Comic-Book of the Week: 2001: A Space Odyssey (Marvel, Issue #2/Jan. 1977)

This is the short-lived 2001: A Space Odyssey series “based on concepts of the 1968 MGM movie by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke.”

Just imagine attempting to capture the age-spanning awe of 2001: A Space Odyssey every month, and you get an idea of what height this comic aspired to reach.

In particular, I’m remembering issue # 2, from January of 1977, written, drawn and edited by the great Jack Kirby. 

In this “startling second issue” of a comic that urged readers to “begin a new journey to the stars - and beyond,” we are treated to the fascinating tale of “Vira, the She Demon.” 

The story begins in prehistoric Italy -- a land dotted by live volcanoes -- as Vira, a “non-submissive female” in the words of Kirby, attempts to survive in a totally inhospitable environment. She is dying of starvation until she encounters the Monolith. 

This strange alien tool/being imbues her with the knowledge of “fear,” and she hence sets herself up as the fierce She-Demon Goddess of a local tribe. Terrified of this pretend-God, the tribe's men house Vira and hunt game for her, and in return she leads them with wisdom...forming mankind’s first government.

Fast forward to the 21st century and we meet astronaut Vera Gentry, of Explorer Unit 5, now stationed on Ganymede. A race of vicious alien hunters destroy her life support and shelter, and like Vira the She Demon so long ago, she flees, only to encounter the Monolith.

This time, the Monolith whisks her off into a world of her own (just like David Bowman’s sitting room in the famous movie...). In her own environs, including a swimming pool she once owned, Vera Gentry ages to 102 years old before ultimately transforming into a Star Child, a so-called “New Seed.”

Wow. Trippy stuff. It was an audacious move to begin a comic-book line based on a film that had few interesting characters, little dialogue, and which jumped from time-period to time-period with regularity, but I wager Jack Kirby was just the talent to do it. This issue apes 2001 by starting at the “dawn of man,” (like the film...) leaping to the year 2001 (like the film...) and then on and beyond into the “future of man” - just like the film. The enigmatic black Monolith, as one can tell from this summary, is a key player, a catalyst, and agent of transformation.

Apparently, it wasn’t long before Marvel's editors realized this sort of story was going to be awfully difficult to sustain every issue. I mean, how many times can you repeat the same tale as the movie? The anthology format essentially meant there was nothing recurring for comic-readers to latch onto each month except....philosophy and the general concept. Therefore, in later issues, such as the final one, number # 10, Kirby went in new directions, focusing on a character named “Mister Machine,” and avoiding the Monolith. In the "Monolith Mail" page of that book, the editors wanted to gauge reader response. Should they focus on Mister Machine as a central character or continue the anthology format? Alas, we'll never know where the comic-book might have finally gone...

So why remember Kirby’s 2001: A Space Odyssey comic today? Well, first of all, it was daring. This wasn’t Star Wars where you could take Luke Skywalker to a water planet one issue, then team him up with a giant green bunny for a pastiche of The Magnificent Seven the next. Kirby’s take on 2001 was a bold idea that relied on the notion that fans would be interested in real science fiction stories, even ones not held together or connected with recurring characters.

Also, I’m a sucker for Kirby’s unique art design. Why hasn’t some clever filmmaker faithfully adapted his style to cinema? His concepts and designs are inherently cinematic, and totally different from anything we’ve yet seen captured on the silver screen. Anyway, that’s another story. I just really believe that Kirby’s comics accurately captured the nature of the 2001: A Space Odyssey universe (with a nod to Marvel’s Watcher thrown in too...), and I wanted to champion that accomplishment.

After all, 2001 is an odd and beautiful film, one with a minimum of talking, but oh such remarkable imagery. We all remember the scene where an ape-man in the past throws a bone into the air and we leap forward to a bone-shaped orbital spaceship, right? Well, Kirby constantly presented panels like that in the comic-book, leaping us from century-to-century with the same kind of visionary touch. Original? Nah, it was Kubrick’s imagination translated to a comic, but it was translated in interesting fashion nonetheless, and Kirby’s art certainly made it feel original, that’s for sure.

So let’s hear it for doing something bold and different in comics. It’s easy to do a Star Trek, Star Wars, or Battlestar Galactica in comic form, but 2001: A Space Odyssey? That’s just a crazy notion, and Marvelous Marvel’s been there and done that.

Comic Book of the Week: Blade Runner (Marvel; 1982)

In October of 1982, Marvel Comics released "the official comics adaptation of the hit film" Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott. 

Setting aside the crazy marketing hyperbole (because Blade Runner was not a hit film at all on release in the summer of 1982...), I've always found this two-issue adaptation of the tech noir classic to be one of Marvel's finest movie-to-comic efforts.

Adapted by Archie Goodwin and drawn by Al Williamson and Carlos Garzon, the comic version of Blade Runner evidences an unusually high-degree of fidelity to the film's visuals. 

If you've seen Blade Runner (and I assume you have...), you understand immediately why that's so important. Blade Runner creates a distinctive mood and texture through its imaginative (yet wholly believable) visualizations of a future "dark city."

Just ponder Blade Runner for a minute, and your mind will fill with indelible images of incessant rain; neon signs, vast "talking" billboards on the sides of incredible skyscrapers, flying cars and the like. 

From the gleaming, smoking city-scape of the future, to the palatial penthouse of the Tyrell Building, Blade Runner proves itself one of the most visually unique and accomplished science fiction efforts in the cinema's history. Marvel seems to get that; it takes precious few liberties with the film's aura or production design.

One pertinent example: Marvel is the outfit that could never quite get the look of William Shatner's Captain Kirk right in Star Trek; but the artists here do a bang-up job of making Rick Deckard look exactly like Harrison Ford. Indeed, all of the likenesses to the cast are eerily, commendably good.

A good comic-book adaptation of a film doesn't just live and die by the visuals, but also by the way it successfully opens up a story we've experienced already; thus showing audiences something familiar and different at the same time. 

Here, again, I find Blade Runner quite an achievement. For instance, during one of the film's exposition-heavy early scenes (involving Deckard and his boss, Bryant), the comic-book actually cuts to images of the information/data Bryant is relating about the escaped Replicants.

When Bryant describes Roy Batty's history ("They used Roy Batty in every off world conflict in the last three years. He'd flown Gypsy ships with the Russians at Tannhauser Gate and been with the squadron of Night Timers in the wars near Jupiter..."), we see frames of burning spaceships, in planetary orbit.

It's just one more way to open up Blade Runner's world, but a powerful one. I remember when I first saw the film thinking about the incessant advertisements (carried on blimps...) for life "off world." That idea carried such import for me: who would stay behind in this overpopulated, nihilistic world? And what kind of life did the "off world" promise? Well, obviously someone at Marvel thought about that too, and inserted this nice little explanatory frame about Batty's outer space exploits as a "super soldier."

On the downside, the Marvel comic includes the theatrical version's hammy voice-over narration (though it reads better on the page than it did on the screen), as well as the sort-of-unbelievable ending sequence featuring Deckard and Rachel heading off to a natural northwestern paradise (really left-over stock footage from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining [1980]).

So far, Marvel hasn't offered an official adaptation of the "director's cut," so don't expect any unicorns.

What I'm Reading Now: Parallel Man (2014)

Author Jeffrey Morris and the artists at Future Dude unveil Parallel Man -- a seven issue comic-book mini-series from ComiXology (and Diamond Comics) -- on October 8^th. The story arc is titled “Invasion America” and involves an alternate, totalitarian version of the U.S.A. that attempts to enslave and exploit our reality, here.

The narrative commences with some historical explanation. In one alternate world, America -- instead of inventing the atom bomb in the 1940s -- discovered the technology to travel between parallel universes. 

Many alternate Earths have already been classified and conquered by these imperialists, and the first issue shows readers Gamma 31, a strange alternate Earth where giant mushrooms are the dominant life-form. 

Another alternate Earth, previously unclassified, is a world where the dinosaurs never went extinct, and man never rose to dominance.

Some of the best passages in the first issue involve the premise that our quantum reality is next in line to be subjugated. Our Air Force One is attacked while in flight, captured, and forced down in the “other” reality.

In short order, President Obama is introduced to his “new leader,” an arrogant tyrant named Warren Cartwright. Our Commander-in-Chief is told in no uncertain terms that he must surrender his world, or be destroyed. This passage of the story plays as gripping “what if” thriller, and is handled with a crisp, compelling sense of verisimilitude.

The remainder of the issue introduces our hero, Nick Morgan, and moves at lightning-fast velocity as he attempts to unravel the mysteries of Cartwright’s master plan: the Ascendancy. 

The art work and narrative approach in Parallel Man reminds me a lot of early 1960s “can do” futurism, an era before our politics and our belief in ourselves became so small. And with dinosaurs, giant mushrooms, parallel universes, heroic secret agents, and nefarious conspiracies, Parallel Man feels like an ingenious mash-up of Land of the Lost, Land of the Giants, Star Trek, The X-Files and Danger Man.  There's both a retro and futuristic feel to the whole enterprise, and Parallel Man moves with confidence, purpose and quite a bit of style.

I look forward to issue number two, to see how the compelling story-line develops….

Comic Book Review: The Rest of Heaven Was Blue (2013)

Tomorrow, Top Cow releases The Rest of Heaven Was Blue, a new graphic novel written by Matthew Wilkins, and featuring art from Emmanuel Xerx Javier.  The comic depicts a story set during the Vietnam War, and opens each chapter with a quote from haunting literary works such as Poe's The Black Cat, or Dante's Inferno.

The Rest of Heaven Was Blue finds a group of American soldiers assigned to round-up local villagers and secure the area.  The mission quickly descends into savagery and violence, despite the best efforts of a soldier named Wayne.  He hopefully hands out leaflets to the endangered villagers and functions, according to the dialogue, as a "one man civilian affairs program."  

Another soldier, Garrett, watches the violence perpetrated by his fellow American soldiers, and participates in it to some degree, but also undergoes an existential crisis.  In a world of light and dark, he finds himself "wandering through the blurred margins," grappling with his duty to his fellow soldiers, but also his duty to humanity at large.

Garrett is so troubled by the actions of his fellow soldiers -- and also by his own inaction in the face of their bloody behavior -- that he finds sleep impossible to achieve.  The "blessing of rest" eludes him.  

Worse, he begins to see strange sights in the jungle.  A fellow soldier seems to return to twisted life as a zombie.  And a dark figure with glowing eyes -- Garrett's so-called "Shadow Companion" -- is never far away, dwelling in the periphery of his world...

The Rest of Heaven Was Blue is an intense story featuring some very violent imagery, and yet the violence serves a noble thematic purpose.  

The narrative grapples meaningfully with the idea of how we, as individuals, react in the presence of wanton (and yet sanctioned...) violence.  

What happens when we can't escape what we've done, or what, through inaction, we've permitted to happen?  

The bloody and persistent violence featured here essentially lands the reader in Garrett's situation, and makes him or her question individual senses of morality.  Indeed, the graphic novel comments on its own nature, actually, when the author notes: "It's said that Heaven hides nothing from our view.  And neither does the deep tract of Hell."   

Garrett's curse is that he must witness everything (along with the reader...) -- far beyond his capacity to process in terms of right and wrong -- and the nightmare seems unending, so much so that the soldier fears he has finally tread "beyond the mercy of Heaven."  His final choice in the book reflects that terror.

The Rest of Heaven Was Blue seems to desire to probe deeply into American history and into many unquestioned assumptions about our behavior as a nation and as a people.  

In the former series, a Native-American "curse" was apparently enacted through the white man's ubiquitous mistreatment of nature.  In The Rest of Heaven Was Blue, Garrett begins to feel that he and his fellow man have, similarly, "tainted everything."  Interestingly, both narratives are historical horror tales, and also eke out territory as morality plays as well.

The Rest of Heaven Was Blue also plays a lot like a Twilight Zone episode ("The Purple Testament,") or perhaps Jacob's Ladder (1990) in terms of its wartime setting, and in the questions raised about death, and about personal responsibility in an arena where group-think dominates.  The graphic novel makes for a splendid, visceral read, and the blood-stained imagery is unforgettable.  

What pleases me most, however -- as it pleased me with To Hell You Ride -- is the idea of the horror genre deployed as a vehicle for human tales of honest inquisitiveness and speaking truth to power.

You can read The Rest of Heaven Was Blue at Comixology, and also here.