to win awards at the Angoulême International Comics Festival.
Maybe I'm a little biased, having read the entire thing in a single sitting on a bus ride with my 4-year old during a vicious thunderstorm. That atmosphere harmonized with the atmosphere in the book. But I think the artwork would still have a similar affect wherever you read it. Which you should definitely do.
The Road: A Graphic Novel Adaptation [Cormac McCarthy and Manu Larcenet / Abrams ComicArts]
Previously:
• Tonoharu: Excellent graphic novel about an English teacher in Japan
• 'I Am Stan' is a gripping graphic novel biography of the Marvel legend
• 'In' is a gorgeous graphic novel about trying to find genuine human connections
