At some point, telling an existing story from a periphery character's perspective got real popular. There's Mary Reilly, Wide Sargasso Sea, and The Wind Done Gone--I think those three are the most well-known novels--but comic book publishers have fallen in love with the storytelling method, since comic book adaptations of movies, which have been around a long time, tend to be truly awful. The comic book “side-quel” ostensibly offers an opportunity for artistic expression while still maintaining some strict boundaries. Of course, these comics tend to awful, just like all comics. The writer is of great importance and Jason Hall's a good writer, so I gave The Messengers a shot. It's a seven dollar comic book, so it was a little more than a shot, I guess. Like two and a half shots.
From page one, with the first-person narrative from the improbably well-read wandering farmer, I knew I was in trouble. Not just with the narration--though I certainly was expecting more from Hall, lame narration and comic books go hand in hand. There are plenty of decent comic books with lame first-person narration. The second signal flare was the character's visit to an antique shop. Now, either I didn't pick up it was an antique shop in an establishing shot or something, but I really got confused because it seemed like the story took place in the 1800s all of a sudden. Once I got oriented, while I was a little peeved about the confusion, I kept reading, waiting for something to happen....
Oh, I forgot--the character seemingly started with a mohawk and then grew more hair. Kelley Jones's art is real sloppy. Panel-to-panel continuity was apparently not requisite.
But nothing happens in The Messengers. There are some apparent crossover scenes with the movie, which are when there's some actual content, because the wandering farmer's story is boring. He doesn't do anything. He fights off crows and bad memories, waiting for the big reveal and the big reveal is utterly predictable. All horror movies are predictable if you've seen enough of them, but the experience of them is supposed to be worthwhile. This comic book has enough content, minus the tie-in scenes, for one page synopsis. If the Kelley Jones art is sloppy and boring when there's a couple characters doing something, it's worse when there's just the guy alone.
I presume the logic behind this adaptation was to get me to see the movie, but with that seven dollar price tag, there's my movie ticket money already.
