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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Steve Niles On Top!, March 30, 2004
Sadly, I have never had the opportunity to read Richard Matheson's "I Am Legend" Novels. So I have no grounds for comparison, rather I can only rate this book as it stands on its own (and theirs nothing wrong with that). I bought this book for a friends birthday. She is a Steve Niles fan and picks up all his comics series (30 days of night, wake the dead, freaks of the heartland) as they come out. So naturally, this was a good choice. I was never a Steve Niles myself, not that his work is bad or anything, its just I never got into the whole "vampire" thing. On top of that, those comics were often accompanied by artwork outside my tastes. I decided to give the book a try after my friend forced me to borrow it... I have to admit, it is one incredible book. Take this from a non-vampire fan. This book is presented in graphic novel format. Don't mistake it for a comic book. Though there are the occasional word bubbles, this is primarily presented with novel style paragraphs to pictures, which I might add are gorgeously rendered. Before Even getting 1/3 of the way through the book I had become overwhelemed with curiosity and fear. Often I would find my heart racing and my adrenaline up, something i should say never happens when i read. The images only help the moody atmosphere. Despite any inconsistancies it may have with its source story, this book is excelent. I place it amungst the greatest of graphic novels such as Blankets, Yossel, Maus, etc. (keep in mind it is nothing like them). Give this book a try, you might LOVE it!
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Read the book instead, January 10, 2008
This review is from: Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (Graphic Novel) (Paperback)
The graphic novel is almost a word-for-word match of the book. Passages like "he turned left into the small hallway" gets one panel and drawing, then "and left again into his bedroom" get another panel and drawing. That works in a book, but it is pointless in a graphic novel. And the corresponding illustration shows a dark figure in a dark hallway, with no detail and no imagination. The authors took nearly every sentence in the book and made a corresponding illustration, even if it added nothing. This makes the graphic novel actually longer than the book (240 pages for the graphic novel, 170 pages for the book). It was really boring, and I found I could read the book in less time, and got more out of it.
The drawings are gritty and dark, but not to convey style or atmosphere: It was to hide the fact that no imagination went into it. If the book said the street was dark, the illustrator drew only darkness - no buildings or streetlights or windows or sky or cars... just darkness. I'm impressed that they remained so faithful to the book, but it defeats the purpose of a graphic novel. Stick figures could have conveyed just as much expression.
Lastly, for those who are looking at this to gain insight into the movie: This is a vastly different story. There's no hidden explanations or back-stories or secret musings that would make you understand the movie better.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Certainly worth checking out if you like the novel, May 27, 2006
Not too much to say here.
As others have mentioned, this is perhaps more of an illustrated novel than a comic book, as it frequently has very long blocks of text to go with only a few panels. Perhaps even more significant, all of the actual language, or at the very least almost all of it, is lifted directly from the novel. Stuff is cut out, of course, but nothing is added in, as far as I can tell. Needless to say, this makes it incredibly faithful to the source material, and though it is sometimes condensed somewhat, nothing at all is really cut out. This can cause some concerns, as parts of the book just don't take to being shown this way, particularly the portions regarding Neville's research. Again, as others have mentioned, much of this amounts to little more than him sitting around and thinking or looking through a microscope, which naturally means that there isn't all that much to look at. On the other hand, most of the novel *does* take well to this format, and the artwork itself is generally excellent. Actually, I'm not in love with how the actual humans look, but the vampiries look terrific, and they matter more anyway. Furthermore, Matheson's sort of flatly, simply poetic language is generally very well suited for this sort of format, and they have wisely kept in almost all of the best lines.
Anyway, this is an very interesting adaptation, and any fan of the novel ought to check this out if they have any interest in comics at all. It's certainly not necessary for you to have read the novel to get this as it is, again, pretty much all here, but I figure that anyone who's actually looking at this has almost certainly read the novel, so that's who I need to address.
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