Tie-ins, Part ?? / The Fairer Sex, Part ??: Miranda #1

You have the right to two pages of colored art, anything you read can be used against you…

What is canonical? How far out from the source material can something go and still be considered part of the mythos. As a Cthulhu fan, I often pose that question about works I read. Take for example Stephen King. Somewhere in most of his stories he’ll drop a name from the Necronomicon. People like me who pay attention to stuff like that, appreciate the nod to HPL’s work. However we also know that mere inclusion doesn’t make it part of that shared universe of stories. It's not mythos, unless it is Mythos. A story has to have the same tone or work with the same elements to merit inclusion.

How does all this relate to Miranda? Miranda is the brainchild of Lance Parker. Parker was a fan fiction writer who made good, advancing to being a published author of his most beloved character. 

That character just happened to be the BBC Time Lord called The Doctor or as we know him Doctor Who. In one of Parker’s novels he introduces the character of Miranda, an orphan living in our time who has escaped from a violent future where her Father, the Galactic Emperor, has messed up the timelines. It’s alluded to that her father is a Time Lord (Miranda has two hearts) and he may even be a future incarnation of The Doctor himself. That books is called Father Time and a synopsis of it can be foundHERE.

The series Miranda takes place after she’s left the company of the Doctor and is convinced by other time travelers to return with them to the future. Once there she is to take her place as the Galactic Empress. I’m going to be honest and say that all this came as a shock to me because I read the book before doing any of my homework. The links are so tenuous between the comic character and the origin material that it can be enjoyed without having any knowledge of the good Doctor. It has a very slight bit of the quirky humor found in the Doctor Who books/series, but nothing very overt. Miranda lasted a scant three issues, which was far too short to complete the six issue story arc setup in issue #1.

Allan Bednar handles the art and does an outstanding job. Sadly, the book is rendered in black and white with the exception of a two page color spread in the middle of the book. I say sadly not because I see black and white art as somehow inferior, but due to the fact that Bednar’s panels on those two color pages look gorgeous. That brief taste leaves you salivating for more. I’m sure all of you are salivating for me to get on with it and so I shall.

The issue begins with a full page of horrible art. Stuff so bad that you think you’ve found an awesomely bad book. A page of nine panels that look like these three.

 

I’m not sure what we are suppose to be looking at, all I know is that white on black background is hard to read when run through the art like that. I’m sure you agree. So page one crushes any expectation that this book will be good. Which we soon find is not the case.

Very next page we are introduced to Miranda who is getting ready for her big debut as Empress of the entire galaxy…excuse me, of 12 entire galaxies. With her is a guy named Ferran, he seems like an alright bloke here and it turns out he’s the one that plucked Miranda from the past and brought her back to the future. He’s got plans for her, it seems and those plans may not be exactly in Miranda’s best interest. For now he’s her support system. 

 

Her introduction to the dignitaries goes well considering that Miranda is a real fish out of water. Note the art here is really only minimally better than on the first page, but we are digging our way out of the hole. By page four, however the book appears to have hit its stride. 

 

And we see the first inkling of real character from anyone in the book. The author does everything in his power to play up this “fish out of water” aspect of our heroine and in the end that makes up for the book’s main problem. A problem that amounts to a fairly decompressed storyline where very little happens. Miranda comes off as plucky, charming and thoroughly British and I find myself wishing that more was done with her character.

As the party slides along at a snail’s pace, Miranda bumps into a waitress who passed her a note as soon as she got out of the TARDIS or whatever time travel device was used last issue. The chick disappears into the crowd and Miranda loses track of her before she can riddle her with questions. Next she’s accosted by this monocle gentleman who she puts on the spot.

 

In that last panel he does appear to be giving them an appraisal. All these great comedic moments can’t last however because we are due for a confrontation of some type before book’s end. We get it in the form of a giant robot that snatches Miranda up.

Ferran calls out the skywardens, who appear to be the future version of traffic cops. Or, given their effectiveness, the future version of meter maids. These brave gentlemen with jet packs slapped on their backs fly off to certain doom against the huge robo menace. By the way, you can definitely tell the book was a product of English sensibilities because these gentleman do not try use a gun to shoot the thing out of the sky. What they do attempt, in glorious full color, is to use harsh language against the techno-terror, the result of which is very efficient.

They are efficiently dismembered. The panels look really good and the overall image is almost poster quality. The next couple of pages have Miranda using the jet pack thing to get away, then this robot with religion shows up and battles the evil, Miranda-stealing robot. Evil bot gets the upper hand and is about to kill the good-guy bot, when suddenly Miranda on accident dumps herself in the sea and turns her jet pack into an unguided missile. While good-guy bot prays…well, see for yourself here.

If you can’t make that out, it is the jetpack flying out of the sea and slamming into the bad robot. It goes kerboom. I guess those skywardens have balls of pure steel to be riding around with one of those “flying bombs” attached to their back. I can see the recruitment posters now: “Skywardens – If you’re lucky, you’ll be dismembered before your jetpack explodes!” Anyway, our robot feels thankful to Miranda for saving its life, the concept of which I have a problem with since it is a) not alive and b) shouldn’t be sentient enough to be thankful. After being fished from the drink, Miranda is back at the Emperor’s palace where Ferran violates her privacy.

I think HR is going to need to have a talk with that young man. I’m pretty sure he needs another round of sensitivity training. You don’t watch a female bathing without their permission. Ferran’s nickname in grade school was “Tom Peepers”, by the way. And does anybody else find it odd that the Empress’s bathtub looks like something from a Walt Disney Resort?

 

I guess it really is a small world after all. And speaking of small worlds, that servant that tried to warn Miranda earlier about Ferran shows up. Just in time to put the skids on his peep show too. Miranda has a typical reaction to the news.

The issue sums up with Miranda getting a warning that Ferran expects them to be married and that he is not one for uniting the galaxy. He even gets a three-quarter page, sitting on his throne like Doc Doom shot to round out the last page of the issue.

It’s a shame there isn’t more here. Miranda is a likeable character. The book takes a leisurely pace getting anywhere and while the art is good, the color centerfold makes the rest of the book look bad. A shame more wasn’t invested in this because it could have turned out to be a top shelf product. Sadly after issue number 3, Miranda ceased to be.

TV/Movie Tie-Ins, Part XXI: 2001: A Space Odyssey #1

Jack Kirby holds a funhouse mirror up to a Kubrick classic

"Beast-Killer"

Writer – Jack Kirby

Penciler – Jack Kirby

Inker – Mike Royer

Letters – Mike Royer

Colors – G. Roussos

Consulting Editor – Archie Goodwin

With the opening of Star Wars: Rogue One, I thought it only fitting to look back at one of the classic sci-fi movies that paved the way for its existence. 1968's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's short story "The Sentinel," will go down in history as one of the most elaborate science fiction movies ever made. It is a marvel of cinematography and special effects.

And many of you hate it.

It is ambiguous, slow, breaks standard narrative conventions, contains no one central protagonist, and relies on the audience to figure out the ending. I don't blame you if it isn't your bag.

But it totally is mine. I loved it the moment I first saw it. Sears in Hulen Mall. It must have been around 1980 and that would have made me just about high school age. Those still new VCR recorders were being demoed and Sears put in a tape of 2001 and had it playing. My parents went shopping in the mall and left me to my own devices. And I sat there and watched it. All the way through. And then still sat when they started it back up again. There was no sound, but the visuals were mesmerizing. I was transfixed.

I still am to this day. The fact that the ending is largely unintelligible does not dissuade me from recommending it. There are just too many thought-provoking ideas crammed into the movie as well as pictures too astonishingly beautiful to ignore. In the end, I judge it to be a perfect movie with flaws, a contradiction as powerful as the images it conveys.

One of my favorite podcasts reviewed it HERE, and the guys and gal at LSG had some interesting takes on the film.

In 1976, Marvel released an adaptation of the movie in its oversized tabloid "Marvel Treasury Edition" series that signaled Jack Kirby's return to them from his stint at DC. The book varied a bit from the film as Kirby pulled in notes from the Arthur C Clarke novel and from an earlier draft of the script.

But it was in no way as odd as Kirby's ten issue, ongoing series follow-up to the movie. Kirby created a similar but different take on the original material and then went way beyond it. The last three issues introduced the character Machine Man or X-51 to the Marvel Universe. The sentient robot became 2001's protagonist and provided a springboard for his short-lived unlimited series that Kirby would also pen.

This issue that I hold in my hand takes place way before all that and it ends up being something I'd call "Just Imagine" if Jack Kirby had wrote the screenplay for 2001. It is kind of awesome in its own regard, weird and quirky and very off the beats that the film creates. However, in some regards, "not off those beats" as well. Let's have a look, shall we?

We begin as the movie begins, in pre-history, with one of the proto humans, this one called Beast-Killer.

Beast-Killer hangs out in what would be present-day New Orleans, and why that is important only Kirby would know. Beast-Killer has to be the most educated and erudite caveman I've ever encountered and that includes Brandon Fraser's Encino Man.

 

The Kirby art in this is just astonishing. He was a unique talent.

Anyway, Beast-Killer does what his name implies and using the power of the voice of the "Stone Spirit", i.e. The Monolith, he learns to attack swift game from the trees. The only issue I have with Kirby's writing at this point is that everything is an excited exclamation. Nothing is simply said and for a reader that does make a difference. Shouting every line doesn't get your point across, it just makes things very noisy.

We see this even more as Beast-Killer is attacked by others from his tribe and every spoken statement is delivered with the same degree of amplified shouting. Kirby can do dialogue, but he needs an editor willing to step in and apply some restraint. That isn't happening here. The result is a very childish narration.

The story moves forward a pace, and note how it parallels the 2001 movie – we begin with a single ape-guy that has touched the Monolith besting other beast-guys that haven't. The difference here is the free reign that Kirby had to crib the story any way he wanted to. It is damn interesting in this character he's created that we feel he has a long term investment in showing his struggles and fate, but it gets way better when we get out into space.

We get the Monolith finally to make an appearance as Beast-Killer his shadowed by his fellow monkey-men. 

 

Then we get Beast-Killer to go the movie one better as the Monolith makes him smart enough to craft a crude spear. My only gripe with all this is that the Monolith is treated as little more than a object in these parts. In the movie it is a bizarre entity with its own desires and plans that is clearly more than it seems. It is given such prominence that the movie makes it seem like a character in the story with its own personality. And it has a plan for us. I had hoped we would get that same power here, but Kirby appears to be using it the same as a Mother Box in his New Gods books…a simple tool that you use, not as an alien person with their own objectives.

Beast-Killer does in a sabertooth tiger with his newfound spear skills. Kirby almost lets the Monolith have a moment, but is too focused on his Beast-Killer character to do that. So now we have an extended piece about how to make better spears…

And then we get into a really neat transition that mirrors the "bone toss" scene from the movie. I kind of dig this move from Earth to space, even if the space stuff is really crazy. I believe Beast-Killer's saga continued on in later issues. But now we move to Woodrow Decker, astronaut, our stand-in for Dave Bowman. 

  

Decker and his companion Mason are stranded on a world with ancient ruins where their space probe crashed. Here again is lots of yelling, especially by Decker who appears to be an out of control hot-head. The art is great, but there is something noticeably absent. Shouldn't take you a second or two to figure out what that is.

 

Hal. 

Because of the crash the ship, there is no Hal stand-in for this part. I know Kirby is trying to take the same story and shine it up a new way, but Hal is so integral to 2001 that his exclusion (or barring that,  the inclusion of a stand-in for him) is a glaring mistake.

Even when you do get giant magenta space-octopus monsters.

 

Sorry Jack, as fun as that looks you still need a psychopathic all-powerful computer or it just isn't going to thrill the audience. Anyway Decker comes off as even more of a jerk here as the level headed Mason gets grabbed …

… and killed. Kirby outdoes himself on that death scene and the monster dragging Mason's body away. Very creepy. Love his art so much. 

 

Decker's entire world falls apart at that moment, figuratively and literally. He's forced to jump in to the hovering Monolith, which now glows with Kriby crackle and power smoke. 

 

We get a taste of a Kirby interpretation of the Star Gate scene, which you have to admit is all kinds of awesome. And then…

 

Things get kinda weird. 

 

This is Jack's take on the ending of the movie and for some reason it works for me. It's no more odd than the Monolith putting Bowman into some kind of 18^th century styled hotel and then feeding him until he ages and dies. And it at least makes getting to the Monolith an actual destination, as if man is striving to attain the things that would better himself.

 

And of course we end with the Star Child flying off, Kirby's "new seed", off to do lord knows what. I have to state that I'm more than slightly curious what Kirby had him do. The entire issue is an off-beat retelling of the movie, what's missing are the things BEYOND the movie. Issue #2 must have gotten to those as well as something called Vira the She-Demon, a mate for Beast-Killer if I had to fathom a guess.

I hope everyone has a great time at Rogue One! I'll see you there.