The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 74: 2001: A Space Odyssey #7, June 1977

A short entry today, as I only have about 5 minutes before this post is officially late! Kirby gives us a story of one of the New Seeds that he's been introducing for the last 6 issues, and it basically plays God and creates new life. We get some thought bubbles from the being, which, as it was in vernacular English, I have to admit takes away from the mystery of these weird little beings a bit. There's a nice Kirby full-page shot of planets linked by giant technological devices, but aside from that, this issue is pretty anti-climactic, especially considering that this is the last issue of the series in which we'll get an investigation of the New Seeds.

Yep, that's it. Short entry. Another break from 2001 tomorrow. Perhaps I'll just pick something at random from my Archie Comics section.

See you tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 73: 2001: A Space Odyssey #6, May 1977

Kirby continues today with his tribute to those of us who are superheroes in our heads and hearts, if not occasionally in reality. For someone who, really, spent a lot of his later career not really working on superheroes, he's certainly got a soft spot, at least, for the people who love them. Harvey Norton's odyssey continues through some very exciting interstellar chase scenes with an alien woman who, in a surprising twist, does not either speak English or have a  universal translator of some kind. He helps her escape a pursuing force of similar aliens, and refers to her as "Princess" in lieu of a proper name, but I couldn't help but wonder, as he get no back story, whether or not Harvey had chosen the wrong side. Perhaps this woman was a hardened criminal, and the fact that she seems to abandon him at the end of the story doesn't do much for my opinion of her.

If that's the case, and I'm leaning fairly heavily toward there being something sinister in this alien's back story, what does this mean for Kirby's presentation of the superhero fan? Are we too optimistic, too trusting? Is this a reactionary story against DC, with whom Kirby had acrimoniously broken around the time of his penning 2001? Possibly, but hard to argue from a single issue.

There was one page in this issue that I thought was some of the best Kirby art I've seen. I love his conception of space as being full of movement and colour, and when he mixes in some bizarre alien architecture, it's really a treat for the eyes:

That's it for today. I'll likely continue on with 2001 tomorrow, the last issue before Machine Man takes over the title. Then a break for some other stuff, I think. See you tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 72: 2001: A Space Odyssey #5, April 1977

When I first started reading the Harry Potter series, shortly after the fourth book came out, I found myself getting annoyed with the repetitive Harry vs. some aspect of Voldemort stories. I felt like it was a bit of a cop-out to have the same confrontation taking place over and over through progressively longer and longer pieces of fiction. It was only after I had it explained to me that that confrontation was the very point of the whole series that I was able to reconfigure the way I was looking at the stories and see them as a whole.

I keep hoping to have a similar revelation in this comic series, but I just don't think it's going to happen.

That said, the opening of this comic is one of the most wonderfully metatextual pieces of comics I've ever read. As the adventure is taking place in the panels, the captions offer not simply commentary or exposition, but this: "The race against time is inevitable. Each hero strains his every faculty to effect the last minute rescue...it is a time-honored tradition!" To this point in the story, it's not quite clear why the narrative voice of the captions is drawing our attention to the constructedness of the adventure, but it's eventually explained by Harvey Norton's visit to "Comicsville," an interactive adventure emporium.

(A brief note: my copy of this comic has a torn cover that completely removes the facade of "Comicsville" you can see on that cover, so I really had no idea what was going on when I first read this issue.)

What's more interesting, I think, about this metafictional moment is that it's Jack Kirby writing it. The tropes he references, the traditions he highlights....he created them. Or, at least, had a large role in their propagation and proliferation. It's easy for a contemporary comics writer to draw our attention to the conventions of the superhero genre, but that writer is doing so from a perspective very similar to that of his or her reader. Superheroes are something that we have grown up with, so we can recognize and appreciate the attention to these conventions. But Kirby is one of a select few who draw attention to these conventions because he had a fundamental place in their creation. If we were to look back to the earliest Captain America comics, it's likely we would see some of these conventions already fully-formed.

So what is Kirby doing with this piece? The whole of 2001, up to this point, has been about moving past the restrictions of the past (or the present) and into the possibility of the future. So is the metatextual moment of this comic a celebration or a denigration? The story moves fairly rapidly from completely fabricated superhero narrative to real adventure in a science fiction setting. In some respects, then, we could read this as a commentary on the proliferation of superhero comics and their subjugation of other genres within the medium. That White Zero/Norton encounters the Monolith within his superheroic fantasy, an encounter that spurs him to leave that fantasy and live a real adventure certainly seems to be a critical look at the superhero genre. It's hard to say, but it makes me want to read some of Kirby's other work from this era to see if the argument I've just laid out can be upheld.

That aside, the story really is the same one we've read in the last 4 issues. The twist in this one is that the story takes place in the far-flung future of 2040 A.D., and Norton actually refers to the Monoliths that appeared 40 years in his past. We are witnessing a future that exists after the advents of the various New Seeds, both the Bowman-seed of the film and the Kirby-penned ones of the previous issues. And it's not a nice future. This begs the question of what the whole point of the evolution of humanity at this point in time is supposed to accomplish if the majority of humankind is consigned to "a vast community sheltered by an astrodome" to keep out the smog that "years of apathy have allowed...to thicken until it remains to foul the air for centuries to come." It's just the New Seeds who get to flit about in the stars while everyone else continues to suffer on Earth.

The fact that, three issues from now, Kirby changes the focus of the book, gives us Machine Man, and then cancels this title and spins off into a new title makes me think that maybe he was asking this question as well, and didn't have a great answer. Or, as was long his wont, he just got tired of telling one kind of story and moved on to another.

That's all for today. See you tomorrow for a bit more of "Norton of New York, 2040 A.D."

The 40 Years of Comics Project: Day 62 - 2001: A Space Odyssey #4, March 1977

Okay, so I know it's verging on sacrilege to say this, but....meh.

I guess this is why the series didn't last particularly long. After a 2-part tale of early humans (including, of course, the Monolith's inauguration of the Bronze Age), with a tiny little 6-page leap into the year 2001, the same story is told, but this time doesn't work for some reason. The descendant of Marek (named Herb Marik) doesn't evolve into a New Seed, even though he fulfills all the requirements that previous characters have.

I'm also not quite following Kirby's timelines here, unless he's setting each of these stories in a different universe. Marik's discovery of the Monolith in 2001 is hailed as the first contact with alien life, even though every story before this one has involved contact with alien life, both monolithic and otherwise.

I'm trying to be open-minded about this title, and I can absolutely see where Kirby wants to go with it. The Monolith is a useful metaphor for thinking about the force of evolution, of destiny. But exploration of a metaphor requires more than simply reiterating the metaphor over and over again. We need to understand why it's a good metaphor, what particular things it's wrapping up in itself, or that we're wrapping up in it.

But his art, still, is great. Moving on to something else tomorrow, I think. I'll put 2001 on hold for a little while.

The 40 Years of Comics Project: Day 61 - 2001: A Space Odyssey #3, February 1977

Sorry. I don't have anything to say about this issue. The art is, as usual, beautiful and dynamic. But I can see where this is going. It's a two-part story, so I'll finish it off tomorrow, but then I think I'm going to take a break from 2001. Kirby's premise seems to be that every major advancement in human history has to do with the Monolith, and that every person who comes into contact with it begins a bloodline that, come 2001, ends in a "New Seed." Which, really, takes away from the grandeur of the original story. If there's a whole bunch of these evolved humans, then what makes Dave Bowman so special? Nothing, really.

So, yeah, this was another gorgeous-looking Kirby title wrapped around a thinly-veiled duplication of the original 2001: A Space Odyssey story. I can see why, once he creates Machine Man in issue #8 that Marvel decided to move the character to its own title.

I feel bad not posting much today, but I'm really put out with this comic. I had considered earlier in this project what it would be like to read visually impressive work that had a mediocre story, but I wasn't expecting it to come from Kirby. I've been reading scholarship about American Realism in the late 19th century, and how the word of Theodore Dreiser went from popular to criticized for his clunky prose, and back to acclaimed and canonized over the course of the 20th century. I wonder sometimes if this is what Kirby's place in comics history will turn out to be. His art is wonderful, but its meshing with the prose portions of the story are clunky, at best. But that clunkiness has an energy that is reflective of the energy of his visual storytelling. I'll ponder this a bit more.

See you tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project: Day 59 - 2001: A Space Odyssey #2, January 1977

So, this issue is, basically, exactly the same story as the previous one, but with a female protagonist. Early human is granted inspiration by the Monolith, overcomes her stone-age dilemma, and then we are transported millennia into the future where her descendant is pursued by aliens (did I forget to mention the aliens in the previous issue?) until she stumbles upon the Monolith, is transported to another place and becomes The (A?) New Seed.

I've only read bits and pieces of the series before, but I seriously hope that it's not simply a matter of Kirby retelling the story of the film over and over and over again until he eventually gets bored with it and creates Machine Man at the end of the run.

Sorry for the brevity, but I honestly don't have anything else to say. The art is Kirby-awesome, but the story is, even after only 3 iterations of it, old.

A special comic tomorrow to celebrate 60 days of the 40 Years of Comics project. Thanks for sticking around and reading. See you tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project: Day 58 - 2001: A Space Odyssey #1, December 1976

I'm not sure how much more I can say about this issue that wouldn't simply be a repetition of what I said yesterday about the treasury edition. The reason for this is that Kirby basically takes the story of 2001, the film, and retells it with a couple of different characters. For the first half of the comic we have "Beast-Killer," a proto-human who is in contact with the Monolith. His communion with the mysterious slab gifts him with the inspiration to make a knife and a spear, so that he becomes the most feared predator in his tribe. So it's basically the beginning of the movie, but probably pushed forward a few million years. That's fine, really. There are enormous temporal gaps in the narrative of 2001, and Kirby seems to have drawn inspiration from this to tell his stories. However, the vast jump to the year 2001 to witness the story of Beast-Killer's distant descendant, Woodrow Decker, and his subsequent transformation at the hands(?) of the Monolith is really just a reiteration of Dave Bowman's story at the end of the movie.

The art is, as with most Kirby stuff, lovely and dynamic, and, as I mentioned yesterday, strangely at odds with the general feel of his source material. I can only imagine that the reiteration of the original story in this issue is simply a device to demonstrate that Bowman's story, though seemingly unique, is but one of many stories of this guided evolution of humanity. I guess we'll see tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project: Day 57 - Marvel Treasury Special - 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1976

As I placed yesterday's comic back into the storage collection, I noticed that Kirby's 2001 was next up sequentially. I thought it behooved me then to read his adaptation of the film first, originally published as an over-sized tabloid treasury edition. I have to say, the format really works nicely for Kirby's art. In the final section there are some gigantic splash-pages as Bowman travels through the Monolith (I'm going to assume that there's a familiarity amongst my readers with the basic premise of the movie. It's almost 50 years old, so I think we're beyond spoiler territory).

We're all familiar with the notion of Kirby's hyper-kinetic artwork, his larger-than-life characters and movements, but to see it in a format that is larger-than-(comic)life is quite a treat. The above image measures about 13.5 inches by 20 inches (sorry, I only had an imperial ruler handy), so it's huge. Not that this means Kirby adds more detail to the picture. We could imagine this as a regular-sized splash page, or even a panel, and it would still have the same level of detail. The larger size simply allows us to be more fully-immersed in the visual dimension of the story. And, especially at this late stage in the narrative, the visual dimension is vitally important.

I have to admit, before dealing with the adaptation, that it's been decades since I've either seen the film or read the book. However, and probably those of you familiar with the movie will agree, it's not something that you forget. There's a reason that this is one of the great science fiction films of all time. That said, Kirby's adaptation is not quite the most faithful of adaptations. He spends a lot of time with the proto-humans at the beginning of the story, more than is present in the film. There are certainly shades of the themes he will investigate in Devil Dinosaur present here, and perhaps working on this project was the impetus he needed for that short-lived and too often ignored gem. Kirby also lays out for us his own interpretation of some of the mystery of the film. While the story is ostensibly about an alien influence on the evolution of humankind, the Monolith in the film is ascribed little to no agency. It simply stands. In Kirby's version of the story, it makes noise that draws the humans in. In his inimitable style, what in the film is a stark, matte slab of blackness becomes a surface filled with movement, though one reads the movement as the almost aetheric swirl of energies that must be present in this mysterious object. Further, once engaged, Kirby's version of the Monolith spews forth light and energy. Again, we can perhaps read this as a more spiritual light and energy than a purely physical one. Kirby's prose at the points where humans (and, it should be pointed out, seemingly only men) encounter the monolith careens off into his typically hyperbolic style, but in terms of the story, of the physical and spiritual evolution of the species, it works in an evangelistic kind of way. Perhaps there are things that can only be spoken about hyperbolically.

I think the biggest difference between this adaptation and the film it adapts is movement. 2001: A Space Odyssey, the film, is slow, not only in the pacing of the story, but in all the movement that happens on the screen. It is set in the airless, gravity-less, isolated realm of interplanetary space, where quiet reigns. Conversely, Kirby's version of the story, as I noted above, is kinetic. There is movement everywhere, on every page. The comic in no way gives us the sense of slowness and quiet that the film does. It instead gives us what seems to be a headlong rush to fulfillment of the Monolith's purpose, a process that, thanks to Kirby's art, speeds across the 4 million years of the story in a matter of minutes (pages?). Thus, it's a very different take on the same story, but that's the important thing to note, that it's telling the same story. Nowhere does it veer off into anything other than a tale about the evolution of humanity. As such, though it is vastly different from the visual presentation of its source material, the narrative is unchanged. The idea of adaptation is a fascinating one in comics studies, and adaptations can be either completely faithful or completely different, or anywhere between those two points. The success of an adaptation is what it brings to the source material, and how well it cleaves to the fundamentals of that material. In this, I think 2001: A Space Odyssey the comic is quite successful.

The biggest difference, though, is the promise of further tales at the end of the story. Though this is implicit in the ending of the film, in the comic we actually have a chance to see what happens next....though some of the stories that come out of the short-lived series happen prior, as we will see. I'll do the first two issues of the series over the next couple of days, and then day 60 will be one of my favourite comics, though I'm not sure which one yet.

See you tomorrow.