Preview Pages From ‘Tale Of Sand,’ The Graphic Novel Based On Jim Henson’s Unproduced Screenplay
WhenJim Hensonpassed away, a few unproduced projects were left on his desk. One was an early project calledTale of Sand, a script written with frequent Muppet co-writerJerry Juhl.
The script has been adapted into a graphic novel, byRamón Perezand comic publisher Archaia. A twenty-page preview is now online, so you can get a taste of how one of Henson’s unrealized projects has been translated to the comic page.
Archaiahas the preview (viaBleeding Cool) but you can see four pages in the gallery below. Head to the Archaia link to see more.
Bleeding Cooldid an interview with the publisher earlier this year, which sheds some light on the project’s history:
What’s fascinating about it is that it really gives you a peek into the creative process and the things that Jim was thinking about at that time, before the Muppets blew up like crazy… this was a really young Jim, doing a very kind of existential feature length film, very much along the lines of The Cube, another of his early things, and Time Piece, the film he won the Academy Award for… This is something that he and Jerry were working on together for quite some time. Because of the scope and strangeness of the movie, it’s very much unlike any other Jim Henson project out there, Jim was never able to actually make the film version of this… We’re working very closely with Lisa and Brian Henson, his children, who are supervising this. They are very adamant about this not ever being made into a movie, or not being made into anything else, they only want to do this as a comic to almost give a storyboarded look at what this lost Jim Henson could have been like.
Here’s the synopsis of the comic:
A Tale of Sand follows scruffy everyman Mac, who wakes up in an unfamiliar town, and is chased across the desert of the American Southwest by all manners of man and beast of unimaginable proportions. Produced with the complete blessing of Henson CEO Lisa Henson, A Tale of Sand will allow Henson fans to recognize some of the inspirations and set pieces that appeared in later Henson Company productions.
