Graphic Novel Review: Stephen and Own King's Sleeping Beauties Adapted by Rio Youers

 

Sleeping Beauties, Vol. 1
(Sleeping Beauties #1-5)
Based  on the novel by Stephen King  and Owen King
Alison Sampson (Illustrations),
Rio Youers (Goodreads Author) (Adaptation)

On the surface Sleeping Beauties is a very Stephen King idea, in the vein of Cell or Under the Dome it is a weird speculative Apocalypse novel. The story is global but the point of view is narrow and focused much like Cell. When I read the novel it felt very influenced by the HBO show The Leftovers. I believe Owen King has said that they wrote first as a teleplay for a mini-series.

So it makes sense to translate this epic story into episodic comic book series, Rio Youers who adapted this was gifted with more set structure than King or Hill family novels. You can almost see where the Kings were planning cliffhangers and such. None the less it is never an easy job drilling down a 700 page novel like this so give Rio lots of Credit for that. He was greatly assisted by the amazing art of Alison Simpson.

In this story, the women of the world are subject to a pandemic called Aurora. The women affected fall asleep and their faces break out in a cocoon that keeps them asleep but alive. In the days that follow men have to deal with the loss and certainly, most men in our world don't understand everything important that women do. A few women are trying desperately to stay awake and some of their struggles provide the story's most suspenseful moments.

Focused on a fictional West Virginia town called Dooling the novel follows events in the town and in the nearby women's prison. The Kings did a great job of making the characters vivid. We know this is a family strength. Youers and Simpson bring the characters and novel to life to the point that I felt I did not need to read all the word bubbles the novel was coming back to me quite strongly.

Simpson has lots of horror credits to her name and she was an excellent choice for the art, it is detailed and vivid. The novel was 700 pages and honestly, I didn't need more than 400 pages to tell the story so this book telling half the story and eventually in two volumes makes sense.

Rio Youers fixed some of the cringe-inducing moments where King let slip some unintentionally sexist moments old-timey gender roles. That was welcome and in many ways, this is a better more simple take on the story. I would have to say I recommend this experience over the novel.