Attending a Chicago sci-fi con in the mid 2000's, Peter Gillis decided for once to play the fan and queue up for guest of honour Peter S. Beagle, responsible for two of his favourite books as a teenager, The Last Unicorn and A Fine And Private Place. Gillis recognised Beagle's manager as Connor Cochran, a face from the 70's fandom scene. The three of them hit it off and vowed to work together in the future. When IDW put together an adaptation of his seminal work The Last Unicorn, Peter Gillis was Beagle's first choice to script it.
The Last Unicorn #1-6 (2010)
Adaptation: Peter B. Gillis
Pencils: Renae De Liz
Inks & Colours: Ray Dillon
I confess to be totally unfamiliar with the 1968 book, or the animated movie adaptation from 1982, so I came into this story cold. This fairytale concerns a unicorn who believes she is the last of her kind. She journeys out of her protected forest into the medieval world, where magic is now all but forgotten, and most people see her as nothing but a white mare. After being captured by a malevolent circus, she falls in with a failed magician named Schmendrick, and goes on a quest to find the demonic Red Bull who holds the secret to the disappearance of the rest of the unicorns. On their journey they run into a merry band of Robin Hood wannabe outlaws, a foppish prince and a typically evil king. It's an extremely enjoyable fable, elevated by Beagle's talent for phrasing. The dialogue and narration reaches deep without devolving into florid. You can certainly see his clear influence on Gillis' writing.
Gillis stayed true to Beagle's words from the novel wherever possible, only occasionally altering or compressing for expediency's sake. Initially he contemplated a languid 12 issue adaptation, but the core story was slim enough to fit inside 6, trimming the odd minor character or diversion. You could question the need for such a faithful version of the original text when you could just read the unabridged novel, but that goes for most book adaptations. What makes this version truly come alive is De Liz and Dillon's exquisite artwork. In animation style, De Liz's cartoony character work is offset by her lovingly detailed pastoral backgrounds, wonderfully digitally coloured by Dillon.
It's a handsome tale, exquisitely told and rendered into life brilliantly on the page. Well worth seeking out.
The art on Last Unicorn looks good, so may be worth checking out. I saw the movie about a year ago but it's hard to judge fairly as it was so antiquated--Scotty Summs
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