IT is one of the most trending series on Netflix, attracting worldwide attention and dividing viewers.
But superhero series Jupiter’s Legacy comes from much more humble roots – and much closer to home.
It was the vision of two Scots – writer Mark Millar (of Kick-Ass fame) and artist Frank Quitely – back in 2013, with the “buzzing ideas” and “meticulous artwork” impressing thousands across the globe.
Quitely, a talented and renowned comic book artist, grew up in Rutherglen and studied at Glasgow School of Art, his artwork from Jupiter’s Legacy was exhibited in 2017 at the Kelvingrove.
But for an artist with such nuances, how would that translate when adapted to the screen?
“A lot of it is very close to the comic but some is new, and the comic has been fleshed out in the TV show both plot wise and visually,” Quitely said.
“Giving that this can be run for however many seasons it needs to, to tell the story, they can afford to go into a lot more depth in terms of plot and sub-plots.
“The costumes are very similar to the one’s in the comic books, but in the comic books the older characters have simple old-fashioned costumes.
“If they had been translated directly for screen the way that they looked in the comic they would have looked old fashioned in a way that we would have recognised as out of date.
“Whereas what they’ve done is they have taken the basic design and added layers of subtle detail and I feel that their version of the costumes was better suited for TV than what I had put in the comic.”
When he originally started to work with Millar on the comic book it was planned to be developed into a trilogy of films, however the writer eventually decided it would be best suited as a TV show.
Quitely has since become renowned across the work for his artwork and many of his fans in Scotland were able to enjoy an exhibition dedicated to him in 2017.
Comics expert and professor of text and image studies at the University of Glasgow, Laurence Grove, worked alongside Quitely to create the exhibition and praised his “incredible” success.
He said: “[Quitely] became renowned for his meticulous artwork but with nuances, there will always be little jokes there, if you look in the background of his artwork.
“He was incredible to work with, he had all these buzzing ideas, and he just got the connection between the artworks and since then he and I have been invited to give talks worldwide.”
The next project Laurence will be working on with Quitely which is called “Pre-History to Pre-Future” will be in the South of France.
The project aims to compare cave art and the way humans first expressed narrative to Frank Quitely’s art pieces.
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