Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 1: The Graphic Novel
Art by Atilla Futaki
Color by Jose Villarrubia

The kids and I read the first Percy Jackson novel, The Lighting Thief by Rick Riordan, about 8 months ago, though it seems a lot longer than that. We’ve since tried The Sea of Monsters and The Titan’s Curse but have given up on reading the rest. The books are entertaining enough, I suppose, but too comic-booky and mythological for our tastes.

“Too comic booky” should have clued me into what I was getting into with this graphic novel, but hey—I found it at a thrift store, I was curious to see how artists might reimagine the story, and so I figured it was worth a shot. It’s comic-book nature stands out too much for me though, what with the flashy gods, the sound effects, the crazy colors and fantastic scenes. Too much noise for my taste.

The flaws to any graphic novelization of a lengthier novel are the same flaws you’d find in a film adaptation.

• The story’s been condensed, meaning it’s missing some major scenes you really looked forward to seeing.
• It’s not totally what you pictured in your head as you read the book, so the looks of characters and scenes sometimes feel out of place.
• It’s also necessarily been adapted to fit the medium, so the new medium plays differently with the book’s elements that you get while readings—light/dark themes, extended fight scenes, shortened dialogue, etc.

Normally I’m ok with adaptations, but the ending in this graphic novel was different enough from the book’s ending that I noticed it and didn’t like it. This graphic novel ignores the Gabe scenes and adjusts the Luke scenes (to fit plot points in later books), and I just wasn’t a fan of the renditions. I also didn’t like that the characters’ “dialogue” was also stilted to fit the role of a narrator, making their words completely unnatural and unlike you’d see in the book. I don’t usually enjoy so much text in my graphic novels, but more blocks of narration and less adjusted speech would actually have been preferable in this case.

Reading novels allows your own brain the be the artist, so when it comes to graphic novelizations of books I’ve read before, I guess I’m growing to appreciate the minimalist approach. Monochromatic or black-white-and-grays, and just a step or two above stick-figures. Artists like Peter Kuper (Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness), John Hendrix (The Faithful Spy), and Guy Delisle sort of fit into this mold. If not this cartoonish black-and-white approach, then I think I’d next prefer the over-the-top artistic approach—again like Peter Kuper in Ruins, in which case the artwork is a character itself. Comic books do all the thinking for me, and I don’t like it.

This comic-book version of The Lighting Thief also gave me a deeper sense of how dark the Percy Jackson really is. Riordan fits so many spots of humor into the novels (and even the chapter titles) that the darkness is sometime hard to see…but it’s definitely there.

Overall, this graphic-novelization reconfirmed for me that it’s good for us to stop reading the book series. It’s dark, morbid, and Godless—and it’s also just too over-the-top for our liking. There are much better, less flashy, and deeper books out there to enjoy.

©2024 E.T.