Wow Noel. Great essay.
First your appreciation of the film having watched it first on television and questioning its place in history is not uncommon. At least you have revisited it obviously several times as have so many writers and fans But with each passing year I read the most inane dismissals on scores of film sites by people who will not engage this film with the same complaints as turgid and that most overused word "pretentious".

This film has always remained for myself one of the most galvanizing in theater experiences of my life. But I saw the film as a sophomore in high school at a CINERAMA Theater in Dallas. That overwhelming theatrical experience was momentous. Remember, there weren't even great full color images of Earth back then much less witnessing space ships so real, so "commercial".

I too wasn't able to quite wrap my head around what I had watched but the collective awe of a packed house, the conversations outside the theater with scores of strangers reacting as if they had just witnessed a miracle and all abuzz was amazing. As the next showing was sold out I found a ticket holder with an extra and went right back in, again gobsmacked. But the second time my head buzzed with youthful exuberance of the future, this possibility of a threat of technology and the superficiality of religion and all that God Stuff
(hey I was a sophomore).

That said it wasn't until the approaching of the actual year 2001 that I could afford collecting vintage material from the film's original release. Posters, lobby cards, lenticular counter cards, hey even a special edition Wedgewood ashtray with the moon in bas relief in the center from the UK premiere.

But when I stumbled on the comics, I thought I had hit pay dirt and they were so inexpensive, but I got them all! My enthusiasm died as soon as cracked open the first larger tabloid sized adaption. They were, so wrong, so very wrong. Never a comic book enthusiast to begin with but I literally felt they "corrupted" my collection as they were so awful. (that said yes I have the Mad Magazine parody) Gathered them all up in one lot and sold on Ebay in 2000. I think $75 for the lot. And today I don't even think they command that much. Where 2001 posters can sell from $600 to $10,000 (for the Psychedelic Eye wild posting poster only distributed in NY and LA) the comics have always been summarily rejected by both comic book dealers and people like myself who respect 2001 highly.

So your essay on the predicament and the pressure Kirby found himself is appreciated. That said I am still glad I sold them.

Fantastic write up as usual. I would love if Jack Kirby did a comic version of all Kubrick's films. "MARVEL COMICS GROUP presents a swashbuckling tale of derring-do!! BARRY LYNDON! This Issue: Tremble in terror as brave Barry infiltrates the slimy world of the Chevalier de Balibari! He's not just betting money--he's betting his life! It's Poker Time in Prussia!"

I really want this kind of vintage illustrations applied to The Shining for some reason. That'd be equal parts hilarious and beautiful.

Or maybe a whole tone-deaf series of seventies-era Marvel comics based on great films of the sixties. Bill Mantlo and Don Perlin proudly present Last Year At Marienbad! Roy Thomas and John Buscema bring you L'Avventura! Pulse-pounding inaction in the Mighty Marvel Manner!

Does he really know her? Can the past even be considered real? Marienbad Is A Monumental Marvel Mystery!

The one I'd most want to read: Paths of Glory.
Least: Lolita. (As Joss Whedon sez, "is anyone else thinking eew?")

Maybe not Kirby, but Dan Clowes' or Charles Burns' Lolita? Hmm...

Milo Manara's Lolita

Not sure whether that would be the best choice or the worst choice, but it would probably be banned in several countries.

I take it back, Kirby Lolita all the way.

"Lighting up lives and incinerating loins, it's LOLITA! Thrill as this gamine girl with the name that tangles your tongue tempts sinners and sears souls!"

No one can tame the Nubile Nymphette!

Art by Bill Sienkewicz. I picture Lolita as a 20-foot-tall 2-foot-wide triangle and Humbert as a warthog with a cigarette.

Wallflower - Rather than a Jack Kirby Paths of Glory, you might like Jacques Tardi's two graphic novels about WWI It Was The War Of The Trenches and Goddamn This War!

MARVEL always did this kind of interpretations that always fascinate me in how they contrast with other adaptions of the work. In fact, I'd love to compare the MARVEL version of John Carter to the fantastic film we got in 2012 just to see if the film had any pf the comics visual style.

As a kid I knew a guy who owned a comic store (he was a childhods friend of my mom) and he used to sell me the old Marvel Star Wars comics for a buck a piece. They are dated but awesome, and since Marvel used the original script of the film as their source for the comic I was aware of stuff like the deleted scene of Han and Jabba in the Mos Eisley hanger long before it was reinstated.

I love, love the depiction of Jabba The Hut in those comics. Makes you realize how wildly different people can visually interpret Jabba's personality.

Penguin Classic's new edition of A Princess of Mars actually uses Dave Cockrum's art from the Marvel comic on their cover, and it's perfect.

Fantastic write-up. Really looking forward to The Blues Brothers video game article too!

Graphic novel adaptations of movies has kind of become a business in its own right, but tend to be reserved for blockbusters or film franchises. It's really weird to think of a film as avant garde, innovative, enigmatic and singular as "2001" getting its own comic series. I'd love to see people doing a comic series based off of There Will Be Blood, or A Separation, or Mulholland Drive.

Back when I was in college, one of the comic book shops I frequented had the graphic novel adaptation of 1941 up on its shelf. I occasionally took it down to flip through it, but I never bought it. Now I'm wishing I had.

The 1941 adaptation is one of the most singularly strange derivative works I've ever seen.

That'd be interesting. A David Lynch comic adaptation would be tough, though. How can one make the Winky's scene so terrifying without that overbearing sound?

I bet J.H.Williams III could do it.

Bill Sienkiewicz illustrated an adaptation of David Lynch's Dune for Marvel, and it's beautifully insane.

It is insane. Steranko's Outland from Heavy Metal magazine and Simonson's Alien are also great adaptations.

Gilbert Hernandez's Sloth has a definite Lynchian feel to it.

Ooh, There Will Be Blood would look great in watercolors. Or maybe done in woodcuts a la Gods' Man.

Great write-up Noel! I actually dug the issues of this that I own out of the attic over the weekend and flipped through them. Kirby's prose is a little dated and hokey for me but these are still fun to flip through, both for seeing Kirby's interpretation of various scenes from the film (and the way he cooses to frame and angle them) as well as those big Kirby splash pages.

The original story issues are batshit weird and convoluted, blending sci-fi with run-of-the-mill sword-and-sorcery that only occasionally delivers. Issue 7 is my favorite of the ones I've read, with a Star Child (not the one from the movie, and looking like a swami with a very literate vocabulary) touring the galaxy checking out planets both primitive and dystopic.

And while he is indeed pretty critical of this book and Kirby's work on it, the web post series by Darius on 2001 is an excellent read, too:

http://sequart.org/magazine...

If you want to psyche yourself up, just do a google image search for "jack kirby 2001" and set the image filter to Large

That panel is astonishing; the only things I've seen that are like it are Darick Robertson's panels in Transmetropolitan, with that kind of density of image. Even Robertson doesn't do the kind of shifts in scale and perspective that Kirby does (which actually makes sense there, because Transmet is all about the incredibly busy, flattened surface of the future).

They are gorgeous, just as pieces of art.

A little part of me wants to photoshop out the dialogue and write new stuff there.

Funny you say that, I believe that while he was at DC during the 70's (or shortly thereafter) there were people at DC who actually wanted to re-dialogue his comics and re-release them.

I am almost certain there were.

Fantastic essay, Noel. Just great.

Fourthed or fifthed or seventhed. I am well and truly blown away.

Eighthed.

Seriously. He may have made me just appreciate the movie even more now!

I suspect it will make me re-read Kirby's Fourth World stuff when I get home tonight.

I've been lurking since the site launched, but I guess this is the essay to draw me out o the woodwork (I used to post on TOS but haven't felt like fighting Disqus). Great write up: I'm a big fan of Kirby's 70s stuff and some of this looks like his other futuristic series OMAC. I grew up w/ Marvel's Star Wars series, and while there is plenty to mock in that run it was obviously a better fit for an action-adventure comic book than 2001.

That's a really good point. The original Marvel Star Wars stories are much better because the source material had alot more to draw from (characters, relationships, the Imperial/Rebel stuff) for a sci-fi action comic.

Great stuff Noel, this was a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Marvelous as always, Noel.

Though, with Blue Brothers coming up next month, I suddenly remembered Blues Brothers 2000 the Video Game, and that's kind of traumatic.

I have the game I'm going to write about in hand, and thought initially that it was the BB2K game, until I realized that it came out before that film. Which is good. I'm looking forward to watching Blues Brothers again; I'd be less enthused about re-watching the sequel.

We should talk about the Batman video game that came out around the movie someday. God that game drove me nuts.

Nice essay, but I must point out the famous cut between the bone and the spacecraft is most assuredly not a jump cut. Graphic match cut, yes, but a jump cut, no.

Fair enough. Apologies for the nomenclature blunder.

In the grand scheme of things, it's not important, so an apology isn't warranted. It's just that, as a picture editor, this oft-repeated mistake always catches my attention. Kubrick's and Lovejoy's simple yet forceful edit was the thing which compelled me, above everything else, to take up the Steenbeck (then Avid) myself. Needless to say, I've studied it quite a bit.

That was one thing about Room 237 that made me chuckle quite a bit - all the "significant underlying message" emphasis on where things wind up in dissolves, or how frames "mysteriously" line up when the film is supered forwards and backwards. But of course, that's no hidden meaning or conspiracy. That's just good visual editing and framing.

I'm with you on that. And when the people played it forward and backward simultaneously, overlaying both pictures.....oh brother!

Not knowing the difference between the two I checked out the wiki page for "jump cut", and lo and behold the 2001 example is used to illustrate the difference.