INTERVIEW: ‘Cobra Kai’ comic retells ‘Karate Kid’ story from Johnny’s view
Image courtesy of IDW / Provided with permission.
In 2019, the Karate Kid magic continues stronger than ever. The 1984 cinematic classic has launched countless sequels and adaptations, but the fandom came to a fever pitch when YouTube Premium launched the successful Cobra Kai series, which follows the ongoing feud amongst the students of Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) and Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio).
Now IDW is getting in on the action with a new four-part comic miniseries called Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues. This version is a renewed look at the original Karate Kid film, but from Johnny’s perspective. Issue #1 is expected in October, perhaps with a big launch at New York Comic Con.
Denton J. Tipton, known for his work on The X Files, is penning the series, with Kagan McLeod (Infinite Kung Fu) providing the art. They are both working with Overbrook Entertainment and Sony Pictures Television on the highly anticipated title.
“I’m an editor at IDW, and we’ve been talking about getting the license for a little bit,” Tipton said in a recent phone interview. “I was interested in the property because I obviously watched the movies when I was younger and started watching the show on YouTube, the Cobra Kai show, and thought it was great, but I ended up not getting the editorial assignment because my slate was already pretty full. So it went to Tom Waltz as editor. But I had been thinking a lot about it already, so I asked him if I could pitch on it. So I came up with four different story approaches for this, and he loved all of them.”
Tipton and Waltz tweaked the pitches a bit and then presented them to the team at Sony. That team added their own tweaks and then kicked the ideas off to the show’s producers.
“They liked all the ideas, but one stood out among the others,” he said. “The others were creating more story, and they wanted to save that stuff for the show. So they ended up going with the idea of doing the original movie but from Johnny’s point of view, so they went with that pitch. So it was pretty quick and simple. Usually a lot of times we do a bake-off. We have three or four different creators pitch ideas, and we kind of workshop those and present them. This time it was pretty cut and dry, and I got to be the guy pretty much from the get-go. The approvals went really smoothly, so really happy and fortunate in that regard.”
Tipton revealed some clues on how the story is structured. For starters, the four-issue miniseries will have a framing device that is set during the time of Cobra Kai, the YouTube Premium series. Essentially Johnny decides to tell his students the story of the original Karate Kid.
“It’s all about 1984, and it goes back a little bit before that into Johnny’s past,” Tipton said. “But we get a little bit of the new characters as well in the framing device.”
The working relationship between Tipton and McLeod has been a positive, productive one. Tipton actually wrote the script for issue #1 before he knew who the artist would be on the book, but then he modified a few elements to better fit McLeod’s style.
“I’ve never worked with Kagan before, but I had read his Infinite Kung Fu,” Tipton said. “In a comic book, how it works, people will write a script, and then the artist will get it and kind of interpret it. His layout is the first stage of that interpretation. It’s kind of like storyboards where he visualizes everything and makes the storytelling choices that come with the art, as opposed to what’s actually in the script. He’ll get a little bit of direction, but then he’ll take it and run with it and use his mind’s eye and create the visuals how he sees it. The layouts came in, and I was like blown away by how he really got my interpretation and just really nailed it.”
Tipton said the miniseries will probably shine a more positive light on Johnny as a character (the original movie casts him as a villain). After all, he is the one telling the story, not Daniel.
“It’s Johnny’s version,” he said. “He’s going to come out looking a little better than he might as people saw in the original film, so it will put him in a slightly better light. But it’s not far from the truth at all.”
Tipton has been editing comics for 11 years, and he has a keen sense of different nostalgic properties that come around again and entice new and old fans alike. The Karate Kid saga was a no-brainer for a comics adaptation because of Robert Mark Kamen’s script for the original movie.
“He really writes his stories based on the characters, so he created some really strong characters,” Tipton said. “So you know once you have that solid foundation, you can put them in more situations and know exactly how they’re going to react. That means that those characters are going to live on in the future, and you’ll be able to go back to them.”
Cobra Kai, the TV series, is a natural progression of the story and simply makes sense from the characters’ perspective, and that no doubt attracted Macchio and Zabka to reprise their roles.
“It goes back to the writing,” Tipton said. “It’s a strong story that has a strong point of view, and it makes sense for the characters and really brings them into the modern day with a different viewpoint. So I think the characters being really solid, and them coming up with a great idea and well executed, really elevated it.”
The challenge, of course, is that Tipton needs to fit the entire original movie into four issues. He was recently working on the second issue, which features a pivotal scene. The original draft that Tipton created had this scene at eight pages. That’s rather long, considering the entire issue runs only 20 pages.
“So I’m going to have to go back and be really ruthless and cut at least two pages out of that scene, which is going to be painful,” he said. “It’s going to have a good midpoint ending at the end of issue #2, which will flip the story and set up the following two issues. Since the tournament is the biggest part of the story, that’s the big climax. A lot happens there. I blocked out the entire fourth issue basically for the tournament, so that can have room to breathe. So the second issue I’m like packing in a lot, and then the third issue is going to basically be the training montage, but from Johnny’s point of view instead of Daniel’s. Long story short, it’s helpful having a definite ending upfront, so you know how to pace things and make sure you fit in all the important stuff. Write the important scene first, give them the space they need, and then fill in the rest to build up the tension and the drama. And make sure you get all the important stuff in.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues, written by Denton J. Tipton and featuring art by Kagan McLeod, will be released by IDW in October. Click here for more information.
