Cowboys and Aliens

Created by: Scott Mitchell Rosenberg
Pages: 112

In the Old West, settlers and Native Americans wage a bloody battle for control of the land. But when the Earth is threatened by conquerors from the stars, these sworn enemies must work together to save all humanity.

If you haven’t seen the previews for the movie “Cowboys & Aliens”, then I’m not sure what to think. The buzz for this movie was astronomical. For months, all I heard people talk about was this movie.

It wasn’t until I listened to Comic-Con radio while at the youth retreat last month that I realized the movie came from a graphic novel. Of course, the geek gurl that I am, I needed to check out the graphic novel.

I was not disappointed in the least. When the comic-con people talked about “the beautiful graphic novel” they were in all seriousness. With 112 full colour pages, you feel completely immersed in the story-line.

The novel gives you more background on the “aliens” portion of the story, while the movie definitely follows the “cowboys”. Reading the graphic novel in conjunction with viewing the movie definitely gives you a fuller appreciation for the story itself.

Readers will see many differences between the print and screen versions of the tale, however I think that by and large the majority of changes fit better with “the big screen”. I also feel as though some things probably would not carry over in the F/X world.  I’m fine with that.

What I truly liked, besides the gripping story and beautiful artwork, was the twist from the norm. We seem inundated with “The aliens are coming! The aliens are coming!” Not that I’m complaining. I just got off the freshman season of Falling Skies and yeah, that was amazingly well done. (Check out my upcoming review!) What made this different was the cowboys. The aliens didn’t come to today, oh no! It’s the height of the gold rush and westward push.  There’s even less technology to fight the aliens than today!

As I told many people: It’s cowboys. It’s aliens. What’s not to love?

–Lady O