Hunter S Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – intimately bound up in most readers’ minds with Ralph Steadman’s hallucinatory illustrations – is set to be turned into a graphic novel by the artist Troy Little.
The adaptation, the first ever graphic novel take on Thompson’s work, has been approved by the late rebel journalist’s estate, and will be published this October by Top Shelf Productions. Little, who has been nominated for an Eisner award for his Angora Napkin series, said he “agonised” over the project, because the work of Ralph Steadman, whose pen-and-ink illustrations peppered the original, “is so synonymous with Hunter you just know from the outset nothing can compare”.
“Fear and Loathing is a punch in the gut of dark humour and chaotic energy, I just did my best to capture that in my own way and try to ignore all the voices in my head telling me I was going to screw it up,” said Little. “I have a massive amount of admiration for Ralph but I can’t imagine that this would be a project he’d ever consider doing.”
Illustration to Fear and Loathing the graphic novel
A page from Troy Hill’s graphic novelisation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Photograph: Troy Little/Top Shelf
Running to 176 pages, Little’s adaptation will faithfully trace the adventures of Thompson, under the pseudonym of Raoul Duke, and his Samoan attorney Dr Gonzo, on their “Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream” in Las Vegas. Thompson, the self-styled “gonzo journalist”, was covering “the fabulous Mint 400” motorbike race for “a fashionable sporting magazine in New York”.
As well as a huge red Chevy convertible that he dubs “the Great Red Shark”, he has spent his cash on “two bags of grass, 75 pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers … and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls”.
The book opens: “‘We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like, ‘I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive …’ And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats.”
Little said he loved all of Thompson’s books, but that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was “the classic”. He was approached by publisher Ted Adams at IDW, the parent company of Top Shelf, to write a sample pitch for the project, and as “a huge fan of Hunter for years … this was simply not something I could pass up,” he said.
“I psyched myself out terribly trying to come up with a look and style that I hoped would capture the manic energy in the book,” he added, “and so I took an exaggerated, cartoony approach that I guess appealed to the Thompson estate because I was offered the job almost the next day.”
So far, he said, “the response to the idea of adapting his books in this manner has been 99% positive”.
“Naturally there are Thompson purists who take issue with anyone but Ralph Steadman drawing for Thompson in any capacity. As a fan of Steadman, I can totally appreciate where they’re coming from,” he said.
But Little pointed out that the book has already been adapted for film by Terry Gilliam, starring Johnny Depp, and “so it’s not like it’s the first time the book has come around in a different medium, so why not comics?”
“It’s a dream job for a guy like me,” he said. “I did my very best to honour the source material and hope that this book may introduce a new set of readers to his work so that they too may ‘Buy the Ticket and Take the Ride’.”
