Marvel Super Special #6: Jaws 2

1978 - Wow.

I am constantly amazed at the sheer volume of crummy movies that Marvel saw fit to adapt into comics in the late 70s and early 80s. I think--heck, I know--I could do a whole theme week of that stuff. But until then, let's talk about Jaws 2, shall we?

The cover with the iconic shark is by Bob Larkin, and the inside art is by the famous team of Gene Colan and Tom Palmer (Palmer also colored the book). Yes, Marvel wasted two legendary talents on an adaptation of Jaws 2.

I'm not going to bother relating the plot of the movie, because its pretty much "A lot of people get eaten by sharks." All the filmmaking lessons of the first film were completely forgotten, and this time around we get the shark, and lots of it.

I guess Marvel didn't want to pay Roy Scheider (Rest In Peace, Roy!), since the Chief Brody seen here bears no resemblance to him. There weren't any other stars in the movie (Robert Shaw having been chomped to death in the first film in the single greatest movie death scene, ever, and Richard Dreyfuss having become a huge movie star), so poor Roy pretty much had to carry the movie on his shoulders all by himself.

Like I said, there's a number of big, gory shark attacks in the movie and in the comic, none more goofy than the one featuring two kids who have stopped in the middle of their sailboat race to get some action, when the shark makes his(?) move:

...holy crap, that's a Galactus-sized shark!

Of course, Brody gets rid of this shark by shoving an electricity-filled pipe in his mouth. Scheider told himself "Enough with the sharks, already" and would not appear in, yes, Jaws 3-D.

The magazine also features an interview with director Jeannot Szwarc, who, while being honest about the artistic merits of the film, drags down the first film to the sequel's level:

I think time has shown us that Jaws is, in fact, a classic; Jaws 2, less so. Szwarc went on to direct Supergirl and Santa Claus: The Movie. I'll refrain from further comment, he's probably a very nice man.

A fun book, and one could argue its actually better than the film itself, because of Colan and Palmer. They could draw the hell out of anything.