M : A Graphic Novel Based on the Film by Fritz Lang

I’m no expert on graphic novels, but to be honest it was the wonderful photorealistic noir artwork that really made John J. Muth’s M for me. The slightly brushed or blurred images have the quality of old photographs: tea-coloured duotones that are both nostalgic and evocative of a gritty urban yesteryear. The effect is appropriately haunting in this adaptation of Fritz Lang’s classic film about a serial killer murdering children. Other colours occasionally crop up, but these run the risk of drawing too much attention to themselves: the colours of the missing child’s dropped ball and abandoned kite... They recall the red coat in Spielberg’s holocaust opus, Schindler’s List.

The scenes of interrogation and trial are show more particularly cinematic, cutting between different angles and facial shots as the killer navigates his changing emotions in a series of high-contrast frames. This is another strength of Muth’s work – how effectively it makes use of point-of-view, mimicking the impact of a camera’s gaze.

Muth’s dialogue is pretty minimal and some parts of the story are conveyed almost exclusively through images. I’m not sure how this compares to the film – perhaps this minimalism is part of its noir flavour.

The pleasure of this book is primarily visual – a debt to its cinematic ancestor – and that works for me. It’s not the kind of layered, self-interrogating graphic novel that, say, Art Spiegelman’s Maus is. But for what it is, it succeeds beautifully. show less

A fan of Fritz Lang's "M," I was eager to get into this book. The first few pages captures you with its haunting effect, and the tension between the children's innocence (mocking the killer by singing a song) and the adults' palpable fear keep you inside the story. But by the second chapter, the effect of the photo/drawings seem to weaken, as the colour and the blur do not help the movement of the story nor the visuals; they start looking and feeling the same all throughout. In the end, the book doesn't really deliver, as the visuals and the story both steadily decline and fall short. A promising book that wasn't carefully watched or edited.

Graphic novel based on Fritz Lang's M with Peter Lorre. The illustrations were based on photos of people posing. They are mostly in black and white, as was the film, but with colors added for emphasis.

A well-done homage to Lang's 1931 film.