Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (Graphic Novel) by Steve Niles, Elman Brown Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (Graphic Novel)
Book Review: This is a must read.
Summary: 5 Stars
I don't care if you don't like Sci-fi or horror this is a book that anyone would love.Book Review: good stuff
Summary: 3 Stars
for whom has not read the book and wants to understand why R. Matheson is a genius. Buy all his books soonest.Book Review: Very good
Summary: 4 Stars
This graphic novel was very well-written. It captures the spirit of Matheson's original work unlike any of the movies have been able to do. I gave it four stars instead of five because there are certain things I didn't like but everyone has an opinion. In mine, I think that it was a little bit too narative for a graphic novel even though there was a lot of source material to work with. If you're a fan of Matheson or Steve Niles, I suggest checking this one out.Book Review: Tragic story about lonliness
Summary: 3 Stars
On the surface, this story is a survival horror book about vampires. But if you peel back the layers, it is really about the a human's natural instincts. The will to survive, the fear of being alone and to crave companionship, as well as the thirst for knowledge and understanding. These are the things that appealed to me about the protagonist Robert Neville. The fact that he seemed too real to me. A fact that I'm sure the author Richard Matheson strived for, and it shows.
The premise is a virus of somekind has spread throughout the world and Neville is the only living creature to be unaffected to his knowledge. The rest of society have become bloodsucking vampires. Neville lives his life by the routine of killing them during the day with wooden stakes while they sleep and then avoiding them at night in his vampire proof house. For being as resourceful and smart as Neville is, one major thing that bothered me was how long it took him to realize that sunlight kills the vampires. I just didn't buy that.
Being adapted from a novel, there is a LOT of text. The illustrations are a nice touch, but not always necessary. Sometimes I wondered how much had been but out from the original to make room for the visuals. It could have used some color but that's not really a complaint.
There's really not an amazing story here. In fact, I wished it had been longer because by the end, I wanted more. It seemed like it ended too abruptly and without exploring the world around him enough. There are some genuienly heart wrenching moments and I was hoping for more of those, but then it just ends, seemingly without closure, but you'll just have to decide for yourself.
Book Review: Certainly worth checking out if you like the novel
Summary: 5 Stars
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.