 All right picking up where I left off with my 2001 a space Odyssey special series two years ago this episode is two years in the making folks This is going to be the next episode of my space Odyssey series as well as the next episode of My odd comics series and once again, I'm talking about Jack Kirby the first question is 2001 a space Odyssey the movie was released in 1968. Why was the official comic book adaptation? eight years later in 1976 I think the only reason is because Jack Kirby wanted to do this The cover is unspectacular it's This is a favorite among Jack Kirby fans people who are not Jack Kirby fans Who are fans of the movie? Have a real This dain for this material. I can see why if if they haven't bothered to learn anything about it This was obviously a quick a Quick job that Jack Kirby did he was an extremely fast artist. He was typically knocking out Two three four sometimes even five Twenty or thirty page comic books every month Keep that in mind and his His primary interest was in creating entertaining material for kids to read he was interested in telling fun stories Enlightening stories for kids that was he that's what he considered his audience not adult comics collectors Like myself Today at the time I was a small child and I loved this stuff. I Was exactly the right audience for this some of this work is beautiful. Look at this He's creating all of this with just black and white lines What appears to be radiant light and energy using nothing more than ink on white paper You'll all also notice the text here Comes directly from Arthur C. Clarke's Novel later on in the book You'll see that the dialogue is not Clark's Jack Kirby begins Rewriting his own dialogue and it's obvious Another thing I want to point out here in the book and the movie Women are noticeably absent from the film The first line of dialogue spoken in the film is spoken by a woman. She is a receptionist Who basically says? Welcome dr. Floyd and that's it. There's one woman politician that Dr. Floyd has a conversation with briefly and that's it and there are no people of color in The film are in the book Jack Kirby made a point of adding women to crucial scenes and People of color and giving them dialogue You'll notice that some of the panels here. He's using Frames from the film as inspiration and others. He is not Some of these are beautiful pieces of work Some of these pages are quick hack jobs like here and they'll be There'll be a beautiful page like this right next to a Quick dirty job and then there'll be a fantastic double-page spread Again, I want to point out how he How he was a master at using light or what appeared to be light when all he's doing is Lines on paper one point here the scene with Dave Bowman re-entering The spacecraft Even though Hal has disabled the doors you'll notice Dave Bowman Without a helmet in vacuum Does not happen in the book that only happened in the movie then we get to the climax of the film and This is where Things get really interesting Arthur C. Clark has his interpretation of these events in the novel Stanley Kubrick has his interpretation of these events in the movie and Jack Kirby has his interpretation of these events in His medium the comic book This is beautiful stuff again It's just lines on paper But it appears to be Light and energy and movement Don't dismiss this stuff out of hand This is a reinterpretation of The cosmic events of 2001 a space Odyssey in a comic book medium by the master of the medium again, you see Two different versions of the same Shot Again, just lines on paper and yet there appears to be light there appears to be energy This is Jack Kirby. This is why I love Jack Kirby Anyway, I I believe The purpose of this Really was a lead-in to this a regular format comic book series Yeah, a monthly series and this has always been one of my favorite covers One of my favorite Jack Kirby covers. It's Very strange the colors are unusual It's kind of a hodgepodge of Different bits and pieces from the story to come in this issue Is it kind of clumsy? But that's what I love about it all those elements. You're wondering how can there be an ongoing 2001 a space Odyssey series will by retelling the story over and over And that's exactly what he does starting with prehistory with cavemen The appearance of the monolith to the primitives segueing directly into The future and with every reinterpretation Kirby introduces alien monsters and then you have the astronaut encountering the monolith in space Revealing the mysteries of the cosmos and Being elevated into the higher life form and then once again with issue two another variation This time with a female protagonist Again, I want to point out Jack Kirby was the first creator to introduce a female protagonist to the Odyssey verse She is the star of the show Primitive cave woman encountering the monolith transitions directly to a future descended In outer space Encounters aliens again Encounters the monolith in deep space And once again more interpretations of The cosmic experience How could you not love this and Again becoming a a Star child with issue eight Jack Kirby starts to get really interesting The other element of the 2001 a space Odyssey story that I haven't discussed here yet is artificial intelligence and finally here Kirby starts exploring that element he takes the concept of artificial intelligent computer and expands it into the idea of Autonomous robots, which of course would be the next the next step and he explores the same problem with Hal is that giving true Intelligence and true life to a machine What doors are you opening these x-series androids being military machines designed to Design for violence and killing once they are activated once their Artificial intelligences are activated they become insane They have identity crises So their inventor takes the latest model the x-51 and Basically raises it as a sign provides it with an actual identity The military and the government have ordered these machines destroyed so Mr. Machine as it's called becomes a fugitive as X-51 is being held prisoner He is visited by the monolith and this is this is important because What Kirby is doing here? He's carrying the idea of 2001 a space Odyssey to the next stage which is the creation the deliberate Creation of a new form of life by the life form that had been fostered by the monolith a very important point here is what the What his captors have done here is they have removed his face They have taken from him the one thing That gave him identity that connected him to his creator to his father and Over the course of issues 9 and 10 look at this beautiful cover by the way look at that unusual color work His face his identity became The major theme here see he says the greatest indignity of all the removal of my face This is heavy stuff for 10 year olds. I Bet you didn't know This is what was going on here. Did you? so he's combining these heavy concepts with this exciting superhero storytelling and What started as Jack Kirby's personal reinterpretation of 2001 a space Odyssey became a new superhero and a new series machine man issue 10 of 2001 Directly continued into machine man number one Which is one of the things that started my interest in comics the machine man series lasted a couple of years and then machine man joined the regular Marvel Universe through an appearance in the Incredible Hulk and then he became a member of the Avengers so 2001 a space Odyssey has a direct connection through Jack Kirby to the Avengers All right, thank you for joining me. I I hope you were able to sit through that rambling discourse I hope you learned something about these comics and why I enjoy them so much as as silly as they are and I will see you next episode Please subscribe to my channel so you can see more of what's coming up and Please remember to press that like button down there. 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