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By Max Allan Collins, José Luis GarcÃa-López, Steve Lieber & Josef Rubinstein (Paradox Press/DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-4012-0357-4
Movies are good for something, it would appear. I often lament the appalling attitude we have in our industry that for a comic to have any worth it needs to be made into a film. The truly sad thing is that this view is almost exclusively held by comic fans. They’ll judge a comic based flick by whether or not the director has “got†the comic, not whether it’s a good film or even a bad strip. Then they whine that Hollywood messes up all the details and that it’s not right.
If we treat comics as inferior to film we have no right to carp when film-makers try to “improve†them. It’s great when our corner of the world gets some real world exposure, but that surely means that we should be proud of what we love, not defensive. What we should be glad of is when the movie is as Good as the Comic, not the Same As, because then something like this happens.
When Road to Perdition was originally released, it was a desperate attempt not to lose money. Originally intended as a three part series, it was quickly cobbled together and rushed out as a single volume seconds before publisher Paradox (a creator friendly imprint of DC Comics) shut up shop. As is so often the case, quality comics only get noticed once they’re gone, and in this case it wasn’t even noticed by our own kind, but by a film guy instead. The resultant success of the movie led to a re-issuing of the graphic novel, which in turn led to On the Road.
This time we noticed. This book is a compilation of the resultant three prequels or perhaps ‘sidebars’. Oasis, Sanctuary, and Detour are set whilst the protagonists, assassin Michael O’Sullivan and his son, are roaming the American mid-West raiding mob banks and searching for the psychopath who killed their family, avoiding criminals, cops and even those charismatic bounty-hunters The Two Jacks.
Despite our knowing already how the dark saga will end, Collins and artists GarcÃa-López, Steve Lieber and Joe Rubinstein still craft tense, human stories about honour, responsibility and retribution that captivate and thrill, all neatly set into a grimly authentic setting we’re all so very familiar with. And without the magic of cinema, nobody would have given these talented people a chance to make such great comics.
Script © 2003, 2004 Max Allan Collins. Art © 2003, 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.