Monday, October 10, 2011

THE BLACK HOLE (1979) by Jack Kirby

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Back in 1979, the Disney folks hired legendary comic book artist Jack Kirby to adapt their new sci-fi epic, The Black Hole, into comic strip form for newspaper syndication. Like the Star Trek newspaper strip that appeared around the same time, it was intended to promote the expensive film. Apparently, it did get picked up by a few papers, but didn't last long - no doubt because the movie was a box-office disappointment.

In 2007, Disney published at least some of the strips - with new, digital colors - in their Disney Zone digest magazine.
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12 comments:

  1. Timothy Paul SchaeferOctober 10, 2011 at 6:46 AM

    Wow. Thank you for sharing these.
    I had no idea Kirby worked on these.
    I learn something new about him just about every week.

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  2. John R. PlattOctober 10, 2011 at 8:13 AM

    Wild!

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  3. MoncynnesOctober 10, 2011 at 9:33 AM

    I wonder if it worked any better than Kirby's "2001" comic book for Marvel.

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  4. Jon PintoOctober 10, 2011 at 9:47 AM

    These are AWESOME!! I never knew about these but now I need to see more. Thanks so much for making my day.

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  5. JayOctober 10, 2011 at 9:50 AM

    VERY cool indeed! Seems like tracking a copy down is near impossible, but I'm on the look out now.

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  6. GaryOctober 11, 2011 at 9:06 AM

    I never liked the movie... but I love the comic strip!!

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  7. El VoxOctober 18, 2011 at 12:22 PM

    I wasn't aware of this either, thanks for sharing.

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  8. jim tOctober 28, 2011 at 6:07 AM

    not sure if i knew of it, but recall similar movie tie-in newspaper strips from the same era and slightly afterward. there's a bit of an old-style FF look to that last b/w panel above.

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  9. William NoetlingJanuary 6, 2012 at 9:24 PM

    It's interesting that you thought BH was a flop - it was just featured in this article on IO9 yesterday:

    http://io9.com/5873224/hit-movies-that-everybody-thinks-were-flops

    Budget - 26 million.
    Domestic Gross 35 million.

    Hardly a "flop" by anyone's standards. Plus it made TONS more dough on home video.

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  10. Marc McKenzieApril 24, 2012 at 9:52 PM

    I remember reading these strips (but not knowing that Kirby did them), but I also remember that while the title "The Black Hole" did appear, the strip itself--at least in the newspaper I read--was titled "Unidentified Flying Oddball".

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  11. Richard GagnonJanuary 12, 2015 at 4:33 PM

    The strip's duration had little to do with the film's success or lack thereof. The film was adapted, over and out. The Black Hole was just an instalment of a anthology package entitled "Walt Disney's Treasury of Classic Tales". The BH was followed by adaptations of The Watcher in the Woods, Condorman, and The Last Flight of Noah's Ark.

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