I would dearly love to know what Arthur C. Clarke (author of the trilogy) or Stanley Kubrick (maker of the film) thought of Jack Kirbys 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY done at Marvel Comics. The books are cold hardware science fiction and the movie, for many people, is one of the most boring cinema experiences ever. Kirby adapted the film/original novel into a seventy-page comic. The tabloid-sized comic, twice the size of an ordinary comic, uses Jupiter whereas the novel used Saturn - it also incorporates elements from the screenplay, in which the computer HAL spoke more colloquially... Kirby’s depiction of the Monolith is very FANTASTIC FOUR:. An all-black space on the page would be hard to pull off, and Kirby couldnt resist depicting it more dramatically. “Kirby krackle” as it is known are overlapping dots that are supposed to look like energy, brimming over or escaping out of a technology, person, alien, whatever. Naturally the Monolith bleeds with this... As with the mysterious Monolith, Jack can’t resist depicting outer space in his flamboyant, comic book way. Instead of the mostly black void seen in the film, we now have a pageantry of effect. Removing the realism and majestic minimalism of the original film is no big deal if I can put it like that. Comics are flat paper or are at least printed on same. Kirbys elevating techniques more than shy away from realism - they charge in the opposite direction like adrenalised mustangs. Jack Kirby makes pulp of Clarke and Kubrick. Kirby adapts the long journey to the Monolith on the moon favourably - giving room to visuals deserving of this attention. In all key places where transition and spectacle are in particular emphasis, they may be said to be the case. Kirby is deeply, deeply visual. Form over content is his usual guidance and understandable technique. For any shallowness and disappointment in his adaption, the journey as goal can be a good counter argument. When the Monolith is revealed — but not shown — during a presentation, Kirby uses a large panel to show the audience’s various shocked reactions, heightening the melodrama, captions and various word balloons the order of the day. He knows to follow the smaller panels filled with exposition with this larger one, but it’s the size of the panel that emphasizes this, more than Kirby’s dialogue, captions etc. His depiction of the black Monolith, like the blackness of space, shares this wild expressionism, as I say. You get to the Moon in this comic and that is brimming with energy as well. The Monolith, to stick to that, is represented quite correctly as a black void like space itself — cool, dispassionate, featureless. Alien and frightening. Its the unknown, staring humankind smack in the face. Thats Clarke transcribed by Kubrick. Kirby adds to it. He embroiders. He does Marvel Comics. He does Kirby. The Unknown becomes recognisable to comic readers, because comic readers know Jacks act. Instead of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, in some ways, we get Kirby. Fullstop. Thats fine with me. And he went on to do a short-lived regular monthly comic utilising the continuity established here in this plus-sized insistently pulp experience. Far from tedium, I find the Kubrick movie fascinating. The novel I read long ago and perhaps mainly I recall Arthur C. Clarkes delving into the mechanical and scientific explanations for everything. It was Clarke who predicted satellite communications/transmissions such as we know now. Forget cable television. So what did Clarke and Kubrick, if they saw it, make of the comic - and its spin-off series? What did they favour? What did they turn their nose up at? Could they see any artistic merit to science fiction turned into science fantasy?
Posted on: Wed, 30 Apr 2014 22:20:05 +0000
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