The Day the Earth Stood Still Remake You Never Saw

Some fans have been up in arms over the upcoming remake of the classic film The Day the Earth Stood Still. But the film is itself an adaptation of Harry Bates’ short story “Farewell to the Master,” originally published in the magazine Astounding Science Fiction. In 1973, Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas acquired the rights to Bates’ alien invasion tale and adapted it for Marvel’s Worlds Unknown. Read the comic adaptation below.

Much as many fans today fear that the The Day the Earth Stood Still remake won’t do justice to the original, so too did Thomas feel that Hollywood had distorted Bates’ short story. And he sought to do a more faithful adaptation, albeit with some changes. He wrote in the September 3rd issue of Worlds Unknown:

Never mind that Hollywood, in enlarging upon the bare plot of the story, had likewise reduced its scope by making Klaatu, and not the eight-foot robot, the Master of the title. Never mind that it was murked up a bit at the end (a la “The Incredible Shrinking Man” of a few years later) by a misbegotten “message,” 1950’s style.

This was The Story.