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I Am Legend (tpb) Posted 12 Sept 2007 Writer: Steve Niles Artist: Elman Brown Publisher: Idea and Design Works, LLC  4.60 out of 5 Stars Reviewed by J. W. DeBolt Jr.

IDW has re-released a softcover bound volume of the Niles/Brown adaptation of the seminal science fiction story I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. One can reasonably argue that this is a horror story or a vampire story or a zombie-ish story, but it is really science fiction, and, categorizations aside, it is the story of one man’s struggle against the odds.

What makes this story so special is the avoidance of many of the clichés of similar storylines. It does not rely on the splattering of blood and guts of conventional horror, nor on the shock and surprise used to make people jump in their seats. The tension comes from the main character’s, Neville’s, everyday life: “First, he separated the bulbs into small, sickle-shaped cloves. Then he cut each pink, leathery clove in half, exposing the fleshy center buds. The air thickened with the musky, pungent odor. When it got too oppressive, he snapped on the air-conditioning unit and suction drew away the worst of it.” The palpable nature of Neville’s work imprints upon the reader the permanence of Neville’s new set of circumstances.

Sometimes the atmosphere of horror seeps through best when the writer takes the reader through the tiniest details of observation. As a contrast to the obvious horrors in the story, the mundane details bring the reader to a familiar level of experiential reality, helping to suspend the disbelief of the horror to come and to provide the contrast that enables the horror to shock the reader that much more. Oftentimes in a suspense story, a period of “normal” activity is the precursor to a shock. This is painfully obvious in television shows and films; for instance, in a soap opera it is rare that a scene with people in a moving car, whether they are talking, fighting or thinking, will not end up in a crash. If a person walks through a dark house with nothing else happening but background music for a certain length of time, then you know a zombie is about to crash his hand through the window or some such surprise is imminent. And on most other shows, if nothing really happens for about 30 seconds, you’ll get a surprise.

I Am Legend doesn’t do that, though. The horror is in the everyday life, the pointlessness, the relentless continuation, the uncertainty of the near future and the near certainty of the coming end. Neville holds on to the normal out of habit; it’s the last thing that the last man has to hold on to. Even the sharpening of stakes and the killing of vampires during the day takes the place of employment. Raiding grocery stores takes the place of shopping. Replacing garlic and mirrors on the door and boards over windows is yard-work and home improvement. Neville even has to continue living by a schedule — he must always be home, locked safely from the night marauders, before dusk.

According to the author, Richard Matheson, the story “came about because, when I lived in New York, I watched Dracula, the old Lugosi Dracula, at a motion picture theater, and it just occurred to me that if one vampire was frightening, then a whole world of vampires would really be frightening.”

But, ironically, Neville “becomes an object of terror to them,” the opposite of the premise in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, according to Anatomy of Wonder, the best science fiction critical guide out there. “To them he was some terrible scourge they had never seen, a scourge even worse than the disease they had come to live with.”

While his life is constantly in the moment due to the harshness of survival mode, Neville does deal in retrospect at times, albeit sardonically: “Why, then, this unkind prejudice, this thoughtless bias? Why cannot the vampire live where he chooses? Why must he seek out hiding places where none can find him out? Why do you wish him destroyed? Ah, see, you have turned the poor guileless innocent into a haunted animal. He has no means of support, no measures for proper education, he has not the voting franchise. No wonder he is compelled to seek out a predatory nocturnal existence.” Neville is beginning to learn the horrible lesson that he will realize in the end — that a new society is forming, that the outcast and the conventional will switch places. He realizes not so much that the individual does not belong with the mob, but that the individual’s own mob is now gone and obsolete.

The end is perhaps too brief and not as self-reflective as the rest of the story. But it is a unique ending when compared to most of the other popular last-man-on-earth stories. Last-man stories perhaps began with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley’s The Last Man, in which an immune survivor defends himself against plague-infected people as civilization comes to an end. We’ve seen many stories on the same theme over time, such as Dr. Bloodmoney, by Philip K. Dick, which displays the perseverance of individual strength in conquering the baseness in us all. Perhaps we are drawn to them because of the inner loneliness many feel in life. Or, in knowing that in the end we truly only have ourselves, we look to these stories for hints on how to adapt and survive in that condition.

Besides being a last-man story, this is also a tale of survival of an individual versus mindless masses, as in the later derivative works Dawn of the Dead, Invaders from Mars, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The film 28 Days Later has a remarkably similar premise and has spawned a sequel, but it owes its existence to Night of the Living Dead, which undoubtedly springs from I Am Legend.

Twenty-three editions of this book have come out, including five audio versions. Yet this addition to the canon by Steve Niles (30 Days of Night) and Elman Brown (The Punisher) certainly deserves its moment in the sun. Niles takes as much of the text verbatim from the original as possible, giving it authenticity. Brown’s pencils are real, pedestrian in the best sense in that it brings the everyday horror of Neville’s life to the fore. This is no fantasy; you get the impression it is all too real. The faces and physiques are lifelike and not idealized as you would see them represented in other graphic adaptations, including films.

And, speaking of the devil, I must mention the film adaptations that have been and are being made. As for the first two, The Last Man on Earth and The Omega Man, Anatomy of Wonder points out that “the metaphysical and psychological implications of the novel are lost in the two film translations of the story”, and the new film coming out will likely suffer the same fate. For Hollywood, “visual horror has become equated with grossness.” An inner struggle is not easy to display without imagination.

I watched a trailer for the new film I Am Legend and I already know it will share little in common with the story other than the title and the premise, though I do respect them for using “I Am Legend” instead of dumbing it down to “The Last Man on Earth” or “The Omega Man,” and this may direct more people to the book. But right off we see the main character walking with a dog and I can see the Hollywood producers saying, “He had a dog in the book; OK, give him a dog,” which totally ignores the dog section of the story — perhaps the best sequence in the book — the pathos, the long and frustrating period of trying to earn the dog’s trust, the balancing act of hopefulness and hopelessness. Hollywood can’t be that nuanced. I say, read this book and forget about the film and you will experience the plenitude of the story.

 

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