The Winter 2004 issue of Nick Mag Presents had a comic written by Frank Pittarese and illustrated by Sam Hiti based on the 2004 adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate EventsFigured this should be a good time to storytime it
Bump if you're reading
And that's the end of A Series Of Unfortunate Events as Told by Count Olaf StorytimeConfession: I've never read the books, watched the film, or seen the Netflix series but I really like Sam Hiti/Kickliy's art and I figured this would be appropriate to do in October
Reminds me of Wind Waker
I love the style of the end credits animationshttps://youtu.be/SVV0ONSiQoA
>>155956607Damn, Jim Carrey used to be EVERYWHERE...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UasYUdGQhs
>>155957486>>155957321I read the “All the Wrong Questions” books as a kid, but never the “Series of Unfortunate Events”. I always felt like I was missing the punchline to a big inside joke.
>>155957321The books are cool. The movie looks nice and gets the general tone down but gets so much basic shit wrong and tries to cram like four or five stories into a single movie and Jim Carrey just does his usual shtick. The show gets (most of) the details right but it looks like shit and goes for way more of a whimsical twee sort of thing I'm not a fan of.
If A Series of Unfortunate Events got a proper graphic novel series would you cool if it looked like this or is there an artist/artstyle you'd prefer?
>>155961392The book art is right there, not even a question really.
>>155961222The movie combined the first three films into a single amalgamation and also included some setup to things that did not exist in the books at all when the film came out (mysterious organization setting fires that the parents were a part of).The film nails the tone and I don't think it got that many things wrong other than the dialing back of the narration. A lot of the humor in the series requires the written medium.The show is a more faithful narrative adaptation but NPH is too much of a clown and the set design and overall tone is not nearly as good as the film. Both adaptations are solid and made with a lot of care (I assume Handler/Snicket worked closely with both).
>>155956607Interesting read. It's pretty much a straightforward retelling of the film which is disappointing. I was hoping this would be more like "The True Story of the Three Little Pigs" where Olaf is actively narrating throughout the whole thing and we actually see events as he claims they happened ie: he's much more handsome and the Baudelaire's are ugly and mean and Sunny actually is a monkey. When Klaus trips he actually trips rather than Olaf hitting him, Olaf asks for Roast Beef and the Orphans actively mock him and serve disgusting pasta. Basically I want a strawman comic with Olaf as the sensible author insert and the Baudelaire's as the loud and incredibly silly opponent.
>>155961649Wait how would he try to justify child marriage?What would that even look like in his retelling?
>>155961623I don't know, I feel like they really bungled Klaus in the movie and while Carrey is generally a better actor and actually felt more sinister than NPH his Oalf wasn't very accurate either since it was mostly Jim Carrey ad-libbing with his usual Jim Carrey-isms. My main problem with the show is that it mostly forgot the dark part of the whole dark humor thing and also the whole setting felt way too modern in a bad way while the books and movie were much more antiquated by comparison.
>>155961693I felt that Klaus was 'okay' but the actor was too handsome and looked very different than the illustrations. I think that his character might have suffered the most from lacking the internal monologue/omniscient narrator describing his thoughts but that is more the fault of the lack of narration/the medium of film.I thought Carrey's Olaf was accurate enough. The ad-libs don't matter given that the script is already a pretty big deviation from the books. Characterwise I think Carrey did a very good job portraying the Olaf from books 1-5 where he's a goofy Lazytown villain in his various disguises. He is still a little menacing but once you hit Vile Village/Hostile Hospital Olaf gets a lot more sinister and there are fewer goofy disguise characters.I do really enjoy the timlessness of the setting. It feels more like a dark fairytale or a nightmare where the setting is intentionally anachronistic (kind of like B:TAS Gotham mixing computers and video games with tommy guns and fedoras). The movie and books definitely did a great job with that compared to the show.I will say that Patrick Warburton is fantastic in general and he did a great job as Lemony Snicket. Better than Jude Law (who also did well).
>>155961684Violet would be an egocentric primadonna and insist that she gets the starring role (without an audition and sidestepping the normal process). The fact that it is an actual binding marriage would be played off as a complete accident/coincidence that Olaf could not possibly have known and then those rotten orphans would accuse him of some kind of horrible 'scheme' when all he wanted to do was have a wonderful play about a marvelous [fictional] marriage.
>>155961460I was gonna make a devil's advocate post and point out plenty of comic adaptations of novels don't use the novel's artstyle because book illustrators don't necessarily work well for deadlines associated for comics but then I remembered the artist is still alive and isn't alien to comics (albeit his one credit is a short story in an anthology)
>>155961895The feasibility isn't what is being discussed here, just what you would like to see.I think the actual devil's advocate stance would be that Helquist's style may not work well 'in motion'. He has a great style for portraits and does a decent job with landscapes/scenery but I haven't seen anything from him that would work as a storyboard (which is how I envision a comic). Mundane conversational scenes (the type of thing that would be shot--reverse shot in a movie) and highly choreographed action scenes both seem like a poor fit for his style.
I really don't like that Klaus is taller than Violet.This isn't even a simple mistake, Violet is at least 3 years older than Klaus, it's the fundamental point of why marrying her was questionable instead of out right illegal.
>>155962136Again, it's based on the film's depiction first and foremost because that's what the comic was trying to promote to begin with
FUCK THIS GAY EARTHI WANT MY PONY PARTY BOOK AND MY LITTLEST ELF MOVIE AND I WANT THEM NOW
In case anyone shows up wondering if a page was skipped due to numbering jumping a number, it's because the page had an adBy the way, here's the full magazine in case anyone's curioushttps://archive.org/details/NickMagRawScans/NickMag%20Presents%20A%20Series%20Of%20Unfortunate%20Events%20-%20Holiday%202004/mode/2up
I didn't find the art style arousing so I didn't read it
So why did the movie underperform anyways?This series was used all the time for book reports growing up
>>155961969>Mundane conversational scenes (the type of thing that would be shot--reverse shot in a movie) and highly choreographed action scenes both seem like a poor fit for his style.Ehhh his art reminds me of certain euro comic artists and I'd say they do a good job
>>155963218wasn't it outrageously expensive to make or something
I really regret not getting into this book series when I was younger cause looking at it now it does seem really cool and something I would have enjoyed. But instead I picked up the books and read the "do not read this story" disclaimer at the start and my autistic ass took that literally and put it down.
>>155963218It was among the many middling adolescent book adaptions at the time trying to chase Harry Potter numbers and being axed when that didn't happen.
The ending credits sequence for the movie went extremely hard for some reasonhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVV0ONSiQoA
>>155965493My favorite “Harry Potter chaser” of the time was The 39 Clues.11 year old me thought:>magic and witches and wizardsMeh. Sounds girly.>spys, gadgets, and international conspiracyHeck yeah!
>>155965586>The 39 CluesKinda lazy title.
>>155965586Spy stuff was everywhere in the 2000sThere's one Anon who desperately wanted to talk about some tie-in novel series for the Spy Gear toyline
>>155964079>But instead I picked up the books and read the "do not read this story" disclaimer at the start and my autistic ass took that literally and put it down.Did you ever finish pic related?
>>155962222t. cakesniffer
>>155961649>>155961823My thoughts exactly. I liked the Hiti's art, but it feels like a very by-the-numbers retelling of the movie's events, just in a different medium and cutting a fair bit of details and dialogue (which the movie and show already do with the books anyway) in exchange for a bit of snarky narration from Olaf. I was really expecting something nearly exactly what you described, something much more substantial and unique. I sorta get the impression the author of this comic just saw the movie in preparation for this, and wasn't a fan of the series or had read the books beforehand, and it shows.
Hiti's an underrated artistGlad he recovered after his depression and accident caused him to quit comics for a couple of years
>>155961468He got the DSLs right
>>155965586Tangentially related but in Junior High I read The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series for my mandatory school reading Found out there was a graphic novel adaptationThese characters looked cooler in my head
>>155970828AnonStop
So was Count Olaf an actual pedophile?
>>155961802>Patrick WarburtonOkay, now I kind of want to watch it just for him
>>155961468>>155970828It really is fucking weird how the artist really decided to give the cartoon version of her such big fucking lips to the point that its distracting. Like is this consistent with rest of this artists work? Or did the artist just spent one too many minutes looking at promotional pics of the actress and just couldnt help themselves? Like looking back at the pics posted you could tell that the artist must have realized it was weird and he dropped the big lips as the comic reached its conclusion.Like even if the artists intent was to differentiate between boy features and girl features he still could have toned it down a notch like this edit I made
>>155974055Look at his art, he does tended to give females more pronounced lips but even in the comic it seems he dropped it from Violet fairly early onhttps://www.comicartfans.com/comic-artists/sam_hiti.asp
>>155972660No. It's pretty clear he genuinely despises children. He didn't bother even trying to put in an excuse to kiss the bride, he just wanted her violet dead once the ink was dried
>>155965586>39 CluesYou know that got a graphic novel series right?
>>1559566072004 was an acid triphttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ErlhM1NaZA
>>155976079Take me back
From the magazine itselfThat's a fucking terrible fishbowl
>>155973838He's kino
>>155976079Especially with the commentary track being Lemony Snickett pretending to be kidnapped and tortured the whole time. https://youtu.be/PhqSv81CPKs
>>155977800What makes it so bad? I'm unfamiliar with the needs of pet fishes
>>155981930It's mostly the size that's the problemThere's very little room and the big pink castle doesn't help
>>155979721I'm not well versed in finding any film audio other than the main one. Is there a place I can find commentary tracks/alternate audio tracks in the same way there is for subtitles? Alternatively, do any releasers include things like commentary tracks? TPB actually had one but it was just the director without Snicket and was a lot more serious.
>>155973838I was surprised just how well he played the part. Gives the character a real Rod Serling quality that really works, and he's more somber than than I've ever seen him.
>>155986858Yeah Warburton is a great actor that is criminally underused.I think the 2004 film does most things better than the show but Warburton was definitely the best part of the show. Shame about the retarded plot with the Quagmire parents. I like Will Arnett a lot too but I think by this point he was kind of phoning in his career.
>>155974055To be fair, the actress in the movie does got some big lips. The actress in the Netflix show has big lips too.I don’t know if that’s how she’s described in the books or what
>>155986913I always loved the film and it nailed the tone and atmosphere better for sure. The show struck me as a better adaptation since it actually did everything and fixed the lame ending, but I do wish they brought Jim Carrey back.
>>155956607I never read the books but my brother did and he seemed to like the movie though he knew that was an unpopular opinion. I rewatched it recently as an adult and I think the movie was solid as it's own thing, the ending even made me tear up a little. As a kid I thought it was too creepy but I was kind of a pussy. I remember the leeches scene freaking me the fuck out as a kid but now I was pretty into it. Maybe I'd feel differently if I knew what was cut or changed. The aesthetic and atmosphere is really cool and gloomy and the soundtrack is fantastic. Carrey is pretty wacky but I think he can pull off threatening pretty well. The tension from none of the adults in these children's lives not believing them about this abusive creep who plans to do them ill is realistically grim. I can imagine their struggle probably resonated hard with young readers who have a parent that mistreats them and can't get anyone to listen to them.
>>155991531I can tell by that handwriting that this comes from a girl
The books are my favorite series of all time. The movie was certainly something but not very faithful to the first three books. Basically just Jim Carrey playing himself but in the SoUE universe. The show adaptation was incredible and very faithful. I am not even remotely a fan of NPH but I think he did a great job as Olaf. And Patrick Warburton as Lemony Snicket was a 10/10 casting choice
Yet another book series that would've benefited from an ANIMATED adaptation
>>155956607>A Series Of Unfortunate Events How unfortunate we talkin'?
>>155956607>Nick Mag TAKE ME BAAACK
