After being a movie icon since the 1970’s and winning an Academy Award a few months ago, Jamie Lee Curtis has a new challenge: graphic novels.
She co-wrote a story about a possessed girl who attacks a small town caught in in the battle between an oil company’s business dealings and the fate of the environment.
It’s called Mother Nature, published by Titan Comics, which is coming soon. Curtis was part of a Comic-Con panel that included co-writer Russell Goldman and artist Karl Stevens.
When Curtis arrived she was surprised the book had a trailer, considering copies of the book had just been made. She says she had the idea for the story when she was 19, and thought about it more after reviving the Halloween movie franchise. Her husband, Christopher Guest, suggested she try making the story. It wasn’t long before she came up with a very dark tale with even darker fates.
“I had…to come up with every gruesome way that Mother Nature could kill people, black ice, storms, hail, tornados,” she said. “I wrote a 40 page treatment, but I didn’t know how to write a screenplay.” She met Goldman, who was hoping to get into show biz. They got together to write a screenplay that eventually became the graphic novel, and he focused the story on the female characters.
Stevens got on board soon afterwards, and suggested the screenplay should be a graphic novel. The process took around four years. “It had this kind of great balance between this really important, probably like the most important message about our climate also mixed with fun, gory stuff,” he said. He was also praised for his illustrations, and how they complimented the script.
The story is about Nova, a girl who lives in a small town in New Mexico. Her mom leased land to an oil company who’s fracking for oil but also trying to make fracking water drinkable. Nova thinks it’s really about corporate greed and tries to stop it. One night, she’s hit by lightning, and a Navajo spirit called the Naayee possesses her. This leads to catastrophes and deaths that seem to be linked to Nova, or the spirit striking back against the company’s abuse of the environment. It’s about mothers and daughters, people compromising their beliefs, and what happens because of it.
Curtis says the story is coming at the right time, as climate change caused by environmental abuse has led to massive flooding and a record heat wave recently.
She also points out that although three White people wrote this story, Goldman did a lot to look into the Navajo perspective of the area and how it fits into the overall story. He later said they took time to make sure they got the story right, and how oil fracking is affecting natives in New Mexico.
“We took it from them. They were here. They loved the land,” Curtis said. “They loved it. They revered it. It was part of their culture to love it, and we have raped it and tortured it in the name of greed and avarice.”
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Curtis also talked about several subjects during the panel, including her career. “My life has hinged on seconds I never saw coming,” she says, “If you think I saw Dierdre Beaubeidra coming, if you think I was sitting going like ‘I’m gonna make a little indie in 38 days in Simi, Valley, California for twelve million dollars, and we’re all going to end up winning Oscars,’ you’re crazy people. What happens becomes the beautiful reality of your life.”
Mother Nature can be pre-ordered on the Titan Comics website. It will be released August 8th.
