Movies That Should Be Comics #22- THEY LIVE

As a lifelong comic book fan, there are movies everyone always expects I have seen already.  One of them is the 1988 John Carpenter classic They Live, which stars pro wrestling star "Rowdy Roddy" Piper.  I never bothered to watch it. Didn't feel like I needed to, because people had told me so much about it.

I found out today that his sidekick Frank was played by a young, scrappy Keith David.  That was enough to push me over the edge to watch it.


There are lots of things to like about They Live.  

The high concept, if you haven't seen it, is that an alien race has taken over the world at some point before the film starts. The aliens have taken full control of the economies of every country, and filled the media with subliminal messages.

Roddy's character George Nada gets his hands on glasses that allow him to see through the alien's deception. After a pointless street fight, Nada convinces his co-worker (played by Keith David) to hook up with a local rebellion, and it's all downhill from there.

There's lots of plot holes in this movie, but I found it pretty engaging emotionally.  Like any good secret invasion story, it latches onto the feeling that something is really wrong with life, but the main character just can't put his finger on it.

They Live was written for the screen by the director under the pseudonym Frank Armitage (that's also the name of Keith David's character, by the way). It was heavily inspired by Ray Nelson's short story 8 O' Clock in the Morning, which was published in comicbook form by Eclipse Comics as part of an anthology in 1986 under the title NADA.  

In 2008, I did art on a graphic novel called The World As You Know It: Plate Tectonics for e-learning company Study Island's reading intervention program, which was probably inspired by They Live, making the proverbial cipher complete.  

When I was working on this, people were always asking me if I had seen They Live, and now that I have seen it, I know why.  

Plate Tectonics was the second book in a series of comics about kids who discover that they live in a world populated by at least two hidden alien races.

Now that I've seen They Live, I would love to draw a comic taking place in the version of the world we see in the movie.  A prequel or sequel would be fine.  I like sci-fi best when it's tied into the contemporary world, not in outer space, or a gazillion years in the future.

If I didn't get to draw it, I would still love to read it!  What creative team would you like to see bring Ray Nelson's Fascinators back to comics?

If you got Amazon Prime, you can CLICK HERE to watch They Live right now.  If you use the links in this post, any purchase you make might end up sending me a few pennies that will be used to support my many self-publishing schemes.  So if you hate affiliate links, just Google They Live movie or something like that with my blessings!
-Samax
Samax Amen is a professional Content Developer, Illustrator and Cartoonist. He is the artist of many great comics you never heard of like FREELANCER LIFE, Herman Heed, Champion of Children, and The World As You Know It. He even writes and draws his own comics, like Dare: The Adventures of Darius Davidson, Spontaneous, and Manchild when he gets around to it. Because making comics is hard and stuff, he started GhettoManga as a blog in 2006 and as a print magazine in 2008.