Or a version by John Byrne, that would be hilarious.
More movie comic talk! Here comes JohnJ with
“Plus comic adaptations of movies also bear the occasional mistake by the artist. Kirby putting a helmet on Bowman in ‘2001’ before the explosive bolts scene still rankles me. Not as much because he did it but for the fact that God knows how many people saw the art before publication and nobody caught it? I have to believe Kirby would have appreciated the opportunity to fix that but if nobody told him, how could he?”
Ah, yes, the famous Jack Kirby adaptation of Kubrick’s film:
If you haven’t had a chance to check out this treasury edition, do yourself a favor and track down a copy. It may be the Kirbiest thing that’s ever Kirbied. Giant pages filled with King Jack doing cosmic space stuff as only he could. I had a copy of this myself for many years, though I gave it up to a customer whose need was greater than mine for the book and…yes, I occasionally regret it. But passing along the Kirby love to another person is, I think, a worthy sacrifice.
Plus I’m hoping for a reprint of this comic at some point, even possibly from DC Comics due to various rights shenanigans that I mentioned in this post here. Getting it all on nice paper under a hardcover with a fresh recoloring…ah, that would be nice.
JohnJ brings up the storytelling error in the comic, which, well, What Can You Do™? Bobody’s nerfect, not even the King, but at the very least we can take solace in the fact that it was a brilliantly illustrated error.
The Wikipedia section on this adaptation brings up a few other issues/differences worth noting:
“…differs in the fact that Kirby incorporated additional dialog from two other sources: the Clarke/Kubrick novel and a copy of an earlier draft script of the film that included the more colloquial-sounding version of HAL 9000, as originally voiced by actor Martin Balsam before Douglas Rain took over. In addition, the comic narrative captions describe the characters’ thoughts and feelings, a significantly different approach from that taken by the film.”
First, I wish I had a copy of this comic still, so I could go through and pick out some samples of HAL’s dialogue, because that would probably be amusing. And I’ve said before that the comic’s captions go out of the way to explain to you exactly what’s happening in the story:
It’s the same story, told with almost the exact opposite tone of the film. Which is great, of course. I love the movie, and I loved this adaptation. I can’t imagine anyone else taking on the task of squeezing this movie into a comic book, but that may very well be just because this is the version that’s been with us for decades. Who else at the time could do it justice? Al Williamson? Steranko? Okay, Jim Starlin just came to mind and I would pay real gosh-danged American money to see what he’d do with it.
Or Steve Ditko. A Steve Ditko adaptation of 2001. Just wrap your mind around that, effendi.
Okay, that went a little longer than planned. So more movie comic discussion soon, but in the meantime, a statement: Len Wein, Herb Trimpe, and John Romita Sr. created Wolverine. An editor trying to horn in as a “co-creator” for some larger paydays for himself is a load of crap. That’s not how it works, Roy.
And that’s this site’s official position on the topic.