A Marvel Comics Super Special: Blade Runner

Marvel Comics Super Special: Blade Runner or just Blade Runner is a comic book adaptation of the film Blade Runner, published by Marvel Comics in 1982. It was written by Archie Goodwin with art by Al Williamson, Carlos Garzon with Dan Green and Ralph Reese.

Publication history

With a cover by Jim Steranko, the 45-page adaptation includes one possible explanation of the title's significance in story context: the narrative line, "Blade runner. You're always movin' on the edge."
This was issue 22 of the Marvel Comics Super Special series of titles, which by this time only printed Marvel's movie adaptations. It was reprinted in a two issue mini series but without the feature content contained in the special.
In the United Kingdom, it was reprinted as the Blade Runner Annual published by Grandreams. Again, the feature content of the original special was not reprinted.
In the Netherlands, a Dutch language version of this comic was printed by Junior Press.
The mass market paperback was published in black and white and contains images from the film, it is one of the rarest Marvel Comics paperbacks.

Plot

The comic followed the events of the film but attempts to fill in gaps in the script.

Reception

According to author Lawrence Raw, the Marvel adaptation was poorly received and widely ridiculed as having bad writing and misquoted lines of dialogue from the film script. Julian Darius of Sequart stated that "most movie adaptations aren’t great comics in their own right, and the Blade Runner adaptation’s no different" but also noted that "the adaptation is something of a mixed bag, but the more time one spends with it, the more one likes it."