Review: Men in Black: The Movie (Oct 1997) -Official Comic Adaptation

Men in Black: The Movie
Marvel Comics
October 1997

Writing: Lowell Cunningham
Art: Rod Whigham

Well, they did one thing right on this movie adaptation, which was to get the actual creator of the Men in Black to write the comics adaptation of the movie inspired by the comics!

The premise behind MIB is that there is a secret government agency that deals with the aliens (legal and illegal) living on earth. From there we move to standard buddy-movie fare with aliens as the backdrop:  Old veteran with new upstart partner.  Classic.

The Story
Experienced agent Kay enlists the help of a young cop names James Edwards who recently stopped an alien by himself.  Because of how good he is, even though he has authority issues, James is enlisted as a recruit for MIB and becomes Agent Kay's partner.

Overall, this is not bad, but unfortunately, this adaptation suffers from what most adaptation suffer from:  trying to cram a movie into a short comic book.  Much of the feel, pacing, characterization, and mood suffer from this.  It would probably take a 2-3 issue limited series to best get it right.  This is a similar problem that movies made from books suffer from.  In this case, many jokes fall flat, because of the comic timing and delivery of the actors, where in a comic book, it would take more panels to be able to get the joke across correctly.

While I absolutely love the concept of MIB (and look forward to reading other MIB comics), this adaptation only makes me hungry for good comics of MIB (or the movie) leaving this issue very forgettable. 

The final panel leaves me hope..."To be continued in MIB: Retribution!"

The Art
The art is nice, with good likenesses of Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith.