The Griff

The Griff by Christopher Moore, art by Ian Corson, 160 pages

Let me start this review by saying that Christopher Moore is a genuinely funny writer of some of my favorite books. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal is easily one of my five desert island books, and most of his others are nothing to sneeze at either, with funny (and often absurd) situations, great characterizations, and are just generally well-written.

Then there's The Griff. This is Moore's first, and hopefully last, attempt at a graphic novel. Moore and Corson present us with the disjointed tale of dragonlike alien beasts (the titular Griff) that have, for some reason, attacked Earth. In the foreword, Moore notes that this graphic novel is the result of a story idea he had that he felt would be better served in a visual medium, preferably a movie. So he and Corson created a script for The Griff and then shoved it in a drawer and forgot about it until he felt like taking a stab at a graphic novel.

The thing is, it shows. The dialogue is thin at best (most of the noises in the book are onomatopoeia), and the art seems much more like story boarding than actually moving the plot along. The characters and artwork are equally bland, while the storyline consists of disjointed action sequences. Rather than a graphic novel, this story would be better served as a SyFy Channel movie a la Sharknado (though that would probably be better than this).

Bottom line: Don't read this book unless you're a masochistic Christopher Moore completionist (like yours truly). If you want to read a Christopher Moore book, read Lamb, or Bloodsucking Fiends, Sacre Bleu, or Coyote Blue, or Practical Demonkeeping. Anything but this.