My grandmother used to say, “getting old is the pits.” Also, “it beats the alternative.” She was loaded with aphorisms like that, and we were lucky that we were able to keep her in her home until the end. She never had to spend much time visiting the Amusement Park. A “lost” George A. Romero film from 1973 that was recently found again, The Amusement Park was intended by its producers as an educational film. Which it is, but with a very Romero metaphorical touch that doesn’t skimp on how cruel society can be to the elderly.
Working with the George A. Romero Foundation, John Carpenter and Sandy King’s Storm King Comics has adapted The Amusement Park into an even more powerful graphic novel. Writer Jeff Whitehead and artist Ryan Carr expand Romero’s surreal vision to go darker in places the master could only imply. A new framing sequence makes it even more chilling — and the point of The Amusement Park is, of course, that we all visit. Woe to those who can’t afford the tickets.
With a style that almost has a woodcut feel to it, Carr brings Death out of the shadows. Echoing but not imitating Romero’s Creepshow host, Death remains ever present, if not always near. Most of the living are oblivious in this excellently captured surreal world, but the elderly protagonist can’t help but let his awareness show through.
Wisely, the lettering by Marshall Dillon feels straightforward. While the story has a supernatural tint, these are still realistic characters, if not real ones. The dialogue Whitehead adds to the script makes Romero’s implicit commentary explicit, necessary in several sequences. Though Carr captures some of Romero’s disorienting scene compositions, his art pulls the narrative along a bit more tightly than the film does.
As a fortune teller says to a young couple in one sequence, you have to stay to the end. It’s a powerful graphic novel that more than does justice to Romero’s vision.
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