Mack to Adapt Dick’s “The Electric Ant”

Posted by bob in Comics, News on July 25th, 2008

At Thursday’s Mondo Marvel panel it was announced that David Mack (Kabuki) will write a graphic novel adapting Philip K. Dick’s “The Electric Ant”.

Dick’s story first appeared in the October 1969 issue of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Dick said at the time, “Again the theme: How much of what we call ‘reality’ is actually out there or rather within our own head? The ending of this story has always frightened me … the image of the rushing wind, the sound of emptiness. As if the character hears the final fate of the world itself.”

A car accident shows Garson Poole he is actually a self-aware organic android and his world view is directed by programming located in his chest. As he tampers with the programming tape, he alters his personal reality.

“The [main] character himself is an outdated model. There are hints to tie other PKD stories in this one, with the inference that the new model of synthetic human is the Replicant. The old model is the Electricant — called Electric Ant as the slang term,” Mack told Comic Book Resources. “It is kind of an antique. So the Electric Ant has an older style of internal mechanism. There is a kind of charm to it, but as you’ll see, it is difficult to find replacement parts of such an older model.”

Mack came to know Dick through Blade Runner and was contacted about five years ago by Tommy Pallotta, who produced the film adaptation of A Scanner Darkly. Pallotta wanted to see if Mack was interested in adapting any of Dick’s works.

“Tommy showed my work to Philip K. Dick’s daughters, who run Electric Shepherd productions, and he suggested the idea of adapting PKD stories into graphic novels for the first time,” Mack said.

Mack decided to approach Marvel in February 2007 about picking up the project based on their work adapting Stephen King’s Dark Tower.  The talks progressed over the last year.

Illustrating the book will not be Mack, but Pascal Alixe. “I’ve been pals with Paul Pope since way back, so I knew he was a PKD fan, and I thought he would be perfect to do the covers. So I asked him if he was interested and he was into it,” Mack continued. “And Brian Michael Bendis and I are big admirers of Blade Runner, so I asked him if he was interested in being a part of the project and he was into it. Then Tommy, the Dick Estate and I saw the work of many artists suggested by Marvel editor Mark Paniccia, and we thought Pascal offered great possibilities for the story.”