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Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? (2011)

by Philip K. Dick(Favorite Author)

4.07 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1608865002 (ISBN13: 9781608865000)

languge

English

genre

Fantasy

publisher

BOOM! Studios

series

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

review 1: I read this series in single issues on Comixology, and since I don't feel like writing six separate reviews, I'll just put my thoughts on the whole thing here. As a lot of the other reviewers have remarked, this is less a comic book "adaptation" of Dick's novel than it is an illustrated version split into panels, which makes it a bit of an odd hybrid. In these days, with comics using narrative captions less than ever, the experience of reading descriptive text alongside the images they're describing takes some getting used to--though in a way, the sense of detachment it creates actually fits the desolation of Dick's world and characters. What I find valuable here--aside from just the experience of reading the original novel, which I'm ashamed to say I hadn't done before--i... mores the visual interpretation Tony Parker gives to "Do Androids Dream," which despite the occasional Blade Runner nod (Deckard's trench coat) is refreshingly distinct from the movie version. Blade Runner is such a visually indelible film, it's hard to imagine there being room for a "proper" "Androids" movie (though they remade Total Recall, so who knows?). Parker's art for this adaptation looks to me like the storyboards for a really great, as yet unmade film--or, I suppose, given the length, a miniseries. Of course it is a pity they didn't use the comics medium to fuller effect (is Dick's text really so inviolate that we can't do without a single word?); and, as is typical in monthly comics, the stunning covers are a hell of a lot more visually interesting than the page-by-page art. Serialization also does the story few favors. Again, I'm not sure how it works in trade paperback form, but the single issues follow the novel so religiously that their pacing is wildly uneven; one installment might be heavy on action, while the next will be almost entirely dialogue. So yes, as a comic, it's an ungainly and sometimes unsuccessful experiment. But as a visual companion to the novel, it more than justifies its existence.
review 2: I come to Dick only through the adaptations of his work – and I cannot think of a Sci-Fi author, no matter how successful, whose work has been done well for the big screen – but if this graphic novel series is faithful to the script of the original novel, then I rather certain that I would not enjoy Dick as an author.Never mind that his Sci-Fi is neither hard nor soft, but just sort of there – a kind of imposed reality of a drug-induced fever dream. It is just that the cool factor for Dick stories seems to be in the concept and not in the execution. As for the imagery in the graphic novel, it does little more than highlight how sparse Dick's descriptive text is. Hey, good for him (and he is certainly better at it than I am). And it doesn't look anywhere near as good as the not-at-all-faithful Blade Runner adaptation. I feel that Blade Runner, much like Apocalypse Now, took the source material well beyond what the original author managed to accomplish.I still plan on giving the actual novel a chance, but I am not hopeful that I will enjoy it. less

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