The Crazy Legacy of Jack Kirby's Forgotten *2001: A Space Odyssey*

When director Stanley Kubrick released 2001: A Space Odyssey 50 years ago, he intended it to be a "nonverbal experience." The movie's dialogue was sparse, and it relied heavily on visuals and score. It was, Kubrick told Playboy in 1968, a subjective film, meant to reach audiences "at an inner level of consciousness, just as music does." The same cannot be said of its 1976 comic book adaptation. Marvel's oversized Treasury Edition, which was written, drawn, and edited by the late Jack Kirby--legendary co-creator of Captain America, the X-Men, Black Panther, and dozens of others--left little up to interpretation.