Cixin Liu's The Wandering Earth: A Graphic Novel Review
As part of the new series of graphic novels adaptations of award-winning Chinese sci-fi author Cixin Liu’s work, one of his best-known short stories, ‘The Wandering Earth’, has been adapted by Christophe Bec what can best be described as a beautiful book. The story has previously been adapted to film for Netflix and now there's another take in a graphic novel form which I think tops what Netflix did.
If you don't know the premise of the story, The Wandering Earth is set in the future where the Sun is about to die and so humanity embarks on an ambitious project to take Earth out of its solar orbit to try and get it into orbit of a new sun - Proxima Centauri, roughly 4.3 light-years away. The technological, geological and social impacts of the various stages of this project are explored within this story with the main character given just as much attention to the wider story to build a nice balance between personal experience and the wider global problems this has caused.
The art by Stefano Raffaele is exceptional and vibrant. There is a nice surprise within with some fold-out pages so that the landscape can be spread over 3 or 4 pages which are magnificent. So much detail and it really helps sell the magnitude of what is going on. It's one of those things where if I was told about it beforehand then I'd have dismissed it as a gimmick and not something that's needed, but I'd have been wrong. I was pleased that text was left to a minimum on these pages because you then get to just enjoy and marvel over the impressive drawings. Apart from those, there are pages that have a scene-setting double-spread panel along the top or through the middle to give voice to the fabulous settings of cities, natural disasters or space. There's a lot to take in and absorb on every page.
Aside from the scenery, the characters are expressive and I can't remember a single person looking slightly off or out of proportion. Raffaele is clearly a very accomplished illustrator.
Story-wise, if you've only seen the film then there's still no reason for not reading this as it follows different people, giving a new perspective on the story that we've not seen before. What really makes the graphic novel version shine though is that it reads better than the book it's based on as any translation issues are easily solved. The illustrations can carry a lot of that burden since you don't need to have things described to you. The opening could be described as info-dumping with lessons from a teacher to their pupils before you move onto the main story, but that doesn't harm the story in any way. It's an essential info dump that isn't overdone.
What's also not overdone, sadly, is the main characters as time progresses. They were missing some depth with one death, in particular, feeling a bit meh. You don't get to know them enough to care. A bit more depth into who they are and their choices would have been great and would make certain moments more impactful. As it is, the characters seem secondary to the massive event that is taking place which is a shame, even if the massive event is the moving of the entire planet out of our solar orbit.
That though is what this book is really about - the whole event of moving Earth and some of the pressures and problems this causes humanity in general. There's a wide scope and the characters sadly take a backseat to that. The art is exceptional though and does a great job of conveying the scale of what is happening. Same with the story and if we had some reason to care for the characters as well then this would have been a solid 5/5, but it loses a star because of that. It also gains an extra half star for those stunning pull out pages that I thought I'd hate but really just want to go and look at again.
Rating: 4.5/5
