The Martian Chronicles: The Authorized Adaptation (2011)

The Martian Chronicles: The Authorized Adaptation (2011)

Author: Ray Bradbury | Illustrators: Dennis Calero / Joe St. Pierre / Josh Adams / James Smith | Page Count: 160

"All the things which had uses. All the mountains which had names. We'll give them new names, but the old names are there, somewhere in time..."

A comic book adaptation of one of Bradbury's most famous works. I'm not going to give a synopsis of story or outline specific themes because I've covered the novel previously. This is about the comic version only, and it'll be brief because I wouldn't recommend a reading to anyone who isn't a huge Bradbury fan.

The book contains an introduction for those that haven't read the source text, from the author himself, detailing the genesis of the original novel, which is vital information if you're to understand the passage of time and the contradictions in some of the stories.

What it neglects to mention, however, is that the adaptation is incomplete. It wouldn't have been possible to fit every story into the limited page count, but some of the exclusions are essential and defining parts of the overall work and their removal weakens it, unquestionably. For those that care, the omissions are listed below the cut:

The Taxpayer / The Locusts / The Shore / The Fire Balloons / The Wilderness / Way up in the Middle of the Air / The Naming of Names / Usher II / The Old Ones / The Luggage Store / The Silent Towns / The Long Years / There Will Come Soft Rains [1]

The artwork pendulums from merely adequate to mildly awful. The limited colours, such as the deep Martian reds and browns, were expected, but the lifelessness of the characters and the lack of singular identity in many of the protagonists was definitely not. Pilots, explorers, settlers, and home-makers should be starkly different in their approach to the new World, but, with a few well-rounded exceptions, those qualities got lost somewhere along the way.

- Don't give up your day job. -

Overall, it's a pale imitation; an evening shadow cast onto a hollow wall. Its intentions may have been good — evidenced by the fact that it uses the original timeline, not the revised '97 version — but it fails to excite. The highlight is the final chapter / story (The Million-Year Picnic), which retains some of the weight, poignancy, and poetic tragedy that's missing from all the others.

[1] The orange text denotes stories that are either absent from some editions of the original novel or were replaced by one of the others, for various reasons.