I’ve recently rekindled my passion for finding and reading 80s era movie tie-in novelizations, and in restarting the hunt for books there were a few candidates that jumped up to the top of my list. One in particular has proven super difficult to track down, the novelization of the Tom Hanks/Penny Marshall movie Big. I can’t confirm that a novelization actually exists as I’ve never seen it, and finding evidence on the internet is proving to be way more difficult than I could ever have imagined. First off, there aren’t that many folks talking about novelizations as it is, but this is drastically compounded by the fact that using “Big” as a search term is about as useful as searching for a determiner like the world “the”. Adding insult to injury is combining it with “Tom Hanks”, “Movie”, “Tie-in”, “Novelization”, or “Book”. Try looking up “Big” in fiction and literature on Amazon, and then decide whether it’s worth the 16 hours it would take to flip through the six billion books the database brings up. Long story short, I can’t confirm this novelization exists outside of a few forum posts, and none of these ever list anything remotely useful, like say the name of the author. The search wasn’t completely fruitless though, as it did turn up one piece of obscure Big merchandise that I had been totally unaware of, a 1988 comic book adaptation!
I know, “What the what?!?” indeed. It’s not that comic book adaptations of flicks are all that rare, it’s just weird to find one that wasn’t action, horror, or science fiction-oriented. You don’t tend to see dramas or comedies adapted because the target audience, especially in the 80s was almost always 12 year-old boys, and by and large most comics aimed at this audience are almost always super hero-related, with the stray Archie and cartoon adaptation thrown in for good measure. What makes this even weirder, at least for me, is that this single issue was published by Hit Comics, which was a division of Dark Horse, the company at the time that was responsible for bringing us a line of very adult and graphic movie tie-ins including Terminator, Aliens, Predator, and Robocop. Big just doesn’t seem like a likely candidate to fit in with this line’s tone or audience appeal. Regardless it exists, and when I first found out about it I really hard my hopes up that it was going to be amazing considering it was largely advertised as featuring the artwork of Paul Chadwick, the man behind Dark Horse’s Concrete…
Before I get into the actual comic though, I wanted to take a look at the single most important reason this comic book exists, which is the back cover (featured above.) A full page advertisement for Big coming to store on VHS seems a little redundant, but then again it explains the entire endeavor. I know this is obvious, but this comic is just one giant advertisement for the home video release, but considering it was released via Dark Horse is where it gets a little weird in my eyes. See, back in ’88 DH didn’t have the market presence of some of their rivals like Marvel and DC. To be honest, I don’t remember seeing any DH titles in grocery or convenience stores, only in the specialty comic stores. So it’s weird that an obvious 32 page advertisement would be produced, with writers, pencilers, inkers, and colorists brought on board just to have it sit on a rack in a comic store being largely overshadowed by a plethora of more popular titles. If I had to take a guess, I’d say that this was comic ended up as a marketing blunder and an eventual lesson learned by both DH and 20th Century Fox, that in the future the future it might be a better idea to try something else (like Dark Horse partnering with New Line to reverse the process and bring their comics properties to the screen, ala The Mask.)
Anyway, this obscure gem exists, and I thought I’d take a few moments to take a look at what it is we did get. So, as I was saying earlier, I was pretty excited by the idea of Paul Chadwick handing the illustrative duties on the book, but then was sorely disappointed when I had the comic in hand and realized he only worked on the cover. The actual comic was penciled by Jack Pollock, inked by John Nyberg, and adapted by Mark Verheiden. Pollock worked in the production department at DH and brought a very Mad Magazine-esqe cartoony-ness to the project. It’s not that this is awful, but it wasn’t the wistful tone that I was expecting from Chadwick’s brush. As far as the adaptation of the film goes, well, it’s all basically there, though extremely abbreviated considering the actual comic only runs 28 pages. Most scenes only get a panel or two, and a majority of the dialogue is reserved for the key quotes from the flick. I was actually surprised that they really managed to fit it all in considering…
Back to the artwork, again, it’s not awful, though it is pretty loose and a lot of the caricatures and exaggeration tend to go way too far. There are a bunch of places in the book where Pollock tries to ramp up the intensity of a scene, or to capture the action of the film and he just ends up going way too far off the grid. Take this segment where Josh Baskin wakes up as a fully grown man…
Egads, no one ever needed to see that particular angle of comic book Tom Hank’s underwear-covered taint. The effect this has on the tone of the overall book can be quite drastic at time. Consider this next scene when Josh first confronts his mother…
Wow, vicious and kind of scary. This cartoon-y approach does make for some weirdly fun interpretations though. My favorite by far is Pollock’s take on the segment where Josh and Billy decide to check into the Saint James hotel in the city. Pollock’s version of a run-down New York is pretty bonkers, and evokes something you’d be more likely to see in a Troma or John Waters film. Speaking of John Waters, I think the caricature on the far left was an homage to the pencil-thin mustachioed king of sleazy cinema…
Of all the scenes to leave in or cut, I was actually surprised that the touching love scene between Josh and Susan was one of the ones that made the cut. Granted, we’re luckily spared of seeing the comic version of Hanks getting to second base. But the scene is alluded to and we do get the “lights on” quote/gag…
All in all I thought this was a thoroughly weird piece of obscure 80s merchandising, and quite possibly the only for the film Big (unless I eventually track down an actual novelization.) It certainly makes me wonder if there are comic adaptations of The Money Pit or the Man with One Red Shoe floating around out there. Better yet, I could actually see Dark Horse having done The ‘Burbs. As it stands, I guess I’ll just have to console myself with this parody of Splash in the meantime…