John Cusack is back in the spotlight.
The 60-year-old actor made a rare appearance at the San Diego Comic-Con on Friday (July 24) to introduce his new graphic novel, Momo.
While speaking to Variety, John explained why he pivoted away from his acting career to start writing.
“Well, I always thought they were the closest things to film, really,” John said. “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.’”
Momo is a heist and road trip story set in 1972 with an extraterrestrial twist
“I got this beautiful, wonderful artist, Ignacio [Noé], to do the illustrations,” John shared. “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.”
He then told Forbes, “It’s not ‘on brand.’ It’s more like a brand-buster. It is based on a true story. It’s all in recently declassified files that I managed to obtain.”
John also hinted that he’s working on a second book.
“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.”
Earlier this year, John made another rare public appearance at the 2026 Oscars to help honor his late The Sure Thing director Rob Reiner.
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