Quick Thoughts on Jeff Lemire's The Nobody

I picked up Jeff Lemire's The Nobody on a whim at the comic shop a few weeks back and have only now gotten around to reading it. I read The Invisible Man back in College for a Science-Fiction English class and while I didn't dislike it, I didn't really enjoy it all that much either. I've also got Lemire's Essex County sitting on my shelf to read, so when I saw it on the rack, I picked it up without knowing anything about it.

While the class approached the book with an intended reading about the idea of "The Other" and how society deals with entities that are alien to it, Lemire's take approaches the story in a similar fashion, but changes the story in a fairly significant way. While Wells' Invisible Man is actually the villain of the story, Jeff's Griffen is the hero, even though the stories are about 85 to 90% identical.

With the addition of a sixteen year old girl who befriends Griffen, her sympathetic narration and Lemire's clever writing casts The Nobody as a sympathetic protagonist even in the fact of doing some fairly horrible acts. I was actually sort of surprised that I was upset with the conclusion given that at that point, The Invisible Man has killed at least two people and wounded another.

Really a great narrative tweak that refreshes an old favorite while remaining loyal to the original material. I'm sure there is a lot more to say and I may come back to it once I finish Essex County and get a better handle on Lemire as a writer.