Smiley Spot: Twelve Angry Men Comic

During our last UysFaber podcast on crime stories, I said that my favourite was Twelve Angry Men. Not really a crime story I know, for it is better known as a court drama. Still, the legendary play-turned-movie is my favourite crime story.

For a quick recap, the story takes place entirely in a jury room. You never learn the names of the twelve men and you follow them through all of their discussions on the case. While originally eleven of them wish to convict the young defendant, one votes not guilty, and uses every form of manipulation and ruling to convince the other eleven to join him. The most revered version of the story is the version by Henry Fonda. Though all twelve men are white and apparently Christians, there are huge amounts of diversity in their personalities, and you learn something new about them and what they are doing every viewing.

The reason I bring this up: this story should be a graphic novel.

More and more classic stories are becoming graphic novels these days. Marvel has adapted Steven King’s Dark Tower Saga and Baum's The Wizard of Oz. Vertigo Comics has adapted Neil Young’s Greendale and will soon be adapting The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. And to be honest with you, I am never into them. Comics provide a different gratification in their imagery than novels, and I always feel that I am walking through a secondary adaptation of these amazing stories. Don’t get me wrong, some of the top artists in comics have done these adaptations, but I never feel the mystique that was originally intended.

With Twelve Angry Men, which takes place in one room and only has twelve distinct characters, I want to see the re-interpretation in comics. Having a stellar cartoonist who will create twelve distinct people, and then selling their emotional journeys, feels far more minimal than comics normally are and would challenge what an artist can do with simple body language and design choices.

Plus, the adaptation would be great because like most comics, Twelve Angry Men is a story about morality and the truths thereof. In the end, no matter the responsibilities and roles, these are twelve men in a room and they bring in all of their own problems, prejudices and fears. They don’t inherently know if they do the right thing, but they need to make peace with what they feel is the right thing to do. If you have read as many superhero comics as I have, then this is the central message to nearly all of them.

Anyways, if you know who has the rights, tell them that I’ll do it if no one else wants to. I’ll give juror number 8 a funny mustache; it’ll be gold stuff.

Dov Smiley