If someone had told me 20 years ago that I'd be buying, reading and reviewing an Animorphs graphic novel, based on the first book in the series, The Invasion, I probably would've rolled my eyes in a very Marco like fashion, and told them they were insane. Yet, here I am writing a review of Animorphs: The Graphic Novel - The Invasion, an adaptation of the first novel in the popular '90s book series, Animorphs. When I read the original book as a kid I always thought it'd be cool if we got to actually see what the world of the Animorphs looked like. What does an Andalite really look like? What do Hork-Bajir and Taxxons look like? What about Jake, Rachel, Tobias, Cassie and Marco? The TV show was a good start, but the severe lack of a budget found us wanting more. And this graphic novel is the more fans have been wanting.
While there's slight differences between we see in the artwork and what's described in the original novel, everything is more or less the way I imagined things to look. Including the Animorphs themselves. Though Marco's hair is much shorter than it was described as being in the first nine books of the series, with him getting a haircut just before book 10. Even Tobias, while looking slightly different from the model used for the covers of the original books, actually looks exactly the way he's described in the books. Which is really cool. Also the Andalites look slightly different too. While on the front covers of the original books their ears were swept upward, ending in points like Vulcans, in this book they look more like the ears of a deer or a goat. Also, the morphing sequences are just as creepy looking as they're described in the original novels, which is a nice touch.
My favourite image in this entire book is a full page spread of the Yeerk Pool near the end of the book. We kinda got a visual glimpse of how expansive the Yeerk Pool is on the TV show, but because of the budget, we were never able to get a real perspective on how big it is. That's the beauty of a comic book. The writer can come up with anything as long as the artist can draw it.
Visually, I think the writer/artist, Chris Grine, was inspired by the Animorphs TV show as well as Stranger Things. The ships actually look a lot like the way they do on the TV show, at least Elfangor's ship and Visser Three's Blade Ship do. The reason I think that Stranger Things was also an inspiration is because the opening shot of the mall looks like it was taken right out of the third season of Stranger Things, though the interior looks like the interior of the mall from the Animorphs TV series mixed with the interior of the mall from Stranger Things.
As for the story, there really isn't a whole lot of difference between this book and the original novel. Though certain things were removed like Marco's line from after he comes up with the Animorphs name, where he says, "idiot teenagers with a death wish" after the others look at him strangely because of the name. Yeah, I can see why they took that line out of the book in 2020. Whether they removed it from the manuscript back in 2011 when they made the attempt to re-release Animorphs or not, I don't know. I just know that it's not included in this version of the story.
I really like that they kept the series set in the '90s and didn't try to modernize it. Papercutz Comics did the same thing with their Mighty Morphin Power Rangers graphic novels, which I appreciated as well. This graphic novel is probably the last Animorphs thing to be kept in the '90s since I'm assuming the upcoming movie will shift the time period to present day rather than make it a period piece. Which is unfortunate, but I understand that they want to bring in as wide an audience as they can, and since it's supposedly a theatrical feature film, setting it in a more familiar setting for the target audience, assuming the target audience is teenagers not the adults who read the books when they were kids, makes sense.
Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall I really enjoyed this graphic novel. It brought me back to the late '90s when I was 12 and 13 years old, reading the novels for the first time and it was exciting. I'm now convinced that the best medium for Animorphs to be brought back in is comics, because there's no budget and all the crazy, out there Sci-Fi stuff can be fully realized without too much trouble. It took a little bit for me to get used to the artwork, but I got over that pretty quickly and just settled in for the ride. It only took me an hour to read, only because I was so stunned by the visuals that I kept stopping to stare at the artwork. Especially the title page where it shows the Blade Ship hiding behind Earth's moon, waiting to ambush the approaching Andalite fleet, something we've never gotten to see, not even in The Andalite Chronicles. I'm giving Animorphs: The Invasion 10/10 stars. If you're a fan of Animorphs, you need to pick this graphic novel up. It is worth it.
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