by Eden
Other than the 1945 film serial, Brenda Starr has been adapted two more times to date, once as TV movie in 1976 and once as theatrical film that was produced in 1986 but wasn’t released until 1989 in Europe and 1992 in the U.S.
I did not watch all of them. I watched maybe … 5? I admittedly lost track. There may have been another I don’t remember.
Marry Me was essentially conceived as a movie. Crosby has more or less said that, pointing to how the early web address for the comic was MarryMeMovie.com. All of that is fine — it’s a great pitch for a 90-minute rom-com.
I want to be honest about not being a particular fan of Adrian Tomine. I liked the collection of his Optic Nerve minis, 32 Stories, but everything after that has left me cold. His art is good, if a little stiff sometimes, but it also feels like it’s too closely copying fellow cartoonists who inspired him. Likewise, his stories don’t feel like they’re populated by real people.
The Kitchen, written by Ollie Masters, with art by Ming Doyle and colors by Jordie Bellaire, definitely feels like it was another case of being conceived as a screenplay first and then adapted into a comic to sell the film rights. Except worse than that, it feels like the outline of a screenplay.