Have You Read This? Joe Hill: The Graphic Novel Collection

The book vs. movie debate has been around since Hollywood has been adapting books into movies (and it will likely continue as Hollywood is keen to produce anything with a built-in audience). Some may argue that movies, a visual medium, typically ignore parts of the book that made it great, but this could be due to anything from budget constraints to parts of the book not translating well to the visual medium (I’m looking at you, Ritual of Chud from IT). However, there were no doubt people who complained about plots in the Harry Potter series that the movies ignored despite seeing basilisk fight and house elves come to life on the big screen. Both movie and book can have their individual strengths and weaknesses, in other words, and the same can be said for stories adapted to a graphic novel format. Joe Hill's new Graphic Novel Collection is a great example of this.

Two stories from the collection particularly illustrate (no pun, intended. I swear) the differences between visual and verbal storytelling. “The Cape” is based on a story from Joe Hill’s collection 20th Century Ghosts. The story deals with a young man still living in his mom’s basement who discovers the cape he once wore to play superhero actually contains some magic. The comic, and its follow-up/prequel, “The Cape: 1969” give a deeper look into the protagonist’s motivations, which often takes away from a short story’s original power, but both tales still manage to tell a focused yet heartfelt narrative about resentment, love, and familial bonds and how they somehow manage to coexist in a familial dynamic. “Thumbprint” is still a story about torture and the trauma inflicted on both the person giving and receiving it, but there’s an odd sort of redemption in the graphic novel version and would make a great comparison with the short story in Hill’s latest collection Full Throttle. The collection also features “Kodiak,” a story about a bear that feels like a collaboration between Chaucer and Joe Lansdale, and The Wraith, which takes readers back to Charlie Manx’s Christmasland, first seen in N0S4A2.

Those familiar with the series Locke & Key will see that Hill is a master of the medium, even surpassing the skills of his famous dad, Stephen King, in that medium. It’s therefore always a treat to see Hill’s tales brought to life in comic panels where artwork by Nelson Daniel and Zach Howard, among others, perfectly complement Hill’s unrestrained imagination. This book is perfect for the Joe Hill completist or those that like a good scary and graphic story.