Jamie Lee Curtis took stage to a packed house during this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. And while there was no talk about her acting work due to the SAG-AFTRA strike, she did spend time discussing what she was here to promote in the first place: her eco-horror graphic novel, Mother Nature, which is also being made into a Comet/Blumhouse film.
The book is being released by Titan Comics and comes to us from Curtis, her co-writer Russell Goldman, and artist Karl Stevens. All three of them were on hand to give audience members a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the story, including what inspired Curtis to tell this story.
“When I was 19 years old, even though I could barely get out of high school with my 840 combined S.A.T. scores, I knew that we were in trouble, I just knew from an environmental standpoint,” Curtis said, later adding: “I had this idea for a story, a movie, something in my head called Mother Nature, and I had some images, and of course I had some gruesome deaths because I have a very dark mind.”
It wasn’t until after Curtis did 2018’s Halloween, however, that she — invigorated by working on that film — decided to put the story on paper. At first she wanted to hire someone to write it, but her husband suggested that maybe she should be the one to write the screenplay. Curtis wrote a 40-page treatment and then brought Russell Goldman on board to make it into a full-fledged script. Later on, when she was talking to Stevens about purchasing a New Yorker cartoon from him, he suggested she make it a graphic novel. And so she did, with Stevens coloring and inking the entire thing.
Mother Nature also centers around indigenous people, and Curtis made clear that she and her collaborators worked closely with people from the Navajo Nation when working on the project for five years.
“It mattered to not just to bring in advisors to say, ‘Here’s what we have, how do we fix it?’ But to bring them on very early in the process and more as we were developing the graphic novel, and share where we were coming from,” said Goldman. “And the only reason any of them worked with us, and they asked us the same [question], ‘Why are you telling this story? What is the perspective you see here, and what makes you three the people to do it?’ And we said it’s a story about … the decisions that one generation is making in leaving a planet behind for the next. And that is a perspective that I think anyone can see and appreciate, and try to understand.”
Mother Nature is also a violent tale, with multiple people dying from the anthropomorphic embodiment of an angry Navajo god. “There’s a lot of red. There will be blood in this book,” promised Curtis.
You can see what Curtis’ dark mind has wrought by buying Mother Nature at your favorite place to buy graphic novels on August 8, 2023. And if you’re interested in learning more about the story, here’s the official synopsis of the tale:
After witnessing her father die in mysterious circumstances on one of the Cobalt Corporation’s experimental oil extraction projects, Nova Terrell has grown up to despise the seemingly benevolent company relied upon by the town of Catch Creek, New Mexico.
The rebellious Nova wages a campaign of sabotage against the oil giant, until one night she accidentally makes a terrifying discovery about the true nature of the “Mother Nature” project and a threat that could destroy the entire town.
