The First Men on Mercury comic adaptation of the Edwin Morgan poem
A while back we mentioned on this blog that we were working on a comic adaptation of Edwin Morgan‘s poem The First Men on Mercury for release on National Poetry Day.
Today, the Metro newspaper is running a full page feature on the project.
To mark National Poetry Day – 8 October 2009 – the Association for Scottish Literary Studies will be distributing over 30,000 copies of the comic-strip adaptation to every secondary school pupil in the poet’s home city of Glasgow. The comic will also be available to read online at http://metaphrog.com/mercury
“The First Men on Mercury is one of Edwin Morgan’s science fiction poems – fizzing with ideas and bubbling with invention. It’s simultaneously fascinating, funny and just a little bit disconcerting, as we witness first contact between the brave explorers from Earth and the native inhabitants of the planet Mercury.” Duncan Jones, ASLS.
The form of the poem, largely dialogue based, makes it ideal for adaptation into comic-strip. It was a privilige to be asked to work on this and also highly enjoyable. We realised that by adding visuals you are also taking away from the inner images the poem in its pure text form might generate for a reader so we tried to treat it sensitively.
December 26, 2009 @ 12:20 pm
Wow.
This "Mercury" comic is wonderful! I stumbled across this blog while finding a link to the poem to send to a friend who'd never heard of Morgan before. (Yes, I know, that's strange in Scotland, but I live in the States now.) Thanks tons for putting it online so I can use it with my own pupils. Normally, I just use the reading of the poem done in 2005 on the CD released for Morgan's 85th b-day, but this comic will really be helpful as well.
Bravo!
December 26, 2009 @ 12:22 pm
Many thanks!
We very much appreciate your kind feedback.
All the best!