MOTHER NATURE / Story by JAMIE LEE CURTIS & RUSSELL GOLDMAN / Adaptation and Illustration by KARL STEVENS / Published by TITAN COMICS

It is not unusual for a movie to get a comic book adaptation. It is unusual, however, for that comic book to come out before the movie is made. Mother Nature is being promoted as the graphic novel debut of actor Jamie Lee Curtis. She is also writing and directing the upcoming Mother Nature movie.

The story of both the comic and the movie is the same, centering around a woman named Nova Terrell. After seeing her father die while working on an oil derrick, Nova devotes her life to attacking the Cobalt Corporation that employed him. This makes her an enemy of everyone in the town of Catch Creek, New Mexico, where Cobalt employs everyone. Then Nova stumbles across the truth behind Cobalt’s new clean water project, as something awakens in the Earth below…

I don’t know if the Mother Nature graphic novel was made from storyboards of the movie, but I feel like it was after reading it. There’s a solid story here and Curtis (with co-writter Russell Goldman) spins a ripping yarn that I’m sure will make for a fantastic horror movie with a message.

Unfortunately, the artwork often works against that message. Karl Stevens is not a bad artist, but there is very little story flow between his panels. His character designs are great and the art itself looks good on a panel by panel basis. There is little sense of sequence between those panels, however, and I often had to stop to make sure I was reading things in the right order.

I think that Mother Nature will be an amazing movie. Unfortunately, this comic book is not as great as it should be. The story is solid, but the artwork makes it seem like we are watching a movie unfold through screen shots rather than sequential art.