Reviews of graphic novels and comic book collections every Tuesday and Thursday.


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Playback Adapted by Ted Benoit and Francois Ayroles
It has often been said that the best trait of comics is the ability to adapt to just about any genre. Obviously the biggest success has been in superheroes, but there are fantastic comics in science fiction, biography, realism, non-fiction, fantasy, and mystery. At first blush, an unproduced noir screenplay by Raymond Chandler would seem to be great source material for a graphic novel. But while reading Playback (2006, Arcade Publishing, Amazon listing), all I could think of was how much better this would be as a novel or a movie.

I think a good graphic novel could be made out of the screenplay, but this isn't it. Not having read the source material, I'm not sure how accurate Ted Benoit was in the adaptation. I have read Chandler though and his tough, hard-boiled writing, while evident in many places here, would have spruced up the story. A novel would have filled in many of the gaps and added to the suspense and characterizations.

As a film, Francois Ayroles' static and often muddy art would have been clarified and made the story more dynamic. Perhaps the reproduction of the art wasn't done well, but it was much too dark. Also, because of the translation issues (the graphic novel was originally published in France), the world balloons are awkward as the new lettering leaves too much white space.

Fans of Chandler would do well to seek out the screenplay or his adaptation of it into a novel rather than seeking out this subpar graphic novel.

Playback 2 stars (out of 5)
posted by Sean McGurr at 8:00 AM