Entry 294: Blast From the Past - Part 25

This is the short King Kong entry before the long King Kong entry. The simple and pleasant entry before the frustrating mess entry. The calm entry before the storm entry.



In 2005 Dark Horse asked me if I could do a 12 page mini King Kong comic. The comic would be packaged in with toys for the upcoming Peter Jackson remake. At the time I'm not sure what I knew of the film. There might have been a teaser trailer out at this point, I'm not sure, but as a Peter Jackson fan I was definitely interested.

The thing was, they needed all 12 pages and a cover drawn and inked in like week. Or something like that. It might have been longer, but I remember that it needed a quick turn around. The good news was that it was a mini comic, so the pages were smaller, like half the size of a regular comic. So it was really like doing 6 pages.

The story was simple, just Kong fighting and killing a t-rex.

You might remember that in the early teaser trailers for this movie that King Kong looked different. I remember feeling like Peter Jackson and his special effects team at Weta didn't settled on what Kong would look like till pretty late in the game. He was shaggier and he might have had a lighter color on his forehead. I think that's the version I was working with. I think I was also looking at some concept art.  There wasn't much to see at that time but, luckily, I didn't need much for this short comic.

Here's something kind of fun. If you'd like this comic read to you you can find that right here on Youtube

I love how beat up this guys copy is. And I love that he says he always enjoyed reading it as a kid.

After this I was asked to do the comic adaptation of the movie.

In the comic industry there are stories about how terrible working on a movie license comic can be. What comes next, I would say, is one of those stories.

Till then
Blogged and blogged.

Side note: That two page spread is one of the few original pieces I've ever sold. It was a long time ago, before I decided to not sell my originals.

Also, these pages were colored by Michael Atiyeh.