Animorphs #1 – 6
Adaptation: Chris Grine
Written materials: Ka Applegate and Michael Grant
Publisher: Scholastic
Ka Applegate’s Animorphs is back with an adaptation of a graphic novel by Chris Grine. The sixth Capture in the series will arrive at local bookstores and public libraries on Tuesday, March 4th, 2025. If you read the original Scattered Document, adaptation is an interesting way to revisit the Cult Classic series. And hopefully, a whole new generation of readers are discovering original science fiction stories for themselves thanks to these new adaptations.
Animorphs
The Animorphs series debuted in June 1996 with an invasion. Written under the pen name Ka Applegate of wife and husband writing team Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant, later a team of ghostwriters. The mainline series volume ended in May 2001 with the 54th entry, The Orget, and was released almost in the month. Along the way, several spinoff miniseries were released, including four “…Chronicle” books, Megamorphs and Alternamorphs.
The story continued with five human teenagers: Jake, Rachel, Cathy, Tobias and Marco. In the invasion, the teenage quintet came home from the mall and met a fatal wounded alien. This alien, El-Fangour the Andalite, revealed that Earth has been secretly invaded by other aliens: Yeerks.
Yeerks are parasites like slugs. To get away from their “Yeerk pool”, they need to control their bodies, craving to the ears of another species. There’s a slight catch. Every three days, they need to return to the Yeerk pool and charge with special radiation. But thanks to “The Sharing,” an organization that disguises itself as something like a community-based charity/social club, they have already managed to control many people, including many authorities. Essentially, anyone could be a “human ruler” or a host under Yeerk’s control.
El-Fan Gour gives five teenagers the ability of “morphs” to give humanity the opportunity to fight penetration. By touching a creature and “acquire” its DNA, teens can “morph” into replicating the creature for up to two hours. However, if you keep the morph at a limit of more than two hours, the morph becomes “nothlit.” They lose their ability to transform themselves and are forever trapped in the form they adopted when the two-hour limit expires.
Animorphs Formula
In the format, the Animorphs series had a special hook. Each of the main series was told from the perspective of one of five teenagers (and then Aximili, the sixth member of the Animorphs team). From volume to volume, the narrator alternates.
The book has gained a reputation for not being able to keep you away from overtly brutal violence as a result of bodily horror, creepy science fiction. For one thing, the in-text process of morphing was not a smooth transition depicted on the book’s cover. Instead, it was an unpredictable and grotesque mutation, the rack bone of the bone, the Kronerg-esque mutation. Meanwhile, the Animorphs you take on against Yeerks can be very troublesome. By the end of the series, the surviving characters are hurt by the length they had to go in the process of wrestling control of Earth from the invaders.
Even if you haven’t read books, or if you were visiting a bookstore, library, or academic book fair in the late 90s, you probably remember seeing them. This is thanks to the aforementioned arrest cover of the original series. These depict “morphing” in the shapes of various animal figures. The cover art of the invasion was by Peter Bollinger, and the cover art for the second book, Visitor, was by Tim O’Brien. However, the remaining 52 main series books and four Megamorphs books feature cover art by David Mattingly.
The final stage face of the Morph was cut out. When the cover was opened, a complete image of the animal morph was revealed. And it wasn’t just a carryover inside from the cover. In the bottom corner of each page there was a sequential image of morphing POV characters. This has made all Animorphs volumes into flipbooks.
In the form of a cartoon
With the release of Grine’s first Animorphs adaptation in October 2020, the series has entered the comics zone. As far as adaptation goes, these are pretty close to the source material. Just like the original series, each volume of the comic is narrated by one of the teens. And so far, each comic has directly dealt with its prose counterparts with title, plot and perspective. Furthermore, all six Animorphs comics released so far have been adapted by Gline.
They are instantly fascinating, as in prose books, because the adaptation is generally faithful. The Animorphs story, characters and myths were key elements of the enduring cult after the franchise enjoyed it. And all these elements are reproduced fairly closely in these adaptations. So these comics serve as a good way to showcase the story or as a good way to revisit the story in a different way.
Grine’s artwork works particularly well with regard to certain aspects of the story. He is skilled at drawing different types of aliens and their spacecraft and technology. All different species of animals are instantly recognizable, including insect morphs that teens don’t try with these early quantities.
And there is another aspect to the artwork that Grine is particularly talented. Unlike the smooth shifts depicted in the original series cover, comic art shows that the morphing process is an unpleasant experience described by prose. This includes the sound effect of a shattered organ shift in bones.
Capture
The sixth entry in Animorphs’ graphic novel adaptation series The Capture returns to Jake’s perspective. Like the previous five entries, this volume makes great use of colored word balloons. By assigning each Animorphs to its own color, it is possible to distinguish who is telepathically speaking while in MORPH.
In this volume, we see Jake, the de facto leader of the team, falling into the Yeerk pool and becoming a controller himself. This includes multiple insect morphs and various “battle morphs” from the team. The process of morphing into flies is particularly annoying. This capture also makes use of the sci-fi trickery that it has two versions of the same character.
Capture is the sixth Animorphs adaptation by Gline. In a post to Blueski, he said the future of comic adaptation is currently unknown. Meanwhile, in a May 2010 interview, Grein said he wanted to adapt his first ten books.
Even as we move forward, adaptation of Animorphs graphic novels must continue. There are so many possibilities for the comic adaptation of the rest of the mainline novels and tie-in stories. The adaptation of books like The Andalite Chronicles might be great. It might also be great to see multiple artists tackle the long Megamorphs story, which includes the perspectives of all six main characters. Whether you’re a longtime fan of the series or are interested in experiencing the story for the first time, Animorphs graphic novels are worth your time.
Animorphs #1-6 are available at local bookstores and public libraries
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