CSBG Archive
A Comic Based on a Tarantino Screenplay – Why Have We Never Seen This Before?
One of the most surprising bits of news at Comic-Con was the news of DC Comics adapting Quentin Tarantino’s screenplay for his new film, Django Unchained. What’s fascinating about it to me is that Tarantino acknowledges the power of comics to do stuff you can’t do in movies, as the comic will adapt the original screenplay before he makes any changes, cuts scenes, etc.
Sounds good!
You can read more about the story (including a description of the film’s plot, which sounds NUTS) here.
The idea of adapting original screenplays into comic book form is a great idea for those screenplays that were just too long to make into a movie. There’s really no such thing as a comic being too long, ya know?
9 Comments
Ian A.
July 14, 2012 at 8:50 pm
I’m very curious to see a) if DC will hire a separate writer to adapt the film script into a comic script and b) who will draw the adaptation.
With Dominique Laveau, Voodoo Child, cancelled, Denys Cowan’s dance card is free…
Brian Cronin
July 14, 2012 at 9:31 pm
Ooooh…good call, Cowan would be perfect. And I imagine they’ll get someone to adapt it. I doubt Tarantino has the time.
Travis Pelkie
July 14, 2012 at 11:49 pm
To truly adapt the screenplay to comics, won’t there need to be homages to old comics sequences, not unlike how Tarantino does homages to old movies? And they’ll have to be, like, old indie comics stuff. I’m thinking maybe from Kane’s His Name is Savage, or something from Baron’s Badger.
And you’ll need an artist who can draw feet. Rob Liefeld is crying now, somewhere.
Tom Fitzpatrick
July 15, 2012 at 4:19 pm
How about the writer? I’d nominate Garth Ennis (who’d been compared to Tarantino in his PREACHER days)!
@ T.P.: Doesn’t Rob Liefeld crying all the time these days?
I never took you for a R.L. anti-fan.
edward priddy
July 15, 2012 at 7:25 pm
Vertigo has done this before. When Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain was originally cancelled he brought the script to DC and Kent Williams painted it. It came out in 2006 i believe.
Jeff Ryan
July 16, 2012 at 7:31 am
And Steven Grant adapted Frank Miller’s Robocop 2 story as an eight-part miniseries, if I remember correctly.
Ben Herman
July 16, 2012 at 11:38 am
Darn, Jeff Ryan beat me to it concerning Robocop 2. He did forget to mention it was published by Avatar, though!
Annoyed Grunt
July 17, 2012 at 9:13 am
Weren’t a lot of old comic adaptations and novelizations based on the screenplay since the movies would still be in production as they were being written?
JoeMac
July 30, 2012 at 1:43 pm
I don’t think Brian was saying why weren’t movie screenplays ever adapted to comics before, because there are a ton of examples from the late 70s / early 80s (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Dark Crystal, Dragonslayer, even a James Bond or two, and that’s just off the top of my head…)
I think he’s saying, why haven’t Tarantino screenplays become comics before…. but correct me if I’m wrong