The Giant (Orson Welles, the Artist and the Shadow)

“Gloriously unruly...an incisive look at an artist who never recovered from the success of his youth.” —Publishers Weekly

From graphic novelist Youssef Daoudi comes a radically new look at the director of Citizen Kane and Touch of Evil: legendary filmmaker Orson Welles.

Long after his death in 1985, the shadow of Orson Welles still looms over Hollywood. By twenty-three, Welles had revolutionized theatre and radio with The War of the Worlds; by twenty-five, he had secured his place in history with his debut film, Citizen Kane. Yet four films and less than a decade later, his career suffered a spectacular collapse, and Welles, once the most promising director in America, was written off as a “would-be genius”—a bad bet in an increasingly money-conscious industry.


In The Giant, Youssef Daoudi weaves together reality and mythology to create a radical new look at one of Hollywood’s most legendary figures and poses a question as timeless as Orson Welles himself: What happens when a true artist comes up against the rest of the world?