It’s all quiet here on the dark side of the moon – Marvel Super Special #3, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”

My recent post about the abject failure of Bugs Bunny/Looney Tunes stories to translate into the realm of staple-bound newsprint got me to thinking about this adaptation. But before I say anything about the book itself, I need to let everyone know where I stand on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the film that it — obviously — adapts.

It’s my favorite movie. Ever.

Though the first Christopher Reeve Superman, always a beloved strip of celluloid, has claimed a larger and larger share of my affections as I’ve grown older, CE3K will always have the advantage of not having a Margot Kidder-spoken “Can You Read My Mind” moment. When my age was in the early double digits I used to pop in the VHS tape of Encounters every single weekend, and it’s still a special two hours whenever I dim the lights and plop myself in front of the TV to watch it. Steven Spielberg was young(er) and hungry back when it was made, and while his films today are superbly crafted, they just don’t sing like the movies he made before he was in a higher tax bracket than God.

Close Encounters was a righteous fusion of music, sound, mood, effects, dialogue, locations, casting, and everything else. You name it, it had it. And I love this movie so much — and have loved it for all tha parts of my life that I can remember — it was with some trepidation that I bought this comic. Well, maybe trepidation isn’t quite the word — I was happy to get it, but I figured that it couldn’t ever live up to the film.

So, when I got home the day I purchased it, I opened it up to see who was given the impossible task of adapting this thing. Archie Goodwin handled the scripting, with Walt Simonson doing the pencilling and Klaus Janson the inking. I like both members of the art team — there were two early marks in its favor.

So how is it?

No surprise — it’s a mixed bag.

While I like both Simonson’s and Janson’s work individually, their styles don’t meld all that well. And, while some comic book adaptations have stills from the production to work with, it seems that most of the character designs in this adaptation were crafted out of whole cloth. You aren’t going to find Richard Dreyfuss or Teri Garr of Francois Truffaut anywhere in these pages. And that’s not the biggest problem. Try as they might, it’s an impossible task for these guys to adequately capture the bottled magic that you would see on the screen.

Just for a brief example, let’s have a look at the biggest no-effects takeaway scene in the movie, the one that’s been parodied by The Simpsons and countless other times — the mashed potatoes scene.

First, the film version:

And here’s the comics version:

The adaptation team is trying. They really are. But they can’t replicate the fear and sadness of a family as Dad falls apart before their very eyes. I shouldn’t criticize them for failing to perform an impossible task, but the failure’s still there.

Okay. I have some issues with the art and teh scripting, but I said that it was a mixed bag. So what’s the good stuff? Well, there’s actually quite a lot of it. If I’ve given Simonson and Janson a hard time for not distilling all of the silver screen goodness, I can at least praise them for capturing certain things. I was struck by the posture of Roy Neary in this panel, when he’s being interrogated by Truffaut’s and Bob Balaban’s characters:

The way he’s leaning back with his arm straight and his hand on the table completely sums up Neary’s mental and physical posture at that point in the movie, and made that particular scene flash in front of my eyes. It kind of makes me wonder if the artists really were working from production stills, and that the lack of precise character likenesses was just a conscious “Screw it” choice. Maybe they had some storyboards instead. I don’t know. But this small piece of the project fulfills one of the old pre-VCR goals of comic adaptations of movies — giving a memento to those who watched the flick and want some help mentally replaying it.

Also, while nothing on flat paper can adequately depict that moment when we realize that all the ships at Devil’s Tower are just the prologue and the big momma mothership shows up, this two-page spread makes a noble stab at replicating the grandeur:

And even the final page, though it lacks John Williams’s stirring score, makes for a stylish close:

I’m admittedly predisposed to “geek out” for anything related to Close Encounters, and this book, warts and all, is no exception. Though it could never replace the original, nor did it ever aim to, this book made for a decent read. And, considering my love for the film, the fact that I didn’t open up my window at pitch it out onto the lawn is a good sign.

“This means something…”