Nimona

"Nimona is the work of ND Stevenson, who went on to co-create Lumberjanes . He is extremely talented. He has been the showrunner, developer, and executive producer of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power . He’s a classic rising star within art and animation. Nimona was his first book. He did it as a thesis. This is such a cool thing about how creative work is done today: you can go back on ND Stevenson’s Tumblr from 2012 through 2014 and see him come up with the idea for this book, develop these characters, sketch them out, and develop a comic about them. It’s a compelling book. It’s a little bit about queerness; it’s about identity. The main character is a shapeshifter and works with people who potentially have different morals and values than she does to take on the Institute, a big bad imperial and fascist apparatus. It is a charming, pretty, very good-looking book. It is visually innovative and it’s visually striking. Nimona was adapted into a film. It was the last production of Blue Sky Studios, which was the computer animation studio that had been owned by Fox. When Fox was bought by Disney, Disney killed Blue Sky Studios. For a while, it looked like this film, which had so much heart put into it, was not going to get released. Eventually, they were able to cut a deal and sell it to Netflix. The film has some serious Oscar juice behind it. It has received a lot of attention. It’s a lovingly crafted film. The animation style is very aligned with the comic itself. I think that this is an example of a really successful adaptation. In taking a webcomic and adapting it into a television show, you are taking some liberties, you are compressing character arcs, and doing all that kind of stuff. Watchmen , somewhat notoriously, had a unique experience with adaptation despite being considered impossible to adapt. I Kill Giants , I think, was slightly botched. Nimona is a really good adaptation that, out of anything that we’re going to talk about today, best nails the source material."