The Stand: Captain Trips

Ripped from the headlines or faithful graphic adaptation of a 31 year old novel?

As the rather scary news of the possibility of a swine flu outbreak swept the world this weekend, I decided to sit down and read a comic book... of course, the comic book I read ended up being a bit more frightening due to that news. The Stand: Captain Trips is the first volume of a comic book retelling of Stephen King’s 1978 novel (expanded in a “Complete and Uncut Edition” in 1990) about the world after a terrible plague. Adapted by Robert Aguirre-Sacasa with art by Mike Perkins and coloring by Laura Martin, The Stand: Captain Trips is a remarkable and scary book.

The Stand has always been my favorite Stephen King novel (The Gunslinger being a close runner-up) and seeing the story adapted into a different format (i.e. the 1994 miniseries) is something I approach with both excitement and trepidation. I ended up enjoying the movie enough to own a copy on DVD, but there are some, and not always small, things that bug the crap out of me about it as well. I am happy to say that this graphic adaptation is better than movie in every way. The story is faithful, the art is gorgeous, and the sense of fear and amazement I have when reading the novel is present here.

Captain Trips, being the first volume of five, tells the story of the outbreak of a disease which kills 99.4% of those it comes in contact with. Where the disease, called “Captain Trips”, comes from and how it spreads makes the start of the novel compelling reading - here in the comic book, the adaptation of the spread of the superflu is well executed... there are a couple sections where the disease moves from person to person, and area to area, in a panel to panel storytelling format, excellently representing portions of the beginning of the tale Stephen King wrote so well. As this is only the first of five volumes (the monthly comics which will make up the second volume, American Nightmares, have only just begun coming out - the whole adaptation is expected to be made up of 30 issues and collected into five books), I cannot comment on how well the whole story will be represented, but feel the beginning of this graphic adaptation is a truly exciting way to revisit a story I know rather well from multiple readings of the book.

I think that for anyone who has not read the novel, Captain Trips provides an adequate beginning, giving you the main points of the story without requiring the time investment needed to read Stephen King’s 1000+ page novel - which is something of a shame, as many who read this will then not read the book (which, I suppose, is a whole other issue concerning how an adaptation of any kind plays a role in the readership of the source material - certainly movies and comics adapted from books increases the original’s sales, but then knowing the story before reading a book takes a whole lot of the experience away from the reader - yes, I HATE spoilers). Personally, knowing the story already does a lot to fill in the between-panel happenings of the story - while we get the main points from the comic, a lot occurs which cannot be shown for various reasons (the space and pace of a comic being the biggest two), and knowing a more in-depth back-story of the characters introduced in this volume provides a much more fulfilling experience. So I'd suggest, if you enjoy this first volume, read the book before you read the following volumes.

And as an almost unrelated aside - here’s hoping we never see an outbreak of a disease anywhere near as horrifying as Captain Trips... the recent news of the world can probably get anyone a bit paranoid - I believe the idea of a deadly pandemic is much better when read about in novels and comic books than it would be in the daily news.

Mentioned in a previous post, the hardcover of Captain Trips is available only through comic book stores, so get out to your local comic shop and buy a copy, it is worth every penny.