64. Stephen King's The Stand: Captain Trips

Captain Trips by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa. Art by Mike Perkins (Canada) - (US)
Stephen King's The Stand: Vol. 1


Pages: 160
Ages: 18+
Finished: Mar. 13, 2011
First Published: Jan. 5, 2010
Publisher: Marvel
Genre: graphic novel, post/apocalyptic, horror
Rating: 4/5


First sentence:

Sally. Wake up now, Sally.

Acquired: Borrowed a copy through Interlibrary Loan.

Reason for Reading: I re-read The Stand this year and heard about the comic adaptation, so of course wanted to check it out.

This is a very faithful adaptation of King's The Stand and I enjoyed it immensely. This first book covers the whole superflu leak. The government part of the story is taken care of pretty quickly, giving us enough information and background to know what happened but care has been taken to include the significant small things such as the man whose face is in the tomato soup. We meet most of our heroes in this volume and what they were doing at the time the flue, nicknamed Captain Trips, hit. We only meet one member of the dark side in this volume. We are introduced gently to the dreams of the cornfield as a couple of people have the visions and Randall Flagg is introduced here as well. We are given his background, what he knows of it, and we are in no doubt that he is the evil force.

I'm really pleased with how closely the story stayed to the book. Of course, things have been condensed. Whole situations have been summed up in a few scenes but the important plot points are there along with the small things that are important to character development. I really like how the characters have been portrayed as well. It's been a quick introduction in this volume so not all the characters have come into themselves yet, but so far I think Stu, Frannie and Randall have had the best characterization. All in all, well done. I'm really looking forward to continuing with the series but I'll take my time with it since it's only 4 volumes in so far.