Product Description
It all begins here: the epic apocalyptic battle between good and evil. On a secret army base in the Californian desert, something has gone horribly, terribly wrong. Something will send Charlie Campion, his wife and daughter fleeing in the middle of the night. Unfortunately for the Campion family, and the rest of America, they are unaware that all three of them are carrying a deadly cargo: a virus that will spread from person to person like wildfire, triggering a massive wave of disease and death, prefacing humanity’s last stand. Collects The Stand: Captain Trips #1-5…. More >>
Stephen King’s The Stand Vol. 1: Captain Trips
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After the success of the popular graphic novel series of Stephen King’s //The Dark Tower//, Marvel has decided to take on the epic story of Stephen King’s //The Stand//. For those not familiar with the story: a government-made lethal virus gets out of the lab after an accident that has the now-infected guard fleeing for the hills with his infected wife and kid. The virus spreads at an alarming rate and soon there’s only a select population left. These people have dreams of two people: Mother Abigail and Randall Flagg; they will have to choose whether they’ll be fighting on the side of good or evil. In true Marvel style, the artwork is stunning, combining elements of the TV mini-series, as well as incorporating exact scenes from the book; but Perkins also establishes his own style and look for //The Stand//. In //Captain Trips//, readers meet our main characters and see just how devastating this virus is, and to what extent the government will go to prevent panic and keep things quiet. A must for any King fan, and for anyone interested in //The Stand//.
Reviewed by Alex C. Telander
Rating: 5 / 5
I don’t want to be a pain in the arse here, but I get serious about great–classic–books, particularly those that you need to take down off of the shelf and read every year or two. The Stand by Stephen King is one of those. Marvel has begun a beautiful and respectful adaptation of The Stand, not breaking it up, but carefully sectioning the work into five issue arcs that, as you read them, draw you deeper and deeper into a dark world, our world, where an apocalyptic battle between the good and the very, very bad is about to take place. Marvel is not doing here what it’s been doing with King’s world of The Dark Tower–that is a broader, much different canvas, of which The Stand is actually a part. No; you don’t fool with The Stand. If reading the adaptation of The Dark Tower is like going to hear a hot jazz combo on ten straight nights riffing differently and brilliantly on the same set, reading the Marvel adaptation of The Stand is like going to hear your favorite rock band perform on a night when they’re on it in every conceivable way, playing all the songs you’ve come to know and love them by. They’re not doing a slavish note-by-note imitation — you could have stayed at home and listened to them on your iPod if that was what you wanted to hear — but they’re playing the songs with an energy and love that one associates with hearing them the first time through.
The collection of the first of these arcs, The Stand: Captain Trips, will send the blood rattling through your veins, as the boys in Spoon would say. The team of folks doing it–Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (Sensational Spider-Man, Marvel Knights, and Big Love) on scripting, Mike Perkins (Captain America)on art, and Martin (Ultimates 2, Astonishing X-Men) on inks — has been pitch and letter perfect from the beginning to end of each issue. Reading The Stand: Captain Trips is like a Classic Illustrated adaptation of a novel loving done by EC Comics (and there are those of you who know what a compliment that is). And indeed, it is a classic. When The Stand was first published in edited form in 1978, home computers were the stuff of science fiction. Cell phones were a decade away. The internet was in its infancy, its accessibility limited to a few. Cable television was new. The beta vs. VHS VCR wars were in full swing. And people knew AIDS only as a weight loss supplement, rather than as a disease which was beginning to attract uneasy attention from a handful of doctors in a very limited number of urban centers. So when I call The Stand a classic, I mean that it is as timeless and as timely today–right now–as if it was published yesterday, notwithstanding the thirty-odd years that have passed since the original novel first saw the light of day.
The story, for the uninitiated, begins when a very nasty designer viral strain, dubbed “Captain Trips” (a sideways tribute to Jerry Garcia) escapes from a secret government facility and spreads. When Charlie Campion and his family escape from the facility–or think that they escape–they are doing nothing more than postponing the inevitable and spreading death in their wake. From the moment that their automobile with its extremely ill passengers makes a final stop at Bill Hapscomb’s gas station in Texas, the fate of the nation is sealed. Since the virus is a secret, no one knows what they’re dealing with. Each person who gets it–and just about everyone gets it–thinks they have “the flu,” at least at first. The few who don’t, and who constitute a fractional rounding error off of ninety-nine percent, include Frannie Goldsmith, a young pregnant woman who is facing the birth of her unborn child on her own; Larry Underwood, a fledgling rock star unable to come to terms with the terms of his own success; Nick Andros, a young man with a hearing and speech impairment who lists compassion as among his few remaining assets; Stuart Redman, one of the first to be exposed at Hapscomb’s gas station, and who may hold the key to immunity; and Lloyd Henreid, a homicidal killer who awaits what would seem to be an inevitable justice. They are all, to varying degrees, haunted in their dreams by an enigmatic character named Randall Flagg, known by those he meets in the back alleys and the shuttered rooms of America as the Walkin’ Man or the Boogeyman. Flagg welcomes Captain Trips as a harbinger of his ascent to glory, even as he haunts the dreams of the survivors.
The Stand: Captain Trips adapts wonderfully to the sequential art media, primarily because the team in charge of this wild night’s ride approaches the work the way a groom should approach his bride: with love, respect, and, most importantly, unbridled passion. There is plenty of opportunity for shock and awe here, and Perkins and Martin are not above presenting some of the more gruesome scenes in all of their graphic glory. Yet, they are more than capable of wringing terror from the most ordinary scenes. Have you ever had your hair stand on end as you witness…a handshake? You will here.. Aguirre-Sacasa, for his part, brings his considerable cinematic narrative talents to the proceedings, infusing even the most benign passages with an atmosphere that hints and whispers that all is not well, even as he moves the narrative along at a perfect pace. And Perkins and Martin are in perfect synch with him, pulling back when appropriate, and getting up close and personal when necessary. And one note, here: I haven’t always been the biggest fan of Perkins’ work, but I am on this effort, where his lines mesh flawlessly with the storyline and with Martin’s dark, somber coloring.
The Stand: Captain Trips is an indispensable take on a much-loved work, a gutsy effort whose reach and grasp are as one. I cannot wait for more. This volume (as well as future ones, presumably) includes reproductions of the alternate covers of each issue, notes from creators, and other contributions to give the reader an over-the shoulder look at how the sequential art adaptation in their hands came into being. Such lagniappe notwithstanding, however, the meat of the book is the story itself, and what a rich, irresistible feast it is. Strongly recommended.
– Joe Hartlaub
Rating: 5 / 5