DJANGO UNCHAINED by Reginald Hudlin, R.M. Guera, Denys Cowan, Danijel Zezelj, and Jason Latour
Collects Django Unchained 1-7 Price: $24.99
When the Django Unchained movie came out I had no interest in seeing it because I've never particularly cared for westerns. Upon receiving the book for review, I still decided to refrain from seeing it because I wanted to judge this book objectively and purely as a comic book. Believe me when I tell you there is just as much positive as there is to say negative about this book.
This adaptation is actually based on Quentin Tarantino's original draft of the screenplay. Therefore, you're going to see things that couldn't be included in the film for either budgetary reasons or time constraints. Make no mistake, this is intended for mature readers. Coarse language, graphic violence, and nudity are all featured. A lot of the nudity is draped in shadow, barring a few bare breasts and several closeups of one hairy rendering of Django's scrotum.
As we embark on this veritable roller coaster ride of quality consistency together, I will talk about the writing first. Hudlin does do a commendable job of adapting a screenplay to the comic book medium, though I'm not quite sure which were Hudlin's words and which were Tarantino's. The dialogue is the strong suit, but the narration is sometimes cringe worthy. Both these men do a good job of making you feel attached to the main characters, so if one dies you will really feel for them. When it comes to the turns the story takes- especially at the end- some are so obvious and convenient that you will do what meme junkies refer to as the facepalm.
Now we come to art, which was the most wildly inconsistent thing about this work; it ranges from pretty good to downright atrocious. I'm sure a lot of guys were lining up to adapt a Tarantino film, but sometimes you can fit only so many cooks in a kitchen. The only artist I have familiarity with is Denys Cowan from his work on Batman: Lovers and Madmen. (Be quiet. I actually liked that story.) Before you ask, he is one of the artists I liked in this collection. The more capable pencilers do a great job of making their segment very cinematic and atmospheric. It was a little disconcerting that even one of the better artists couldn't make his characters look consistent from panel to panel. I'm aware that the intention was to not make the characters in the book look entirely like their onscreen counterparts. There's one particular scene where Candie kind of looks like Leonardo DiCaprio and then in the next panel looks EXACTLY like "The Million Dollar Man" Ted DiBiase. Wouldn't you agree that those are two markedly different looking gentlemen? Since I didn't read this in single issue format, I'm not quite sure how they rotated artists. There's no separation of chapters between issues and I understand that being an obvious decision to make it flow like a feature film. It's easier to accept a change of artist between issues or in a backup story, but there are times when a character is in mid-sentence and- BAM- you turn the page to see a different artist's work. It's off-putting to say the least.
While the sensitive subject of slavery is the backdrop of the story, the heart of it is a man's love for his wife and his quest to get her back. That's a theme that any man can relate to. I liked the supporting character, Schultz, and his smooth talking legal rhetoric. He has an interesting relationship with Django that sometimes borders on fatherly. Not only does he grant him freedom, he also mentors him as a bounty hunter and educates him. When Django uses all he's learned at the end, it really pays off.
As for supplemental material, we're treated to a foreword by Quentin Tarantino himself, a gallery of standard and variant covers, preliminary sketches, and factoids about the adaptation.
If you are a die hard fan of the film, then you should probably pick up this alternate cut of sorts. Jonah Hex fans might want to give this a look as well. If you're someone that's just curious, you might want to wait for lower price point when this eventually gets a paperback release or check it out from your local library. So, did this make me want to finally see the movie? No.
Score: 7/10.