Marvel Super Special featured almost exclusively movie adaptations, and one of the most unexpected was the House of Ideas' take on Annie, the big-budget film version of the classic comic strip, starring Albert Finney and directed by John Huston, no less!:
The adaptation is written by Tom DeFalco, with art by Win Mortimer and Vince Colletta, which suggests to me that Marvel wasn't all that interested in bringing its "A" game to the proceedings.
That said, adapting a musical into a straightforward comic book story had to be no easy task, and Marvel deserves points for trying to attract a different audience with this; an audience that had almost given up mainstream comic books at this point.
The issue also features bios of the cast and crew, and a piece on Leonard Starr and the original Little Orphan Annie strip:
Marvel got a lot of use out this thing--they reprinted the whole thing as a treasury edition, as well, one of the last treasuries they ever published.
Little Orphan Annie lasted all the way until 2010, where it had spent the last few years of its life limping along in just a handful of newspapers. The Annie movie was a mixed success--not a bomb by any means, but not the mega-blockbuster expected in situations like this. I've never actually seen it; looking back over this adaptation makes me want to check it out. Maybe tomorrow, when the sun comes out...
That said, adapting a musical into a straightforward comic book story had to be no easy task, and Marvel deserves points for trying to attract a different audience with this; an audience that had almost given up mainstream comic books at this point.
The issue also features bios of the cast and crew, and a piece on Leonard Starr and the original Little Orphan Annie strip:
Little Orphan Annie lasted all the way until 2010, where it had spent the last few years of its life limping along in just a handful of newspapers. The Annie movie was a mixed success--not a bomb by any means, but not the mega-blockbuster expected in situations like this. I've never actually seen it; looking back over this adaptation makes me want to check it out. Maybe tomorrow, when the sun comes out...
1 comment:
I always thought this comic would have been better if the art had been done as a Harold Gray pastiche. And I think Win Mortimer could have done it, too (maybe not with Vinnie Coletta.
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