STEVE MCQUEEN IN LE MANS

If you’re about to embark on an ambitious Porsche restoration project, Comic book artist, Sandro Garbo, had a dream. Not a Martin Luther King kind of dream, but one of those middle-of-the-night eureka moments that has you bolt upright, wide eyes open and consumed by a sudden sense of purpose. “I saw Steve Mcqueen and he told me to create a graphic novel based on his motorsport movie, Le Mans. From that moment, it became my life’s work.” The project had all the hallmarks of best intentions, but translating one of the greatest motorsport movies into a sequence of illustrations — not forgetting the film barely has a script, let alone much in the way of dialogue to work with — could have ended in disaster. A peek inside the 64-page hardback, however, reveals quite the opposite. Garbo’s amazing talent and extraordinary attention to detail bring the movie to life in a whole new way. Each Le Mans character is penned with obvious affection and respect, as are the various Porsche sports cars depicted throughout. Additional dialogue and a couple of new supporting characters are introduced to deal with the movie’s long periods of silent acting, and Garbo has gone to great lengths to depict the real racing conditions of the 1970 24 Hours of Le Mans, with special focus on the weather and competing cars, including the Salzburg 917 K driven to glory by Richard Attwood and Hans Herrmann. An accompanying Sarbo-created graphic novel, Steve Mcqueen created Le Mans (outlining the making of the movie), is also available.

Price: £28 garbocomics.com or search Amazon