In 2006, multi-award winning author Cormac McCarthy released his novel The Road. The harrowingly bleak tale of a father and son trying to survive a blighted post apocalyptic hellscape drew both critical and commercial success – among which its author (who died age 89 in June 2023) received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2007. Earlier this year The New York Times named it one of the ‘Best Books of the 21st Century’. In 2009 a movie adaptation directed by John Hillcoat and starring Viggo Mortensen was released but – surprisingly – it has taken almost two decades for The Road to be translated to the comics page. Until now – as French creator Manu Larcenet‘s graphic novel adaptationpublished by Abrams, hits bookstores this week.
Manu Larcenet might be lesser known outside France but a number of his works have been made available digitally in English via Europe Comics. Born in 1969, the artist established the early part of his career in the mid ’90s through cartoons in French monthly humor magazine glacial fluid after which many notable Franco-Belgian publishing houses and publications came a-calling – with Larcenet finding a regular creative home at Dargaud. Not keen on being pigeon-holed, he was also producing serious, intimate work. While largely relying on a cartoon style, Larcenet has also stretched his artistic muscles on intense mood pieces that include the four-part Blast series (2010-2014) and first literary adaptation Brodeck’s Report [Brodeck’s Report] (Dargaud, 2015-2016), based on the Philippe Claudel novel of the same name. Both showed their ability to mine darker, bleaker depths.
The Road however it is another challenge. A tough novel at the best of times, Larcenet was keen to adapt it. Interestingly – in order to stay as faithful as possible to the book – the dialogue is entirely lifted from the original novel with Larcenet focusing entirely on the visual narrative and mood to push the story forward.
Ahead of the title’s release on September 17 the Beat’s Dean Simons had a chat with the artist about the adaptation process, getting the go-ahead, and more…
DEAN SIMONS: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is a very challenging novel – both in terms of language but also theme – what about the text made you want to adapt it?
MANU LARCENET: I was immediately enthralled by the atmosphere it creates. Most likely because I enjoy drawing the snow, the chilling winds, the dark clouds, the sizzling rain, snags, rust, and damps. I drew violence or kindness, wild animals, dirty skin, pits, and stagnant water. I enjoy the contrast between the characters and their environment.
I was also very sensitive to slowness and the absence of Hollywood-style action scenes. There is no classic narrative arc but rather a succession of scenes, sometimes very contemplative.
DS: Was there a lot of negotiation with McCarthy, did he require much convincing? Was he involved in the graphic novel prior to his death in 2023?
ML: To present my project of adaptation we got in touch with McCarthy through his agents. We presented some of my previous works and especially Blast [released in English with Europe Comics] and an adaptation of another successful novel, The Brodeck Report [by Philippe Claudel].
I guess that it convinced him but it was obviously based on my future work that I thought we were going to have a dialogue. Unfortunately, this has not been possible; he died and he only saw half of the album before we could communicate.
I was only told that he was both happy and impressed by it.
Which is both too little and a lot.
It so happens that I had complete freedom. Today I like to think that it was the way McCarthy wanted and I believe that he would have been happy with the result.
DS: I believe this is your first adaptation of a novel to comics form – how different did you find working on it compared to your prior creative work?
ML: I had spent 5 years working on a very personal and demanding project (Group Therapy3 volumes). I needed to get away somehow from myself and to enter someone else’s universe.
But it was not my first adaptation. I had already adapted Brodeck’s Report almost 10 years ago. It’s a very successful novel from Philippe Claudel. And in addition to being successful it’s a very dark novel, full of snow, cold and silences…
(Maybe there is a pattern? 😉)
DS: You’re an artist of many different styles. How did you decide which visual direction to take the project? Did it require a lot of trial and error?
ML: The graphic style was imposed from the start, that of a classic drawing far from caricature. I knew that immediately and if any, my inspiration could have come from Gustave Doré.
DS: One interesting feature in your adaptation is you forewent sound effects and captions – with the dialogue directly lifted from the novel. Can you explain why you went this route and if it presented an extra challenge?
ML: I decided that sticking to the dialogue only was the best way to be faithful to the novel. There was no point to rewrite and simply add images. I wanted to get as close as possible to the characters, to recreate the atmosphere imagined by McCarthy.
Obviously it was a challenge creating a graphic novel from a novel of little action and very few words. When McCarthy describes a landscape in 12 lines it may sometimes take me three pages to render it.
So I needed the readers to go through my drawings as if it were text. I wanted them to read my drawings and I felt I would be able to draw the silences of the novel.
DS: Your use of color is very interesting, largely working in muted hues that occasionally change or starkly shift. Where did that idea come from? Did you consider not using color at all?
ML: I had also made the resolute choice of black and white, but it turned out to be very violent, too binary, radical. I then remembered my classes when I was an art school student and my discovery of colored grays. A way to soften the drawing without denaturing it, a very sparing use of color. I am my own colorist and I think I used 14 shades of gray (!) and readers tell me that I owe some of the most beautiful pages of the album to these colored grays.
DS: The original novel and your own pages are incredibly bleak. Was it a mental challenge to work on? How did you personally manage it?
ML: During two years I spent most of my days and some of my nights reading and reading again The Roadimmersed in McCarthy’s world and words. Of course living in such a universe has been demanding and somehow depressing. And I sometimes suffocated in that coldness and got lost in the dark universe I had recreated.
DS: You have made a stunning book, every page is arresting. How much of it was made on physical media, and what materials did you use? Was there a lot of digital work?
ML: Thank you for those kind words. They mean a lot, that my goal has been achieved.
Apart from one or two sketches drawn directly on my [sketch-] book, everything has been drawn on my graphics tablet. I stopped using paper 10 years ago and this album is the result of the use of digital tools.
It is not simpler, not faster than traditional drawing but it allows me to have no boundaries in my creation.
Drawing is my life and my tablet is nothing but a tool.
And I can still use a pen.
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, by Manu Larcenet will be available from all bookstores Tuesday September 17
