When Joe Hill The Graphic Novel came to my door, I was jumping up and down because 1. I didn’t know there would be a graphic novel and 2. I love everything I read from Joe Hill so far (Locke & Key and NOS4A2).
The graphic novel is a compilation of Joe Hill’s most notorious stories that are transformed into short stories, easier for the readers to enjoy the art. Also a big applaud to the illustrators Nat Jones, Zach Howard, Vic Malhotra and Charles Paul Wilson III.
The Graphic Collection includes stories of ; The Cape, The Cape : 1969, Thumbprint, Kodiak and The Wraith. I’m not going to describe every story but here are the first two:
The Cape : A story about two brothers who play in the trees in the backyard until one of them falls off a tree and hurt himself pretty bad. After the incident, we move forward to a couple years later and see how they grow up, one to be a doctor graduated from Harvard and the other still being a cashier in a Pizzeria, but the mysterious cape from their childhood decides to show up in the most unexpected way in their lives.
The Cape 1969 : Without spoiling too much, we are at the center of the Vietnam War where an American Captain is being captured by one of the Viet Cong camps. After his capture, they threw a wizard in his cell and he discovers the mysterious ways of the Wizard. It’s also a sort of origin story of The Cape (the first short story).
The artwork is very precise and sometimes quite scary. Joe Hill deals with raw emotions and sometimes it is very uncomfortable watch the characters behave. It’s not an easy read but for the fans of Joe Hill, I would totally recommend it. As an introduction as well, I would suggest it but only for people who genuinely enjoyed some thriller and horror stories. Like I said, the illustrators did an amazing job in picturing the elements and sometimes they are not the.. most aesthetics, let’s put it that way.
RATING: 4/5
Thank you to Penguin Random House for sending me a copy for review!
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This might be a little too rough for my tastes. Thanks for sharing!
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Hahah no problem! 🙂 What’s your recent graphic novel read?
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A couple of years ago I read, ‘RatQueens’,
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Nice, this one’s new to me. I really enjoyed the audio presentation of Locke & Key done with a large cast. But I found I preferred the movie version of Horns over the book, and I almost always prefer the books. But Horns, the book, just felt too long for the story. I’d love to try NOS4A2 and Heart-Shaped Box. I think I may have ebooks of both.
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