Badlands: The Unproduced Screenplay

by Steven Grant

Comic book author Steven Grant thinks comics are paper movies. Have you ever wondered what a film version of his award-winning Badlands might be like? Well, you can't head down to your local metroplex and buy a ticket just yet, but you can do the next best thing: pick up a copy of his unproduced Badlands screenplay. It's all here; the tale of intrigue, conspiracy, sex and murder — and the guy who really killed Kennedy — fashioned for the screen by the author himself. Cover by Brian Wood.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Crime, Fiction

152 pages, Paperback

First published May 11, 1993

About the author

Steven Grant is an American comic book writer best known for his 1985–1986 Marvel Comics mini-series The Punisher with artist Mike Zeck and for his creator-owned character Whisper.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_...

Reviews

[Jesse Baggs]

Disgusting but provided some entertainment. I thought this was a newer graphic novel but it’s actually from the early 90s and thus a little gonzo. I mean, there are a lot of wild and crazy comics these days, but that’s de rigueur. Creating a perverted historical fiction at the dawn of Image Comics-dominance takes an impressive amount of dedication, like a vow of poverty—of for these comic creators, a vow of chastity. This revisionist take on the JFK assassination was still created for the superhero crowd, so there’s plenty of sex and ultraviolence. There’s also a seventeen-year-old nympho and a dollop of homophobia, so it’s morally depraved. But is it more engaging than a superhero book from the 90s? Well …

[Jordan]

Very cool, though I was a bit confused about the Lee Harvey Oswald aspect of this, and some of the revelations in the final section. Probably my fault. Great art and it reminded me of the Vertigo Crime series, which I miss collecting.

[Max]

After going through 30%, I couldn’t even understand what’s going on. Poor story telling.

[Henry]

A fictional account of events for some of the imagined fringe players of the JFK assassination, leading up to and following from November 1963.

Maybe I take such things too seriously, but let us face that this still remains an event where no satisfactory conclusion has been brought to the shameful assassination. I hope most people accept there was more than one shooter, and as such so many unacceptable questions unresolved. But let us accept that such things still allow for fictional imaginations to revolve around the events.

I found no depth to characters, the idea that such weasels would have any role in this co-ordinated assassination sustaining too much disbelief, the repeated pointless nudity of teenage nymphomaniacs repugnant, and nothing to enjoy, even if one accepts the bad taste and the implausibility.

[David]

I like the surprise ending..as Jonathan Vankin points out, there is
very little fiction written about the JFK assassination. This graphic novel tells a plausible version (it is around the edges of the main story).

Like Don Delillo's 'Libra' and James Ellroy's 'American Tabloid,' it
raises questions about what kind of a country we really are. (I started
reading Ellroy's later novel about the JFK assassination a few years
ago and put it down because it was so violent and sexually yucky..
not that I am against kinkiness...being a comic, 'Badlands' is slightly
kinky...but Ellroy's second novel on the JFK murder was sexually ugly)

[Adam]

This is one of my all-time favorite comics. Written by Steven Grant and drawn by Vince Giarrano, Badlands imagines a possible scenario leading up to the assassination of President Kennedy. In the grand tradition of crime fiction, it features a main character who can't seem to make a good decision, along with corrupt oil men, a nymphomaniac daughter, and a scary, scary hired killer. The really scary part, of course, is just how plausible it all seems.

[Greg]

Bit of a sucker for anything relating to JFK Assassination but found this disappointing. Illustrations were only ordinary and the story was just a bit too far fetched (yeah, I know, a graphic novel). At least it's a primer for 'Reclaiming History' - Vincent Bugliosi's 1600 page door stopper - which arrived the other day.

[Christine Engelbrecht]

This graphic novel has a historic lens, exploring conspiracy theories around the assassination of John F. Kennedy. A must-read for any JFK history lovers.