#42 Twilight: The Graphic Novel: Vol 1 by Stephenie Meyer and Young Kim
It would be interesting to go back to the days when a book was just a book and nothing else. The twenty-first century goal appears to be to take a story and make it accessible to the maximum amount of people by presenting it on as many platforms as possible. Sure, there have been movie adaptations of books for a long time, and television series as well, but now the trend is to bring the story over to a comic/graphic format. The Twilight Saga is the latest series to jump onto this trend with the release of Twilight: A Graphic Novel. As one can tell from the title, Twilight: The Graphic Novel is a straight retelling of the first book in the Twilight Saga.
Unlike other paranormal titles that have recently made the jump to sequential art, Twilight is not presented in an American comic book style, but is clearly inspired by Japanese shoujo manga/Korean manhwa. This seems like an wise choice from a marketing standpoint, as plenty of teenage girls, Twilight's main fan group, are likely to already have jumped on the manga train. As a reader, it makes a lot of sense to me considering the Twilight Series often read like a text-only shoujo series, with it's over the top drama/romance, and emphasis on good looking guys. In this adaptation, Young Kim does a really good job with the artwork, which comes off as very flowing and romantic. The illustrations are presented in mostly black and white with the occasional splash of color to either assist with storytelling or enhance Bella's surroundings. The character designs are obviously not based off of their movie counterparts, and feel truer to their descriptions in the book than the movie cast.
Admittedly, it's been a long time since I've read the novel Twilight, but the graphic novel seems to do a solid job at adapting the story. While I was reading it, I couldn't help but compare it to the recent movie adaptations, which have been pretty faithful the source material, but ultimately lack the charm and magic of the novels. This is less of an issue here. There are a few pages that feel too dialogue heavy, but for the most part the story flows really well from page to page. The graphic novel reads impossibly fast, a little too fast if you ask me. Price at a hefty twenty dollars, the graphic novel only covers a portion of the actual novel, focusing on the early development of Bella and Edward's relationship, and ending soon after Edward's big reveal in the sunlight. I know that it takes a long time for the artist to adapt a work to this detailed style, but I couldn't help but wished that we had gotten to see the entire novel. Still, I can't really complain as I got this book off of paperbackswap, and technically didn't pay anything for it, but I can only imagine that may bother people who have paid full price.
The first volume of Twilight: The Graphic Novel is sure to appeal to fans of the Twilight Saga, and manga/manhwa inspired artwork. Obviously, they are planning on at least finishing up adapting the novel Twilight. If they chose to continue the series, I'm curious to see how Kim's pretty artwork will handle some of the more violent moments later in the series.
Rating: four stars
Length: 224 pages
Source: paperbackswap
Challenge: This book is 2010 Young Adult Reading Challenge
Similar Books: Hana Yori Dango. No, seriously. Both series deal with a young girl going to a new school an encountering an group of four elite teenagers who are wealthy and insanely good looking. The heroine both find themselves entangled romantically with a guy who is initially rude to her. Yes, there are no vampires, but there are plenty of parallels between the two series.
Other books I've read by this author: Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn, The Host ( my review)
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