I recently read Strange Weather, a collection of four horror novellas by Joe Hill that included the story Rain in it. A blogging friend told me that the story had been adapted into a graphic novel, so I of course had to track it down. Turning this short story into an entire graphic novel both helped and hindered the original story.

On an ordinary day in Boulder, Colorado, a deadly rainstorm suddenly appears- raining down crystal spikes that kill anyone unlucky enough to be outside. A woman named Honeysuckle had been excited that her girlfriend was moving in that day but instead sees her beloved die. She then takes off on a post-apocalyptic road trip to tell her lover’s father what happened and, of course, is besieged by other survivors. When she arrives back home after her adventure she learns who caused this deadly calamity and is shocked to find she knows the culprit.

The artwork by Zoe Thorogood was a mixed bag for me. Honeysuckle was an appealing hero, whom you were rooting for. You will get attached to the vibrant Yolanda quickly, making her loss hard. But Marc and the other males were very effeminate looking with weird stubble on their faces, and I found it distracting. The art reinforced some of the themes of the story, with her visit to the zoo heartbreaking. The panel placement was standard but did include some good full-page splash pages. The ending when you find out who started the deadly rain is abrupt, but it was in the original story too.

An interesting forward by Joe Hill and an art gallery at the conclusion round out the book. David M. Booher adapted the story well, showing how madness and violence led to devastating loss, but then gave us a glimmer of hope at the end. Overall, I give this a thumbs up because of Hill’s storytelling, but if I read this implausible story without knowing its source material, I don’t think it would have worked for me.

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