The Road to Perdition [Paperback]

I was dead wrong.

Aside from the lovely illustrations, reading this three-hundred page brick after the movie was boring and excruciating. The writer gives a ten page autobiography before the graphic novel, about one page of which has anything to do with Road to Perdition. Unfortunately, it was probably the most interesting part of the book. The actual comic has flat characters and the boy is horribly irritating (A little trivia: this guy wrote for Batman comics for a while and his version of Robin was so aggravating that readers voted to kill him off!). This feels just like a kid's comic book and lacks the seriousness and tragedy of the movie. Rooney--who is named Looney in the comic--has no sympathy for Sullivan and seems to pretty much be a stereotypical villain in the original. Some of the best scenes in the movie aren't here--they changed a lot for the movie and I honestly can't blame them.

The movie is one of my favorites ever. I was terribly disappointed by this trash. Maybe you'll like it more if you are a history buff, because some of our hero's antics tie into historical events and famous faces. If you haven't seen the movie yet, maybe you'll like the graphic novel.

But if you have seen the movie, save your money.

But perhaps the work he is best known for, and the work that stands out as the most meaningful, is a graphic novel he produced in 1998 with Richard Piers Rayner entitled Road to Perdition. Set during the Great Depression and based in historical fact, it is the story of gangster Michael O'Sullivan, better known as the "Angel of Death." While O'Sullivan is out on a hit one day, his son secretly tags along and witnesses the murder. From there both Michael and his son must go on the run from mob boss John Looney, who wants to make sure the boy never gets a chance to tell people what he knows.

Now if you've never heard of Road to Perdition before, you must not get out much, because a year ago it was turned into a film by the director of American Beauty, Sam Mendes. It was the last film that the great cinematographer Conrad L. Hall worked on before he passed away. Released by Spielberg's production company Dreamworks. Starred Tom Hanks and Paul Newman.

That so many brilliant people read this graphic novel and saw some spark in it worth devoting their time to adapting it into a film should be recommendation enough. The film itself does an adequate job of capturing some of that spark, but of course it could never really do the book justice.

There are several brilliant themes at work in the graphic novel, some of which carry over into the film but others of which do not. The key relationship in both the film and the novel is that between Michael and his son, and both works spend a great deal of time exploring the nature of the father/son dynamic. We watch these two bond while on the road, actions juxtaposed with John Looney's protection of his own son Connor. But the film centers on this theme at the expense of all others, leaving concepts in the novel such as the theme of loyalty and betrayal and the differences between revenge and retribution relatively unexplored.

Religion and ethnicity also play major roles in the novel, but both elements of the story are somehow lost in the translation. Their background as Irish immigrants plays a large part in shaping who they are, for it paints them as outsiders who have nowhere else to turn but to each other. The novel also characterizes the "Angel of Death" as both devout Catholic and cold-blooded killer, and through the son's narration, we are able to explore where the line between good and evil should be drawn.

And by cold-blooded killer, I do mean exactly that. The novel's violence, toned down for the film to protect Hanks' image, is graphic in every sense of the word. Road to Perdition is a bloody work with a very high body count, but at the same time it is beautiful. Collins has stated that the films of John Woo were an influence on some of the action sequences, and you can see how well the novel recreated the cinematic qualities of Woo's gun battles, how he is able to make flying bullets seem like a ballet.

In the months since the film's release, I have loaned Road to Perdition out to various people and everyone who read it, including non-comics readers, found it incredibly gripping, a real page turner. My own father, who usually is very reluctant to read, couldn't put it down. It is a very good tool for convincing people that comics aren't just kid's stuff, since it deals with both mature situations and mature themes. In fact, I taught it in a class I recently offered on comics. Not only did it lend itself very easily to discussion, it was also the one book that almost all of my students chose to keep at the end of the semester, rather than try to sell back to the bookstore. And if that's not a high enough recommendation, then I don't know what is.

One of his largest inspirations for the story was the Japanese comic "Lone Wolf and Cub." This influence shows, since the story has a predictable, almost ritual aspect to it, like kabuki. Very little that happens in the book will surprise readers. Hong Kong action movies also influenced the story, so a number of the gunfights resemble John Woo movies.

The art in the book is both great and aggravating. The artist, Richard Rayner, used photographs extensively, creating a remarkable look to the backgrounds. Also, characters based on public figures, like Capone, look very accurate.

However, he did something which drove me to distraction: he changed character models mid-story. The main character, Michael O'Sullivan, was based on a single face at first. He was easily recognizable.

But he has Kirk Douglas's face on page 127. On page 135, his face was taken from Daniel Day-Lewis. On page 205, he's Humphrey Bogart. Worse, these resemblances are very strong. Considering that those three men don't look alike, one can imagine the confusion. The realism of the art makes this morphing of features very distracting. O'Sullivan's face changes pull the reader out of the story. This happens to other characters as well. Sometimes I had to guess who a character was by context.

Strange as it sounds, I think Rayner would have been much better off making his character faces a bit more abstract, making it easier to keep them consistent.

Still and all, it's not a terrible book. The art is very good, though unstable, and the story is serviceable, though it's a rote revenge story. The best part of the book is its approach to comic storytelling. It's a true "graphic novel," not a collection of comic books thrown together. I enjoyed the attempt, even if the material didn't break much new ground. If you like revenge stories or want to read a decent graphic novel, go to it.