After hearing the Douglas Adams audiobook earlier in the year, I was again interested in the ancillary Dirk Gently stories published by IDW starting in 2016. These were tie-ins and publicity to the BBC America series that ran for two seasons. I had collected most of the stories as individual issues but not all of them, so I was delighted to receive the three volumes collecting three separate story arcs: “A Spoon Too Short,” “The Interconnectedness of All Kings,” and “The Salmon of Doubt.”
If you’ve never read Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency or The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul, the original novels by Douglas Adams, start with those. The comics play in that world but are not adaptations.
I am more of a Hitchhiker’s Guide fan, but as an adult I have come to appreciate the absurd, and Adams did well with Dirk Gently. Arvind Ethan David has acquitted himself honorably with the characters and tone of the original. In particular, the Salmon of Doubt intertwines the TV version of Dirk Gently somewhat and I find myself wanting to go revist the 18 episodes of the show. (In researching I found a 2010 version done on the BBC that was just four episodes that is on BritBox. More to watch!)
Back to the comics: these collections are good, filled with the variant covers of individual issues and a couple of actors introducing the volumes. I’m not a huge fan of the artwork but it’s not bad.