Everyone knows the Men in Black; the sleek-suited, Ray-Ban-wearing secret government agents tasked with protecting the Earth from the scum of the universe. While conspiracy theories have postulated for decades that these shady figures actually exist in real life, it was the 1997 Will Smith/Tommy Lee Jones sci-fi/action/comedy that put the clandestine organization in the pop culture zeitgeist. What many may not know, however, is that the movie – which spawned two sequels, a spinoff, video games and an animated series (not to mention a couple Will Smith bangers) – was based on a short-lived comic book from years prior.
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The Men in Black, a black and white series from writer Lowell Cunningham and artist Sandy Carruthers, ran for an initial run of three issues in 1990 and was given another three-issue run the next year. However, despite the characters having the same names – or code names – as their movie quasi-counterparts, the similarities don’t extend much further than the black suits, sunglasses and otherworldly antagonists. While the movie MIB is focused solely on extraterrestrial threats, the comic version is really more akin to The X-Files’ Mulder and Scully, in that they investigate any number of supernatural entities, including demons, werewolves and zombies. One aspect of the books that did make the leap to film was the memory-erasing Neuralyzer, though in the comics it looks more like a flashlight an agent flashes in someone’s face as opposed to the sleek, futuristic looking device seen on screen. Beyond that, the only thing really lifted straight from the page was the quote, “We’re ‘Them.’ We’re ‘They.’ We’re the Men in Black.”
Honestly, really the only significant connection between the books and the first Men in Black movie is a plot in the second issue involving a bug-like alien and a farmer named Edgar, though it plays out wildly different on the page. In the movie, Will Smith’s character, Jay, was a New York City cop who voluntarily joined the shadowy organization after successfully hunting down an especially spry alien on foot. But in the comics, Jay starts out as an unnamed DEA agent investigating a cult and a strange new drug called Bezerk, which quite literally makes its users go bezerk, amplifying their rage and strength. And instead of joining the MIB, he’s more or less kidnapped by Kay and told he can either join or have his memory wiped and be stranded in the desert to try to explain to his bosses what went wrong. “You weren’t kidnapped. You were requisitioned,” Kay tells Jay, who’s left with little choice but to acquiesce.
The rights to the comic book property bounced between a few publishers, ultimately landing at Marvel. After the success of the film, Marvel released a comic book adaptation as well as a few one shots, with the characters remodeled to reflect their on-screen counterparts (Jay was originally white in the comics) and with a much lighter tone than the original books. Writer Cunningham was the only constant presence throughout the entire ordeal, having penned those issues as well.
It’s pretty impressive to see what started out as a fairly modest six-issue independent comic series turn into the billion-dollar franchise that it is now, even if the latest movie installment, Men in Black: International, left a lot to be desired. Still, fans of the movies owe it to themselves to take a look back at its origins and just how different a property can become when making the leap from page to screen. And for anyone who doesn’t find it to their liking, there’s always the Neuralyzer option.
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