From an artist who reveled in illustrating the un-illustratable, a
historical graphic novel based on the Great Moon Hoax, the most
successful newspaper hoax ever.
In 1835, New York newspaper The Sun published a series of six articles
declaring the discovery of life--and even civilization--on the Moon,
which the paper attributed to the famous contemporary astronomer Sir
John Herschel. According to the Sun, the lunar inhabitants included
unicorns, bison, bipedal tail-less beavers, and intelligent humanoids
with bat-like wings.
Life on the Moon is a full-length graphic novel capturing this
mythical world. Creator Robert Grossman said the book is set in a time
when many of the signal achievements of the 19th Century still lay well
in the future, Andrew Jackson was president, the steamboat was the
summit of technology, and news traveled slowly. The unfettered novel
includes real historical figures such as P.T. Barnum, Jean Jacques
Audubon, Lorenzo Da Ponte, Charles Goodyear, and Edgar Allan Poe.
Grossman stated that, Life on the Moon is meant to be at least partly
funny, and has a rip-roaring sci-fi ending. Grossman concluded, I read
somewhere that William Randolph Hearst insisted that everything he
produced had: Tears, laughs, loves, and thrills. Life on the Moon has
all that and more.
