I’m sure most of you have heard of Twilight. The book and film series is a remarkable success, driving women across the country absolutely mad and creating stratospheric stars out of writer Stephanie Meyer and actors Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner. Not only that, but it triggered a wave of vampire love and an odd romanticization of the once tried and true go-to horror villain.
When word came out that they were adapting the book series into a series of a graphic novels by Young Kim, comic purists lost their minds. They thought it was a blatant money grab (which it probably is) and likely to be creatively bankrupt (which we’ll get into). Yet I was okay with it, as pre-orders had already made it by far the most successful comic of the year and my selfish hope was that the buzz and new readers from the series could lead to a new and untapped audience for comics: teenage girls.
While it’s not likely that many of these readers immediately started pull boxes, even if a small percentage of them did it’d be a win for the industry. My defense of the book also earned me the unenviable position as reviewer of this graphic novel, and in many ways I’m perfect. I’ve never read the books, I’ve never seen the movies, and I’m fairly certain I’m on no one’s team. Click after the jump to see where I stand on this hated before release title.
“I love Twilight: The Graphic Novel. It’s simply beautiful. Working with Young was always very exciting, but more than that, it brought me back to my first Twilight experience. She would send me a new set of drawings, some portrait of Edward or Bella would jump off the page and suddenly I would be feeling all the same things I felt that first summer I was writing their story. The art made it fresh again. I hope everyone has the same experience with it.
– Stephanie Meyer”
Thus begins my journey into the world of life, love, and sparkly vampires.
Stephanie Meyer was credited for the story and “meticulously reviewed” each and every panel, while art and adaptation duties fell on Korean artist Young Kim. As a person who had never read the books or seen the movies, I can address this title as a standalone book which thrives or dies entirely based off its own merits.
And die it does.
I’ll start with what works. Kim’s art is actually fairly solid. She has a real grasp on the look of these characters and does a fine job of creating the world of Forks, Washington. Her decision to portray this world in black and white with only occasional flourishes of color was another solid one, as it makes the moments of color all the more well done. The graphic novel is thankfully only 224 pages, and the decision to trim the fat out of a story (I can’t even imagine what I missed) that is still too long and filled with far too much introspection is a very good one.
Basically, my take on this is that Kim is fighting a losing battle from the very beginning. It’s like taking Bill Belichick and making him the Head Coach of the Oakland Raiders. Sure, Belichick is a genius, but they are still the Raiders and they will still be pretty terrible.
And to be fair to Belichick, Young Kim is no genius. The latter third of the story is rife with storytelling gaffes from an artistic standpoint, frequently losing me as a reader as characters seem to weave in and out of scenes with inexplicable speed (I don’t care if Cullen is super powered).
One of the major negatives of the book is the fact that the story itself is an abomination. It is essentially a fairy tale romance told at hyper speed, as these two people fall in love roughly as quickly as I could expect to order a meal from McDonald’s. There is nothing Kim can do to fix this basic issue. The storytelling is all trite romantic bursts, introspective analysis of the situation by the inexplicably unsatisfied and one-dimensional Bella Swan, and varying degrees of mystery featuring one Mister Edward Cullen. With all things being equal, the story is flat and the characters themselves are the type you’d see in a high school creative writing class.
Once upon a time, I was thankful for a book like this finally getting tweens and teens to connect with a book if only because it means that they were reading. Now? Well, I just hope the masses moved onto something with a brain and perhaps some writing ability.
You would think that the fact that the both the story and the characters are abysmal would be the biggest negative…yet you would be wrong. As Chris Sims of Comics Alliance (aka The ISB) pointed out (you should read this), this creation features historically bad lettering.
Before I get into that, I wanted to share an anecdote from Multiversity’s recent Emerald City ComiCon experience. While waiting to talk to Matt Fraction, we came across Chew writer John Layman. He told us that he was just hanging out with Richard Starkings and talking lettering because he himself is a lettering enthusiast and Richard Starkings is…Richard Starkings. The dude is a lettering god. Anyways, we talked to Layman about how he and Starkings discussed how lettering can make or break a book, and by god, Twilight‘s lettering breaks this book like Bane broke Batman’s back.
As Sims pointed out, when you look at the credits of this book you find no letterer attached to the project. This makes perfect sense when you read the title, as no good letterer would ever let their name get mixed up in this mess. I’m a little surprised we didn’t see “Letterer: Alan Smithee” in the credits, as whoever came up with this shit show would likely try to get that as far away from their resume as humanly possible.
Let me describe it for you: it’s like Young Kim adapted the novel, created all of the pages of art, and they then handed the book off to some high schooler with photoshop. From there, the kid arbitrarily decides where the letter boxes go, makes an ultra big balloon (don’t worry, they make it transparent if it manages to cover up the action) and fills it with Times New Roman text. There was one panel in which it seemed as if the letterer had a random selection program and that, regardless of whether or not this placement made sense, that is where the balloon would be.
There are entire pages in which word balloons pop up for a conversation yet they have no people to connect it to, so you literally have no idea who is having the conversation or saying these things. Unless you’re very familiar with the book (and let’s face it, they’re counting on that), you’ll be confused.
The last thing I’ll say about the lettering is that if a book is good and it has bad lettering, it can ruin the experience. When the book is bad already, bad lettering can make it a nearly unparalleled bomb.
This lettering can’t even be properly encapsulated by the word “bad.”
Overall, this book is a pretty trainwreck, as Kim did a solid job on art and the packaging was well done. They knew going in that creating a high quality product was ultimately an unimportant factor in this equation and they proceeded thusly. A sales a sale, and the Twilight name is as good as gold. It’s just a shame because it makes me highly doubt that the industry itself will get any semblance of an uptick in readership from this vapid mess. It’s a shame really, but I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised.
Final Rating: 3.5 – Pass
