I love the intention behind this book: to use the graphic novel format to bring to life an unproduced movie concept by Salvador Dali and Harpo Marx, Giraffes on Horseback Salad. Frank and his collaborators go the extra mile, building from a 14-page treatment prepared for MGM, as well as Dali's translated journals and concept sketches, and imbuing additional meaning from Dali's own life. They even convene a writer's room to "break" the script and compose songs as if Cole Porter had written them. Manuela Pertega brings the story to life with her art that combines more modern surrealist/comic book sensibilities with more of a black-and-white storyboard style.

As expected, the concept for the movie is very weird, but it also gets repetitive in the telling, with the point made quite on the nose in several places. This seems faithful to what Dali and Harpo Marx had intended, but is also just a bit challenging to get through, and you can understand why the studio didn't think the movie would work. Still, it's very cool to see what could've been and I appreciate the effort the team went to to make this happen.