John Cusack’s New Graphic Novel ‘Momo’ Is The Surreal Thing

When celebrities do graphic novels, it’s normally a solution to lengthen their model. Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready does a graphic novel in regards to the early grunge scene in Seattle. Keanu Reeves does a graphic novel about an unstoppable warrior on a killing spree. Great British Bakeoff finalist Kim Joy does a graphic novel involving bakingand so forth.

But actor John Cusack did not appear to get the memo, until his model is a few beforehand unsuspected mixture of Don Delillo, Hunter S. Thompson and Mark Leyner (who wrote the foreword), filtered by means of mid 90s-era Grant Morrison. His new graphic novel Momo (Mad Cave Studios, due out September 29, 2026)fantastically illustrated by Argentine artist Ignacio Noé, could be formidable even when tried by a longtime practitioner of the shape. For a debut, from somebody new to the medium, it’s actually out of left subject.

“It’s not ‘on brand,’” Cusack stated in an interview forward of his Comic-Con panel to launch the ebook on Friday, July 26. “It’s more like a brand-buster.”

Momo in its easiest conception is an amalgam of a buddy story, heist and highway journey with a sci-fi twist, set in 1972 and embodying the storytelling model and aesthetics of an indie movie from that period. The two protagonists, “Johnson” and “Tina Louise” (aka “Ani Mal”) for their very own causes, crew up with a seedy, drug-fueled character named Doc, to meet a future concerning the pinnacle of a captured alien within the custody of Richard Nixon’s authorities. This alien head is the singular obsession of Jackie Gleason (the actor from The Honeymoonersfairly a star within the early 70s) and Twenties-era French silent movie star Antonin Artaud, whom Gleason had rescued from insane an asylum following World War II.

“It is based on a true story,” Cusack assured me. “It’s all in recently declassified files that I managed to obtain.”

That comparatively easy plot is difficult by some very opaque characterization typical of Cusack’s postmodern influences, a fantastic mix of historical past and conspiracy theories, and a ton of Preston Sturges-style snappy dialogue that consumes pages of talking-head exposition scenes. Some of those artistic selections and digressions would sandbag the story if not for Noé’s partaking, painterly artwork model and facility with European-style comics pacing. Probably Momo’s closest analogue in each artwork and story for modern comics readers is James Tynion IV and Martin Simmons’ Department of Truth (Image Comics), which is a fairly high bar.

So what motivated Cusack to take this course for his inaugural foray into the medium? “Back when I was starting to make movies, you would find people who had aspirations to do something totally unique, not just installments in a franchise or something that fit their business strategy.”

While that is not how issues work in 2020s Hollywood, Cusack says it occurred to him that with comics, he may simply write no matter he needed, rent an artist, and see it offered visually. Mad Cave Studios, an up and coming impartial comics writer, took on the mission to publish as a graphic novel. He launched it at Comic-Con at a panel moderated by actor and comedian creator David Dastmalchian.

Cusack was cagy about expressing future media ambitions for the story, though he acknowledged writing it with a cinematic sense of story, pacing and construction, impressed by low-budget crime films from the early 70s period by which the story is ready.

Whatever the business way forward for the mission, Cusack says he loved the collaborative course of with the artist and the liberty that the comics media afforded him. “I wanted to do something like movies from a different era, and no matter what happens, if someone reads it and likes it, I count that as a success.”

He says he’s already engaged on a second graphic novel mission with Noé and hopes to proceed exploring the medium as his profession in appearing and filmmaking permits.