'NOS4A2' Is A Smart And Creepy Take On Joe Hill's Terrifying Novel [WonderCon 2019]

While the essence and tone of the story remains the same on-page and on-screen, readers of Hill's more-than-700-page book will notice there are differences as well. "My task was to stick as closely to the book as I possibly could while still making a television show," O'Brien explained during the panel. "In the first third of the book, Vic is a kid, and the story is also really compelling and super dramatic, and I wanted to show every moment of it. That said, I knew that we were going to cast an adult actor, so I thought let's just say that maybe Vic gets her powers later."And the change works; the major things that impact Vic—her parents, her drawing, her bike (well, dirt bike in the TV show), the covered bridge—remain the same.  And her journey to discovering her powers—the pain behind her left eye, how she first "found" the covered bridge when her parents were fighting—remains intact. Fans of the book will see Hill's story here, even if Vic's age is different.There are other differences between the show and the book, of course, and most of the changes make sense and work well. In the first episode, for example, we get to see more of Vic's life in Haverhill, Massachusetts than we do in the novel. We see her at school (where a certain Bing Partridge, played by Olafur Darri Olafsson, works as the janitor), and we see her hanging out with her peers. The show also uses her relationship with Willa, her rich friend, to really hammer home the classicism in her town (something that's not touched on much in the book). When Vic mingles with Willa's other friends at a house party, she is the black sheep of the group (literally – she's dressed in black while everyone else looks like they're in a J. Crew catalog) because doesn't have rich, college-educated parents. And while sometimes the messaging here is a bit heavy-handed (there's a flirty/teen-angsty moment with one of Willa's rich snotty guy friends that made me cringe), the focus on the class divide adds another dimension to Vic's world that fits into who she is as a character and how that will shape her actions in the future.Other differences include seeing scrabble-loving librarian Maggie Leigh in the first episode (she doesn't show up in the book until much later), and spending time with Charlie Manx's pre-Bing wingman before he gets thrown to the curb. More changes are sure to pop up as the season progresses, but fans of the Hill's work won't be disappointed—the parts you love, the parts that matter, are all there.