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A Mixed Bag of Bradbury, 19 Dec 2007
I'm not a particularly huge Bradbury fan, although I am familiar with his most famous/popular work, and am aware of his vast influence on modern science-fiction. I am a fan of graphic storytelling though, and that led me to pick up this collection of graphic adaptations of twelve of his short stories (I have no idea why the publisher has chosen to give the book the subtitle, "The Graphic Novel", presumably to cash in on the current popularity of the so-called graphic novel). To add to the confusion, the selections here all previously appeared in the "Ray Bradbury Chronicles" comic-book series published by Topps. And just to make things totally muddy, some of those reprinted much older adaptations published as comics by EC! So, consider this a sort of best-of collection from the Topps series. Phew!
The book opens with a very nice one-page introduction from Bradbury, about falling in love with comics, abandoning them in the face of peer pressure, and then coming back to them even more committed. He also provides a paragraph intro to each story, telling how it came about, which is a nice bonus (although I would have liked to know what year each was written in). Not having read any of the original stories, I can't comment on how faithful these adaptations are -- although other reviewers say they are quite close. Similarly, those familiar with the story will probably get a richer experience from these visual versions.
"A Sound of Thunder" lays out the classic problem of time-travel -- the smallest impact you have on the past might have a dramatic consequence for the future. This is shown via a plotline involving prehistoric safaris to shoot dinosaurs (surely the developers of time travel could come up with a better business model?) and what happens when one such hunt goes awry. The art here is supplied by Richard Corben, whose strengths lie more in showing the natural world than people. The story was made into a pretty bad film a few years ago with the same title.
"The City" is a very dark and cool story about a city that is alive and waiting for humans to come back to it. The artwork is by Mike Mignola, who is one of my favorites. "Dark They Were, And Golden-Eyed" is another dark story, this one about Mars colonists who are stranded following a war on Earth. The artwork by Kent Williams and John Van Fleet is a little too arty and impressionistic for my taste. Van Fleet appears again in "Picasso Summer," about an American's summer vacation in Southern France and his obsession with Picasso. It' a cool piece, but I didn't care for the art that much.
"The Golden Apples of the Sun" is a kind of weird one about a spaceship on a journey to harvest a portion of the sun in order to save humanity (which strikes me as quite similar to the recent film "Sunshine"). The art by P. Craig Russell is nothing particularly interesting, sort of well-done generic comic-book stuff. Daniel Torres's art for "Night Meeting" is much cooler, as the material allows him | |
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