IDW Publishing has secured the rights to release an original graphic novel adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The company made the announcement at Comic-Con on July 19.
“We have a handful of properties that we would do almost anything to publish, and we’ve wanted to do this for about as long as we’ve been publishing comics, which is about 10 years now,” says Ted Adams, CEO and president. “We have the most success at IDW with properties that an individual is passionate about. I grew up reading Hunter Thompson at an age that was probably too young to be reading Hunter Thompson. He had a great impact on how I view the world.”
At Comic-Con, Adams has been talking with authors and illustrators who could potentially join the creative team for the project. He notes that a key challenge will be not to compete with the Ralph Steadman illustrations from the original Rolling Stone articles, which are so closely associated with the work. “We want to make sure this is done right,” Adams says, noting that the release date will be dependent on the creative timeframe. “It’s not something we would rush in any way. If I can’t find the right creative team, I won’t publish it.”
IDW has done several literary adaptations, including Beowulf, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Oliver Twist, as well as titles by Richard Matheson, James Patterson, Clive Barker, and others. Fear and Loathing is another good fit with the graphic novel format, Adams points out. “The descriptions are so visually interesting,” he says. “It’s really visceral and really visual.”
