Comic Book Adaptations of films were very popular back in the days, and some extremely successful. In the times when it wasn't as easy to watch the movie again, or you had to wait months or years to see it for the second time, or own it, novelizations and comic book adaptations filled the void. In latter years, they provided extra material, deleted and alternative scenes that sometimes expanded the story or mythology and answered some questions that might not have been explained in the film
Some Movie Comic Adaptations were made into a big event in itself, like the adaptation of 1989's Batman. And pretty much every sci-fi or fantasy film, no matter the budget, had a comic adaptation. T2, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, had one of those massive promotional campaigns and hype machines that happened only when a milestone was hitting theaters. Carolco spared no expense for promotion and presold millions of dollars worth of merchandising licensing. A special effects heavy teaser trailer was shot by Stan Winston, and the T2 emblem and the teaser image of half Arnold, half-endoskeleton bust started to appear everywhere. However, surprisingly the comic adaptation arrived 2 months after the movie premiered
The rights for the Comic Book Adaptation went to one of the biggest guys around, which was and still is the Marvel Comics. However, the newsstand comic book made by Marvel were of rather cheap quality, and surprisingly for an adaptation of a film that was the most expensive movie ever made at the time with biggest name in Hollywood, they didn't make exception. The quality of the paper made it look and feel like a daily newspaper. At least the adaptation got an A list name in comic books, Klaus Janson, famous for his work with Frank Miller on the legendary The Dark Knight Returns and Daredevil. But I did put a spotlight on it in an article about the Terminator comic books in the early 90's HERE, so I don't want to repeat myself here but I want to focus on a different aspect of that Comic Adaptation, and that is its different editions. One thing I just want to mention about the actual adaptations - I recently surfed around to get a feel what comic book aficionados and fans think of this adaptation, and they all love it, specifically Janson's work and some even study and analyze his particular work on T2. There's some nice subtle stuff I wouldn't have noticed otherwise. I'm happy T2 got such a big name in the industry for its comic adaptation
Marvel milked its T2 comic as much as they could, as it was actually released three times the same year! After the original, newsstand singular issues were released on that newspaper paper, later that year it was released in one issue in both black and white, with an original cover by Janson (see HERE), and in color on much better quality paper (see HERE), which made it, I would say, significantly different from the newsstand version. It was then reprinted by a company called iBooks in 2002 in black and white as well (See HERE), and it differed from Marvel's by having white border on some pages and cut off artwork in places. Here are some comparisons of all the versions
As you can see, the original newsstand version has much darker, duller colors and darker shadows
And here are few more comparisons of all versions. Again, the original colors are more diluted, darker, than the color Trade Paperback's, which has much brighter and stronger colors. Note the shadows on the faces that nearly completely disappear in the TPB version. The black and white editions don't vary much other than occasional framing
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