Darren Aronofsky’s Noah graphic novel released in Europe

Before Noah was picked up by Paramount, Darren Aronofsky and co-writer Ari Handel began working on a graphic novel adaptation of their script with artist Niko Henrichon. (Henrichon is perhaps best known for illustrating Pride of Baghdad, written by Brian K. Vaughan.) Titled Noé, the 72-page graphic novel has been released in Europe by Belgian publisher Le Lombard. It appears to be the first of four volumes, and Noah appears to be Thor. No word yet on when an English translation is coming or who will publish it.

This isn’t the first film-related comic book venture by Aronofsky. While making his debut Pi, Aronofsky was also working on a comic book called Pi: The Book of Ants. The comic was used as a promotional tool for the film after Pi was picked up at Sundance. Though long out of print, artist Edward R. Flynn made Pi: The Book of Ants available online. Aronofsky also did a 176-page graphic novel adaptation of The Fountain with artist Kent Williams while that production was in languishing in limbo.

We’ve got some preview pages of Noé in the gallery. After the jump, we’ve got a trailer for the graphic novel with my weak attempt at translating the French text in the video into English.

So here’s what I think the text says:

Epic and masterful, the first volume of this tetralogy is already praiseworthy.
– Trois Couleurs

A dreamlike story.
– DBD

The first volume of this series provides a glimpse of Darren Aronofsky’s largest cinematic vision yet.
– Allociné

God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
– Genesis 6:5

But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
– Genesis 6:8

“If what I see is our future…
…then the world is going to be destroyed.”

“I must prevent it.”

My French is really, really bad, so take the above with a grain of salt. (Just don’t ask Lott since he may take it the wrong way.)

Production on Noah won’t begin until next year and Henrichon still has a lot more to draw before the story’s done, so figuring out who will release the English version of the completed graphic novel is a bit of premature speculation.

Regardless, Vertigo seems like an okay bet since Aronofsky and Henrichon have done work with them before. Then again, Vertigo’s part of DC Comics and the Time Warner family, so who knows if they’ll publish an adaptation of a Paramount production. Newly launched Legendary Comics, who recently published Frank Miller’s Holy Terror, is another possibility, though it’ll be interesting to see what transpires there since Legendary has ties to Time Warner as well.

Since this is a European album-style comic book, it seems like this would fit well with the North American wing of Humanoids, who over the years have published work by Alejandro Jodorowsky (yes, the filmmaker), Moebius, Milo Manara, and Enki Bilal. Image Comics is another possibility given the diversity of the line, though if Noah finds a home at Image, to my knowledge this would be only the second translation of previously published material they’ve released. (I think the first was Lucha Libre.) Dark Horse is another strong possibility, and they’ve published quite a few English translations in the past (e.g., Akira, Lone Wolf and Cub, Dylan Dog, Blacksad).

Don’t really see this sort of graphic novel fitting at indie houses like Fantagraphics, Drawn and Quarterly, or even Pantheon given their respective outputs, but it’s a little to early to rule anything out, I suppose. We’ll see.