We Can Monetize Your Legacy, Wholesale

Just got word from reader Chris that there are some Total Recall sequel comics due out in May. See the pics? Here's the problem: why is Quaid still yoked out like Ahnold? My hope was that in revisiting this adaptation that they (the Yance men or whatever) would try to stay faithful to the story. Quaid should be a nebbish weakling.. I'm guessing this comic is actually more closely aligned with the original Total Recall. Bummer. If I remember correctly (insert implanted memory joke here) PKD sold all merchandising rights for "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" lock, stock, and barrel, so basically, the option holder can do whatever they want with the narrative contents of the story. Read this:

"Inspired by the hit 1990 science fiction movie, Total Recall. Read the story of what happens next! Having killed Cohaagen and given Mars an atmosphere, Douglas Quaid (the man who was Hauser) simply wants to live happily ever after with the woman of his dreams, Melina. How can Quaid have his happily ever after with Mars in chaos, new enemies coming to the red planet, and a mysterious stranger walking about? Check out issue Total Recall #1 to find out!"

I kinda like that this appears to be the most boring comic ever created. My hope is that Quaid gets a manager position at the Mars Starbucks and becomes a civil war buff.

So, I expect one of you readers with an interest in comics will review this series for us. That way I won't have to buy these...

Pages From Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Comic

Chip Mosher, a longtime subscriber to the PKD newsletter before the intertubes and one of the guys over at Boom Studios who worked on the comic adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? sent me a couple pages from the very begining. Click to enlarge.

What do you guys think? Admittedly, I'm not much of a comic book guy, but these look pretty good. I guess I imagine Deckard as more of a bureaucrat. He looks a little too pumped up in these images, but I'm being picky. Isn't interesting to see how others imagine PKD's setting - and how that setting may always look like Ridley Scott's Blade Runner?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? to Become a Comic Book Series

Boom Studios announced today that it plans to publish a 24-issue comic book adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Remember, Dick's trust authorized an adaptation of "The Electric Ant" last year, and this looks like another pretty good move, hopefully exposing the novel to another set of fans. One thing that I like about the project is that they plan to a complete adaption, totally faithful to Dick's original, even using his original text.

I'm not a huge comic fan, but the illustrations look good, and my guess is, this won't hurt Dick's burgeoning literary reputation. This article over at MajorSpoilers.com quotes Dick's daughters Laura and Isa as saying:

“We are thrilled that DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? is being adapted for this audience by such a talented team. We’ve been incredibly impressed with BOOM!’s ability to create such a faithful interpretation of the original work without sacrificing their own original instincts and artistic sensibilities,” said Laura Leslie and Isa Dick Hackett of Electric Shepherd Productions. “Through this medium, readers will now have visual access to parts of the novel not explored in the film adaptation BLADE RUNNER.”

Warren Ellis is set to provide "backmatter" for the novel to appear in the first issue. That's the only red flag. Ellis, who probably doesn't deserve the bashing I gave him in this post awhile ago, nevertheless rubs me the wrong way. Remember he wrote one of those old, backhanded-compliment "PKD was a brilliant nut-case" articles we all had to wade through when Dick had his literary coming out party with the release of his first volume from the Library of America.


Those covers look better than these: