John Cusack is moving into graphic novels with Momo, a debut book set for release on September 29, 2026 from Mad Cave Studios. He calls it a “brand-buster,” and says the project is meant to do the opposite of the kind of celebrity-branded comic that readers have come to expect.
That is why the book is drawing attention now: Cusack is set to introduce it at a Comic-Con panel on Friday, July 26, putting the project in front of fans long before its 2026 release. The timing also gives the actor a new kind of launch pad, one that treats the book as a serious creative turn rather than a side project.
Momo is illustrated by Ignacio Noé and set in 1972, where Johnson and Tina Louise team up with Doc in a story that mixes a buddy tale, a heist, a road trip and sci-fi elements. The plot centers on a captured alien head in the custody of Richard Nixon’s government, a premise Cusack says is grounded in material he obtained from recently declassified files. Mark Leyner wrote the foreword.
That is where the book gets stranger, and more interesting. Cusack says the story is “based on a true story” and tied to “recently declassified files,” but the finished pitch also leans hard into postmodern influences, history and conspiracy theories. The result is meant to sit somewhere between older Hollywood films and mid-1990s-era Grant Morrison-style comics, while still making room for the kind of absurd, genre-mixing energy that most celebrity graphic novels avoid.
Cusack has also said he is already planning a second graphic novel with Noé, which suggests Momo is not a one-off experiment. For now, the immediate milestone is the panel launch and the September 29, 2026 release date, but the sharper question is whether the first book lands strongly enough to turn this into a longer creative run.
