Vertigo Comics was bowled over with charm when award-winning director Quentin Tarantino presented his bold plan to release “Django Unchained” into the comic book stratosphere with a six-issue miniseries.
The comic book version is adapted by Reggie Hudlin and based on the original (long) screenplay and includes many scenes that didn’t make it into the final theatrical cut.
The first edition of the comic book sold out days before Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” was nominated for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay by the Academy Awards.
Hudlin, who is also a producer on the film, isn’t shy about enjoying his solid working relationship with the often-controversial director. In bringing Tarantino’s original screenplay to the comic book page, it was a mutual artistic, bro-love that made the experience bonding.
“Quentin and I, we love to talk, and one of the things we love to talk about is comic books,” Hudlin shared. “Specifically western comic books. The main thing was to be as faithful as possible to the original script.”
“If I had included all of my ideas, I’d have a four-hour film,” Tarantino confesses. “So, comic books. Not only do I love comic books, I especially love western comic books. Growing up, I read the adventures of Kid Colt Outlaw, Tomahawk, the Rawhide Kid, Bat Lash and especially Yang and Kid Cassidy, which for my money was the greatest Blaxploitation western ever made. And it’s in that spirit of cinematic comics literature that I present to you ‘Django Unchained.’” (Yang, incidentally, became the TV hit “Kung Fu.”)
With rich interior art by R.M. Guerra (“Scalped”) and flashback sequences by Jason Latour, “Django Unchained” tells the gritty, visceral journey of a bold slave-turned-bounty hunter who, with the help of his odd mentor, sets out to rescue his abused and enslaved wife from a ruthless, sociopathic Mississippi plantation owner.
The first issue, which sold out shortly after its release in hard copy and digital in December, included a movie-poster cover and variant by Jim Lee.
The next comics will be released in the following order:
- Feb. 13 – 40 pages in color, $3.99.
- March 13 – 48 pages in color, $4.99.
- April 10 – 48 pages in color, $4.99.