Review by Colin Credle

Manu Larcenet’s The Road is a first graphic novel adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s well known novel. McCarthy presents a post-apocalyptic bleak world, exploring the power of love, the importance of human connection, the perils of despair, the nature of good and evil and the value of faith, and this graphic novel has quite a pedigree. Larcenet spoke with McCarthy before he passed away in 2023. McCarthy approved of the initial panels presented to him and his estate approved of the book posthumously. Larcenet himself is a well-regarded French artist who in 2004 won the Angoulême International Comics Festival prize for best book for his sublime graphic novel Ordinary Victories.

In The Road, a nameless father and boy navigate their way south in a landscape saturated with ash, devoid of any food and barren of life. The few survivors who appear must be met with trepidation and preferably from afar. The wandering duo suffer from hunger while they desperately search for undiscovered cans of food. They run into bands of hostile cannibals, face illness and wrestle with remaining safely hidden or seeking help. The father remembers a world that no longer exists and is no longer pertinent to his son. He struggles to do everything in his power to make sure his son will survive.

In an online interview, Larcenet explained tackling the desolate landscape with fourteen shades of grey after realising black and white depictions were too violent and stark. He also explains how struck he was by the absence of Hollywood action, long silences and the slow pace of the journey. How does one draw silence?

Larcenet’s panels are detailed and excel at establishing an atmosphere of silence, dread and ash, making his adaptation a work worth appreciating on its own merits. It is loyal to the source material but manages to elevate it with imagery that flows through the languid noiselessness of a land barren of life and morality. The nameless father struggles with being relevant, with informing his son’s ability to survive and how to discern between the “good guys” and the “bad guys.” Having read McCarthy’s The Road or seen the film with Viggo Mortenson, Larcenet’s The Road is still worth the read. If it’s your first time, then the journey is unique and worth the time to contemplate.