2001: A Jack Kirby Odyssey

 

   "Less than half the film has dialogue. It attempts to communicate more to the subconscious and to the feelings than it does to the intellect. I think clearly that there's a basic problem with people who are not paying attention with their eyes. They're listening. And they don't get much from listening to this film. Those who won't believe their eyes won't be able to appreciate this film.
   "I tried to work things out so that nothing important was said in the dialogue, and that anything important in the film be translated in terms of action."

    -- Stanley Kubrick

I was just ten years old when I went to see "2001: A Space Odyssey" in the movie theater. By the time it was over, it's probably no surprise to hear that I didn't really know what to make of it. (From what writer David Kraft conveys in an essay on the subject, the same held true for a number of film critics--I imagine their expressions by the end of the film resembled the stills of the stupefied Dave Bowman, shaken to his core, interspersed with the "photographic effects" of the alien monolith.) Containing elements of various short stories by author Arthur C. Clarke (among them "The Sentinel," née "The Sentinel of Eternity"), the 1968 film received its novelization by Clarke that same year, and, in 1976, its comic book adaptation by artist/writer Jack Kirby during his brief return to Marvel Comics.

Yet it took me until this year to sit down with that Marvel Treasury Special (an exclusive banner which Kirby's Captain America's Bicentennial Battles also carried) which, unlike Kubrick's vehicle, was obliged to use an ample amount of dialogue and narrative to tell its story. Without having read the novel, my guess is that Kirby might have turned to it for most of his characterizations for that very reason--for instance, the "dawn of man" character named Moon-Watcher, our man-ape which discerns how to wield a skeletal bone as a club, is not named as such in the film (nor is the actor, Daniel Richter, listed in the film's credits), yet Kirby attaches Clarke's name for the simian (sans hyphen), and it wouldn't surprise me if Clarke, like Kirby, provided Moon-Watcher with some of the backstory that Kirby used for the character (the presence of his dead father, for instance). In addition, the HAL-9000 A.I. computer which so calmly interacts with Bowman and his shipmate, Frank Poole, even when asking Bowman to reconsider deconstructing his memory at the end, becomes panic-stricken and reacts helplessly in Kirby's version when the moment arrives.

Having recently pulled out my Blu-ray disc of the film and reacquainted myself with it, I was reminded of the scenes which stuck with my 10-year-old self--"takeaways," as they would be regarded today, many of which Kirby put his touch on. In the film's beginning, of course, were our man-apes--a prelude which even as a kid struck me as interminably long with its cutaways of different landscapes, tribal feuds, and simians killing time but which serves to place the monolith at the most primitive stage of man's existence. In the film, Moon-Watcher's club, hurled toward the sky, smoothly segues to a piece of technology in Earth orbit--yet Kirby makes an equally distinct impression, as the toss aligns with the trajectory of a shuttle on its way to rendezvous with a space station (to the dulcet accompaniment of the Blue Danube, no less).

(Thankfully, the station appears to have licked the artificial gravity problem, or those scenes would be moving just as slowly as the shuttle's personnel.)

In the film, Heywood Floyd (the man leading the investigation of the monolith) is amiable and approachable enough and yet, when it comes to details on the monolith, a character so reticent and tight-lipped that even his colleagues find it difficult to get past his guard. Kirby, instead, chooses to make him more casual and approachable, more reluctant than closed--and suitably awed at his first look at the artifact, moments before it would emit its sound that begets the Discovery mission toward Jupiter.

The existence of the three scientists kept in hibernation capsules which lower their bodily functions to a bare minimum is casually covered by Kubrick in an interview conducted from Earth with Bowman and Poole--their roles as "surveyors" rendering their presence on Discovery minimal, though the two men who are awake and functioning feel the other three have more information on their mission than they themselves are privy to, suspicions which Kirby broaches well ahead of time.

Poole and Bowman would be forced to raise concerns about HAL, as well, who reports on a piece of equipment that will fail in 72 hours but which checks out fine when it's pulled and examined--leading to the two men to discuss those concerns within one of the ship's resident space pods, out of "earshot" of HAL. The film would set up HAL's ability to nevertheless monitor the discussion taking place by having Bowman order HAL to rotate the pod back to its original position facing the console (from which HAL would have a clear line of sight within the pod), despite having no good reason for doing so other than to accommodate the scene--a clear oversight on the part of Bowman or Kubrick, take your pick. Kirby, however, can afford to strike that portion of the scene and cut directly to the conversation.

In the adaptation, Kirby has also chosen to establish two strikes against HAL, when the A.I. reports another malfunction--this time with the ship's radio antenna, which was the only faulty incident in the film but in Kirby's version has Poole checking out E.V.A. This time, with another false alarm, Poole's voiced intentions have the unfortunate effect of branding him a threat to the mission as far as HAL is concerned, to be dealt with accordingly.

As we've seen, Poole's death is more gruesome here than in the film, where his suit's life support was literally cut off and his flailing body was sent by the pod hurtling into space. Here, Bowman's efforts to retrieve him fail, whereas the film has Bowman returning with his body to Discovery. Again, certain segments of these incidents as well as similar ones we've come across appear to have their roots in Clarke's novel, published in the same year as the film, though the Treasury cover's captions as well as Kirby's splash page give clear indications that the story has been adapted from Kubrick's film; that said, "adaptation," of course, carries connotations which allow for alteration.

We would see more interweaving of novel and film as Bowman proceeds to take action to disable HAL, and, in the process, learns that the three scientists have met with the same fate as Poole--while Bowman would leave Discovery one last time for different reasons entirely.

Nearing the end of this drama, one notable omission which Kirby makes to his story that differs from both film and novel is that Bowman never learns any information concerning the discovery and implications of the monolith nor the true goal of the Discovery mission. Instead, he encounters the monolith while drifting in space--and the subsequent physical and mental effects he succumbs to as a result fall in line with the preliminary narrative regarding the monolith's presence on Earth, ground which Kirby has already covered and which he likely felt would be redundant at this point.

The scene then gives way to Bowman undergoing a transformation to a new form of life, which brings a sense of symmetry to the events we've witnessed on Earth 4 million years ago.

Kirby would follow up on this adaptation in December of the same year with his own ten-issue series of the same name, which also introduced the character of Machine Man and led to his own series.

At a record seventy pages, Kirby's effort here probably speaks for itself--and one of the few Treasury publications which didn't pad its page quotient with reprinted material. As indirectly mentioned, I ended up passing at the time on forking over $1.50 for the edition--a poor choice indeed, as the issue is priced nowadays at around $130 in "good" condition (your mileage may vary--an autographed copy will bump that up to about $180). A paperback copy goes for around $250--I would have thought the original would turn out to be the more expensive, but I think I've already demonstrated I'm no accurate judge of value.

BONUS!
In the sequel to the film, "2010: The Year We Make Contact," written, produced, and directed by Peter Hyams and starring Roy Scheider, John Lithgow, and Helen Mirren (highly recommended), there appears to be a major (and I mean major) continuity blunder in a scene where HAL's "neurotic" behavior is finally explained. Can you spot it?