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| A comic book I think Eddie would have loved. |
In 1990, Malibu Graphics went all-in on Ed Wood. The fledgling California comics company, best remembered today for such titles as Men in Black and Ultraforce, released two strange but intriguing little books based on Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) that year: an "uncensored and uncut" screenplay and a graphic novel. These slim volumes could have easily been combined into one omnibus edition, but instead they were released separately. Did the company succumb to the Ed Wood curse? You tell me. By the time the Tim Burton-directed biopic Ed Wood (1994) was released to theaters, Malibu had already been absorbed (read: chewed up and spat out) by rival Marvel Comics.
The early '90s, in retrospect, was rather a fallow time for Wood fandom. A decade had elapsed since The Golden Turkey Awards (1980), but Rudolph Grey's groundbreaking book Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992) had not yet been published. Eddie wasn't in the public eye very much during those years. Malibu's two modest Plan 9 books can thus only be seen as labors of love; they certainly weren't the result of market research or trend-hopping.
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| The 1990 Plan 9 comic book. |
I've already discussed the screenplay book in a fair amount of detail, so this week I turn my attention to the graphic novel, which carries the subtitle The Official Authorized Movie Adaptation. (I believe film distributor Wade Williams gave his blessing to the project at the time.) Like the script book, the comic was edited by Malibu Graphics co-founder Tom Mason. Yes, he shares a name with the gaunt chiropractor who once served as Bela Lugosi's double in the original Plan 9. No, they're not the same guy. The chiropractor died in 1980. It's just a wacky coincidence, maybe one that Ed Wood himself would have found amusing.
Malibu assembled quite a team to create the Plan 9 comic. The script was adapted to graphic novel form by author John Wooley (1949- ). In his decades-long career, the multitalented Wooley has written for Fangoria, penned volumes about beach movies and biker flicks, and hosted an NPR show about Western swing, among many other endeavors. Like Johnny Legend, Wooley has done so much in so many fields that it's difficult to define him or categorize him. But he's more than qualified for the job of writing this comic. The artwork was penciled by Stan Timmons (1956- ) and inked by Bruce McCorkindale (1960- ), both prolific veterans of the comics industry with voluminous credits at DC, Marvel, and other publishers.
In an introductory essay called "Shabby Dignity," Wooley decries The Golden Turkey Awards as smug and condescending and laments the negative attention the book brought to Ed Wood and Plan 9. However, he acknowledges that the graphic novel he's writing would probably not exist without Harry and Michael Medved. He also describes the approach that he and his creative team took in adapting Wood's film to the comics medium. Basically, they had two choices. They could literally translate the film to the page, complete with wonky special effects and mismatched footage. "Or we could do it straight," Wooley writes, "using Wood's story and dialogue but—in effect—giving him a budget, since it costs no more to draw a million-dollar spaceship than it does to draw a pieplate."
Ultimately, Wooley and company chose the latter option, and I'm glad they did because this graphic novel gives us a Plan 9 that we haven't seen, rather than rehashing the one we've sat through a hundred times. To be sure, this comic is a faithful, instantly recognizable adaptation of Ed Wood's film. The comic book versions of Tor Johnson, Vampira, Bela Lugosi, and Criswell all look like their famous onscreen counterparts. Meanwhile, John Wooley's script carries over the plot and dialogue we all know with just a few tasteful adjustments, including some added explanatory narration. But Stan Timmons and Bruce McCorkindale have been given a fair amount of leeway in redesigning sets, props, costumes, and supporting characters. Edie the stewardess, for instance, has been given a very 1980s-looking permed hairdo and does not much resemble Norma McCarty's version of the character. Eros and Tanna's ship is more credible, too, and the tombstones in the cemetery don't appear as though they're about to fall over.
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| A redesigned Edie in a more realistic cockpit in the Plan 9 comic book. |
Also, because the makers of this comic are not shackled by the constraints of low-budget filmmaking, such as filming real actors on a cramped soundstage, they can show us the action from vantage points that would have been impossible for Ed Wood to replicate. We get closeups, wide shots, Dutch angles, overhead shots, and other niceties that Eddie simply didn't have the time and money for. The comic book even manages to work some visual interest into Plan 9's talkiest and most static scenes, such as when Col. Edwards (Tom Keene) meets with Gen. Roberts (Lyle Talbot) at the Pentagon.
To me, the best sequence in the entire comic—the one that justifies the existence of the project—comes when the resurrected Ghoul Man (Bela Lugosi) breaks into the home of Jeff and Paula Trent. It's nighttime, so Paula (Mona McKinnon) is in bed when the Dracula-like monster enters her bedroom. She flees the home in utter terror and runs to the nearby cemetery, only to be horrified by two further zombies: the Ghoul Man's wife (Vampira), who has been stalking the grounds for days and has already killed two gravediggers, and Police Inspector Daniel Clay (Tor Johnson), who has just arisen from his grave. Ultimately, though she trips and falls along the way, Paula makes it to the road and is rescued by kindly Farmer Calder (Karl Johnson).
In the original movie, this mostly-wordless sequence is infamous for a number of reasons. Ed Wood combines some leftover scraps of footage he had of Bela Lugosi with newly-shot footage of Lugosi's unconvincing double, Tom Mason. Lugosi mostly mills around without any particular direction, while Mason is purposeful and menacing. It's difficult to think of them as the same character. Vampira looks amazing as always, but she has nothing specific to do except glare at Mona McKinnon from a distance. Meanwhile, poor Tor Johnson has great difficulty pulling his massive frame out of his grave, and his "resurrection" involves numerous model shots that do not match the wide shots at all.
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| Paula is terrorized by ghouls in the Plan 9 comic book. |
If this all plays as slapstick comedy (or performance art) in the movie, it's actually an effectively creepy sequence in the graphic novel. For one thing, Wooley made a conscious decision to depict the Ghoul Man character consistently from panel to panel, rather than switching between Bela Lugosi and Tom Mason. And with his long, flowing Dracula cape, the Ghoul Man is quite an imposing figure as he enters the Trent home and stalks Paula. The tension only increases as the young woman runs into the cemetery and finds further horrors there. Again, the artists have the freedom to include dramatic closeups and to depict the action from any angle they choose.
Plan 9 from Outer Space: The Official Authorized Movie Adaptation proves that Ed Wood's writing translates extremely well to the comics medium. One of the most-mocked aspects of the Plan 9 movie is its campy, overheated, and sometimes nonsensical dialogue. (Say it with me now: "Inspector Clay's dead, murdered, and somebody's responsible!") But even this is not a problem in the graphic novel. Somehow, these lines seem perfectly fitting and natural when they appear in speech bubbles and aren't being said aloud. It reminds me of the story Carrie Fisher used to tell about George Lucas on the talk show circuit:
I was in so many films where you'd get the dialogue and you couldn't say it. We used to say to George Lucas, "You can type this, but you cannot say, 'It'll take a couple of minutes for the navicomputer to calculate the coordinates.'" It took 20 takes.
Ed Wood and George Lucas might have been very much alike in this respect as screenwriters. You'll notice that Star Wars (1977) was quickly adapted to comic books, and George Lucas' mega-franchise has spawned countless comics in the ensuing decades.
Outside the wacky world of Drew Friedman, however, there aren't many Ed Wood-inspired comics. This seems like a missed opportunity, because I think Eddie's short stories, like the ones contained in Blood Splatters Quickly (2014), would be a natural for this treatment. I've also suggested in the past that Eddie's numerous unproduced screenplays, like Trial by Terror (1958), should be turned into graphic novels, especially now that Eddie's main actors are no longer around to perform them. Ed Wood himself was a major fan of comic books, as Nightmare of Ecstasy demonstrates repeatedly:
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| Some quotes from Nightmare of Ecstasy about Ed Wood and comics. |
So Eddie's proposed Bela Lugosi comic never came to fruition during his lifetime, but Plan 9 from Outer Space: The Official Authorized Movie Adaptation gives us a glimpse of what that comic might have been like. I am confident that Ed would have been flattered by this nicely-produced volume from Malibu Graphics. It's too bad the company went out of business and that no one else continued in this vein. We could have gotten comic book versions of Bride of the Monster (1955), The Bride and the Beast (1958), and perhaps even Orgy of the Dead (1965) in anaglyph 3D. Imagine what an artist might do with that!
NOTE: As this article was being finalized, I learned of the existence of Ed Wood Jr. Graphic Novel (2022) by Diana Wood. I have ordered a copy of this book and will review it for a future installment of this series. - J.B.