‘MOMO’ Review: John Cusack’s Wild Conspiracy Graphic Novel

John Cusack writing a graphic novel was enough to get my attention before I knew a single thing about MOMO. Then I found out it involved two fugitives, Jackie Gleason, Richard Nixon, aliens, government conspiracies, occult weirdness, and eventually some very large cosmic problems. Okay. Sure.

I genuinely did not know what I was walking into with this one, and that was part of the appeal. I like when someone comes into comics from a completely different creative background and decides to make something weird instead of playing it safe. With Cusack teaming up with artist Ignacio Noé, MOMO definitely has its own identity.

MOMO is John Cusack’s first graphic novel, created with Argentine artist Ignacio Noé and letterer Taylor Esposito. It blends crime, science fiction, political satire, conspiracy theories, occult ideas, dark comedy, and eventually full-on cosmic absurdity into one very strange road trip through 1972 America.

If that sounds like a lot, congratulations. You understand MOMO.

Wait, John Cusack Wrote a Comic?

Yes, that John Cusack. Cusack has been acting for decades, with movies like Say Anything, Grosse Pointe Blank, High Fidelity, Con Air, and Love & Mercy making up just a small part of his career. That background is actually pretty important here because MOMO does not feel like someone approaching comics from the usual direction.

Cusack has talked about being drawn to graphic novels because of how closely the medium can resemble filmmaking. You are choosing the shots, controlling what the audience sees, and building the story visually, but without needing a movie studio and a massive budget to make it happen. Once you know that, MOMO makes a lot more sense.

There are stretches of the book that feel less like traditional comic storytelling and more like scenes from some forgotten 1970s road movie. Characters spend time talking in cars, strange people drift in and out of the story, bursts of violence interrupt long conversations, and the whole thing slowly becomes more surreal as Johnson and Tina Louise get deeper into whatever is happening around them.

The project also grew out of film ideas Cusack had been playing with before it became a graphic novel, and you can definitely feel that cinematic DNA throughout.

What Is MOMO About?

The story begins in 1972 with a man named Johnson standing in front of a congregation dressed as a priest. Then people start shooting at him, so we are off to a healthy start.

Johnson escapes and jumps into a car driven by a mysterious woman wearing a wig who seems determined to answer every reasonable question as cryptically as possible. Her name is Tina Louise, although the book takes its time even giving us that much.

We eventually learn Johnson is not actually a priest. He has been framed for stealing money from some very dangerous people and is now on the run. Tina Louise has problems of her own and works for a man who sends her on unusual assignments, so she comes to the conclusion that maybe the two of them can help each other.

This eventually leads to another job involving a military base in Florida and something connected to Jackie Gleason. Specifically, an alien artifact.

There is actually some real-world conspiracy lore behind this. Gleason was famously fascinated by UFOs, and his second wife later claimed that Richard Nixon once took him to a military base and showed him extraterrestrial bodies. It is obviously an unverified story, but it became one of the ideas Cusack used as a jumping-off point for MOMO.

From there, the story gets much bigger than two fugitives trying to survive a strange job. Government conspiracies, Nixon, aliens, theology, occult ideas, Antonin Artaud, bizarre creatures, and increasingly cosmic forces all start becoming part of the same journey.

There Might Be Too Much MOMO in MOMO

This is where things got complicated for me because I really liked the initial setup. Johnson and Tina Louise meeting under completely ridiculous circumstances, neither one entirely trusting the other, and then getting pulled toward this bizarre Jackie Gleason conspiracy is exactly the kind of thing that should work for me.

The problem is that MOMO keeps expanding its scope until almost every idea feels like it is competing with another idea for attention.

What starts as a strange crime story becomes conspiracy fiction, political satire, science fiction, theology, occult mystery, and cosmic absurdity. The book is intentionally genre-bending, so that constant evolution is part of what Cusack is trying to do, but I found myself much more interested in some pieces than others.

The early road-trip material was where I connected with it the most. Johnson and Tina Louise have an odd energy together, and the 1970s setting gives their journey this paranoid quality where everyone feels like they might know more than they are saying. Once the story starts widening into something much larger, that connection became harder for me to hold onto.

There are a lot of conversations about big ideas here too, and I can see that being a major selling point for some readers. Cusack is clearly interested in politics, religion, power, American mythology, conspiracy culture, and the strange ways people try to make sense of the world around them.

I just did not always need all of those things happening at the same time. Sometimes I wanted MOMO to stay with one idea long enough for me to really care about it before introducing the next one.

Ignacio Noé Is the Best Part

What worked much more consistently for me was Ignacio Noé’s art. There is this rough, painterly quality to the book that fits the setting perfectly. The roads, cars, motel rooms, bars, military spaces, landscapes, and characters all look slightly worn down in a way that makes MOMO feel like something pulled out of another era.

It has a pulp quality without looking like someone is simply trying to imitate old comics. That becomes even more important as the story gets stranger. Noé has to move between relatively ordinary scenes of people talking or driving and imagery involving aliens, occult figures, surreal environments, and eventually much larger cosmic ideas. Somehow it all still feels like it belongs to the same world.

The facial work especially helps because so much of MOMO involves people talking around each other. Characters are suspicious, irritated, confused, amused, or clearly hiding something, and Noé gives those scenes enough personality that they do not just become pages of dialogue.

There is also something about his style that makes the entire book feel slightly uncomfortable, which is exactly what this story needs. Nothing feels completely clean or safe. Even normal moments have this layer of paranoia sitting underneath them.

It Really Does Feel Like a Movie

The film influence ended up being one of the more interesting parts of the book for me because it explains both what works and what sometimes frustrated me.

Cusack clearly thinks in scenes. There are sequences that feel like conversations from an independent movie, moments where characters just sit inside the weirdness for a while, and then sudden shifts into action or something much more surreal.

That confidence is probably easier to understand when you look at the movies Cusack has spent his career making. Grosse Pointe Blank could jump between crime, violence, romance, and absurd comedy without treating those things like they belonged in separate movies. High Fidelity was extremely conversational and perfectly comfortable letting characters live inside their own heads.

I would not say MOMO is directly influenced by either of those movies because Cusack has not said that, but I can understand how decades of working in film shaped the way he approaches storytelling here.

There are scenes where I wondered if the strange pacing or long stretches of dialogue would play differently with actors delivering them, music underneath, and a camera controlling exactly how long we sit in each moment.

That might be part of why the book did not completely work for me as a comic even though I understood what it was trying to do.

I Can See Who This Is For

The thing about MOMO is that I can easily imagine someone loving exactly the parts that frustrated me.

If you enjoy conspiracy fiction, political satire, 1970s paranoia, surreal storytelling, theology, strange historical rabbit holes, and books that are perfectly happy to change genres halfway through the journey, there is a lot here to dig into. It is ambitious. It is weird. It has a point of view.

And honestly, I would rather see someone like Cusack come into comics and make something this specific than slap his name on a completely safe story that could have been written by anyone.

There is clearly something personal in the way he approaches the material. MOMO is interested in America as this strange combination of mythology, celebrity, politics, fear, religion, entertainment, and conspiracy, and using Jackie Gleason and Richard Nixon as a doorway into all of that is certainly a choice (a completely insane choice, but a memorable one).

For another Mad Cave book that plays with conspiracies and increasingly strange discoveries, we had a much easier time getting lost in Dark Pyramid, which starts around Mount Denali before heading into monsters and cosmic weirdness. And if you want Mad Cave horror that keeps the focus tighter on its main character, Orla! turns modern dating anxiety into something considerably more monstrous.

And if nothing else, John Cusack made me spend part of my day researching whether Richard Nixon showed Jackie Gleason alien bodies. Comics are educational.