John Cusack Explains Pivoting Career to Writing Graphic Novels During Rare Appearance at Comic-Con

John Cusack made a rare public appearance at San Diego Comic-Con to introduce his new graphic novel, Momo.

“Well, I always thought they were the closest things to film, really,” Cusack, 60, told Variety on Friday, July 24. “You know, you’re picking out shots and they’re so cinematic. I wanted to tell a story, but I didn’t want to negotiate telling a story.”

He continued, “When you ask somebody to put $20 or $30 million into a bank account [to finance a film], they want to have an opinion and they’re afraid and all that stuff. This was, just, I wrote it and, ‘I like this story.’”

Cusack independently wrote Momo, a heist and road trip story set in 1972 with an extraterrestrial twist, that will be distributed by Mad Cave Studios.

“I got this beautiful, wonderful artist, Ignacio [Noé], to do the illustrations,” he said on Friday. “Nobody edited anything I wrote or what he drew, and so, it’s really a piece of work done by two people. … It was just me and Ignacio’s story, and that doesn’t happen today. It’s an anti-algorithm thing, like, there’s no committee and there’s no computer up in Seattle that’s poll-testing it.”

Cusack debuted his first graphic novel at SDCC on Friday.

“It’s not ‘on brand.’ It’s more like a brand-buster,” he told Forbes ahead of his panel. “It is based on a true story. It’s all in recently declassified files that I managed to obtain.”

Cusack, who hinted to Forbes that he is already working on a sophomore book with Noé, further detailed his motivation for pivoting into the literary industry.

“Back when I was starting to make movies, you would find people who had aspirations to do something totally unique, not just installments in a franchise or something that fit their business strategy,” he stated. “I wanted to do something like movies from a different era, and no matter what happens, if someone reads it and likes it, I count that as a success.”

Cusack has notably been acting since the 1980s, beginning with his breakout role in John Hughes’ Sixteen Candles. He later starred in films such as Say Anything, High Fidelity, Must Love Dogs, Serendipity and America’s Sweethearts.

In the years since his film success, Cusack has stepped back from the stoplight.

“I was lucky that I never had the desire, or no one asked me to do any sequels. There’s one that I think would be interesting to do, which would be 1408,” he quipped during a Say Anything screening last year, per People. “Just because … I think today, you know, most movies suck. There’s still the horror psychological, you know, that Rod Serling kinda stuff. That’s still pretty pure. If you can pull off something like that, it’s fun.”