Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Book: Marvel Comics Super Special

Issue No.: 3

Published: March 14, 1978

Title: “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”

Cover Price: $1.50

I surprisingly haven’t yet written about my beloved Marvel Star Wars adaptation — it was printed Treasury Edition style, squarebound with larger-than-normal pages, and it was basically a reprint of the first six issues of Marvel’s Star Wars comic book series, which adapted the classic 1977 sci-fi film. Marvel Comics Super Special (at least the issues I’ve seen in person) was a series of one-shot, staple-bound magazines that were basically the same size as a comic book. It ran for 41 issues, and, like this one, many issues were movie adaptations. Sometimes they would get reprinted as a standard comic book mini-series. (The Super Special adaptation of Empire Strikes Back would get reprinted over the course of a few issues of Marvel’s monthly Star Wars comic.)

My favorite bit of trivia about this series is issue no. 7, an adaptation of the infamously bad Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band movie, was never published. Apparently the creative team on the book (which featured the late, great artist George Pérez) ran into a few roadblocks and was struggling to make their deadline. Then the movie came out and immediately bombed, so Marvel never bothered to release their adaptation. And they didn’t bother to renumber the next issue (an adaptation of classic sci-fi TV show Battlestar Galactica). Or maybe they just didn’t have time to renumber it.

You can read a bit more about the Super Special series on Wikipedia (of course).

Keep in mind that there wasn’t really a home video market in 1978. When a movie came out in theaters, if you missed it, you might have to wait years before it showed up on TV. So, along with novelizations, a comics adaptation like this was a way fans could take the movie home. It was also a way to get the jist of a story you couldn’t see in theaters. I remember being distraught when I found out Blade Runner was rated “R.” There was no way my mom was gonna let me see that (I was like eleven years old at the time). My consolation prize was Marvel Super Special no. 22 — Marvel’s Blade Runner adaptation.

I haven’t seen CE3K in forever. Which is good in this case, as I could better tell how well the story holds up just as a comic book, without having a recent viewing on my mind to fill in too many blanks. My verdict — it’s a solid comic book story. A few highlights...

First, I like that they explain what the different “kinds” of close encounters are on the inside cover. I don’t think I was ever really clear on this despite having seen this movie 40-plus years ago (probably on broadcast TV because we didn’t have cable) and a few times since then.

The artwork (by penciler Walt Simonson, inker Klaus Janson, and colorist Marie Severin) is generally good and often excellent. For example, here’s an amazing double splash page of (spoiler) the big spaceship showing up at the story’s end.

There’s a nice article at the end of the book where writer Archie Goodwin explains several of the challenges involved in adapting a movie into a comic book, and he goes into some of the details of how he and the rest of the creative team adapted Close Encounters.

Finally, there’s a house ad at the end of the book pitching Marvel’s regular comic books to Close Encounters fans. And bonus, it features my very first comic book, Amazing Spidey no. 180!

Next time — I check out the Avengers’ very own reprint book!