Ground Control to Major Tom If you like mashups,...

Ground Control to Major Tom

If you like mashups, remixes and general re-imagining, try Andrew Kolb’s retelling of the David Bowie classic “Space Oddity” as an illustrated children’s book.

Via ComicsAlliance:

The tale of doomed Major Tom plays out in Kolb’s bright and retro animation style, giving a face to the legendary Bowie character and making the conclusion that much sadder…

…If Bowie’s telling of the story sounds a bit dire from the start, Kolb’s reinterpretation is decidedly optimistic. Kolb’s illustrations also take their cues from that 1960s vision of the future seen in Kubrick’s films, but with the artist’s distinctly cheerful vibe that humanizes every aspect of the story, not the least of which are Major Tom’s space capsule and Ground Control themselves. Everything looks shiny and new, everybody is smiling and happy, and there’s no reason to think anything is going to go wrong. But of course it does, and in a way that fans of Bowie’s song will find quite clever. Without giving too much away, Kolb looked to the curious lyric, “And the stars look very different today” as a way to depict what exactly went wrong far above the moon.

ComicsAlliance has all the panels available on its Web site.