Moby-Dick is an 1851 novel by Herman Melville that describes the voyage of the whaleship Pequod, led by Captain Ahab, who leads his crew on a hunt for the whale Moby-Dick. There have been a number of adaptations of Moby-Dick in various media.
Comics and graphic novels
In 1946 Gilberton Publications adapted the story in Classic Comics #5.
In 1956 Dell Comics adapted the story in Four Color #717.
In 1965 Adventure Comics #332 featured "The Super-Moby Dick of Space" with the Legion of Super-Heroes' Lightning Lad in a role analogous to that of Captain Ahab, after he has to have a robotic arm replace his own due to the Creature making his lightning bolts reflect back at him, and concussion from a crash gives him a more aggressive personality. However, instead of killing the creature he shrinks it down to its original size; it is revealed to be a metal-eating creature that was accidentally grown to gigantic size by a scientist.
In 1976 Marvel Comics adapted the story in Marvel Classics Comics #8.
In 1977 King Features adapted the story in King Classics #3.
A 1990 Classics Illustrated graphic novel by artist Bill Sienkiewicz and writer D. G. Chichester
Also in 1990, Pendulum Press adapted the story in issue #1 of Pendulum's Illustrated Stories.
A 1998 graphic novel by artist Will Eisner
2000AD's series A.H.A.B. borrows the storyline and the names of several characters from Moby Dick.
A French BD from 2005 takes a sci-fi approach similar to Bradbury's, below.
In 2008 Marvel Comics released Marvel Illustrated: Moby Dick, a six-issue adaptation.
In 2011, Tin House Books released Matt Kish's Moby Dick in Pictures: One Drawing for Every Page.
In 2017, Dark Horse published the two-part 2014 Vents d’Ouest hardcover graphic novel by Christophe Chaboute in English.
China Miéville's 2012 novel Railsea, set on an ocean of railroad tracks instead of on the sea, has been described as an "affectionate parody" of Moby-Dick.
The novel Involution Ocean by Bruce Sterling, published in 1977, features the world Nullaqua where all the atmosphere is contained in a single, miles-deep crater. The story concerns a ship sailing on the ocean of dust at the bottom, which hunts creatures called dustwhales that live beneath the surface. It is a science-fictional pastiche of Moby-Dick.
Emoji Dick, released in 2013 is an adaptation of the novel using emojis.
Speed-talking actor John Moschitta, Jr., as part of his audio tape, Ten Classics in Ten Minutes, read a rapid-fire one-minute summarization of the lengthy novel, concluding with the line: "And everybody dies... but the fish... and Ish."
On 5 June 1966, the BBC radio series Round the Horne broadcast a parody of the story entitled Moby Duck ("the great white Peking Duck ... eighty foot long it be with a two hundred foot wingspan and they do say as how when it lays an egg in the China Seas there be tidal waves at Scarborough!") starring Kenneth Horne as the Ishmael-like hero "Ebenezer Cuckpowder" (Kenneth Williams: "This fine stripling with his apple cheeks and his long blond hair, aye and his ... cor', you don't half have to use your imagination!") who is shanghaied in Portsmouth aboard Captain Ahab's ship The Golden Help-Glub-Glub ("the woman who was launching it fell off the rostrum and drowned!"). Kenneth Williams played "Captain Ahab", who after the great duck is sighted has himself stuffed into the harpoon gun and fired at his prey (Betty Marsden: "Oh, congratulations! A direct hit!" Kenneth Horne: "Where?" Betty: "Well, I can't actually say, but if Captain Ahab was an orange ..."). At the end of the story, Kenneth Horne stated that "Hugh Paddick played the part of the duck ... it was the part that most people throw away."
In 1973, a simplified version of the novel by Robert James Dixson was published by Regents Pub. Co.
The Star Trek franchise has made several references to (and been inspired by) Moby-Dick, most significantly in two films:
1982's Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was essentially Moby Dick in space, with Khan taking the Ahab role (the whale and object of his revenge obsession obviously being Admiral Kirk). Khan even quotes Ahab extensively throughout the film, right up to his last lines: "From Hell's heart...I stab at thee! For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee."
1996's Star Trek: First Contact also references the novel, with Picard seeking revenge for the emotional scarring inflicted upon him by the Borg: "And he piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the rage and hate felt by his whole race. If his chest had been a cannon, he would have shot his heart upon it."
The whale, as well as other references to the book, was featured in an episode of Dexter's Laboratory in 1997.
The visionary architect Douglas Darden was greatly inspired by Herman Melville, and circa 1990 designed a work of paper architecture called Melvilla that is meant to be a structural celebration of what Darden regarded as America's greatest novel. The building is sited on the lot in Manhattan where Melville worked on Moby-Dick, utilizes a passage from the novel as a building inscription, and apart from the overall design looking like a whale, the building's design was inspired by ideas, turns of phrase, structures, and passages from the novel. Additionally, Darden utilizes a passage from Chapter 78 on the title image of his only published book Condemned Building.
MC Lars' 2006 album The Graduate contains the track "Ahab", in which Lars raps the story of Moby-Dick.
In 2004, the heavy metal band Mastodon released Leviathan, a concept album based on Moby-Dick.
In 2006 The funeral doom metal band Ahab released an album titled The Call of the Wretched Sea, adapting the novel.
The music video for the song "Into the Ocean", from the Foiled album released on April 4, 2006, by the band Blue October, depicts an outdoor theater in which the band plays said song and also acts out a rendition of Moby Dick in which the lead singer, Justin Furstenfeld, plays the part of Captain Ahab.
The Demons & Wizards song "Beneath These Waves" is based on Moby-Dick.
Leviathan '99 by Ray Bradbury is a direct spin-off of Moby-Dick set in the year 2099. The whale is replaced by a comet, the sailing ship by a space ship, and the character names are either the same or nearly the same. In 1968, BBC Radio 3 broadcast a 90-minute adaptation starring Christopher Lee. A concert version, Leviathan '99: A Drama for the Stage, was performed in 1972, while a novella, Now and Forever: Somewhere a Band is Playing & Leviathan '99, was published in 2007.
Philip Jose Farmer wrote a sequel called The Wind Whales of Ishmael, in which Ishmael is transported to the far-future where flying whales are hunted from aircraft.
A parody exists in the 2010 Chick-fil-A calendar "Great Works of Cow Literature" in July where the novel is referred to as Mooby Dick.
In 2010, the band Glass Wave recorded a song entitled "Moby Dick". The song recounts the story from the perspective of the mariners and of the whale itself after the decimation of the ship.
In 2011, the illustrator Seumas Doherty created a redesign of the story as if it were a Scifi video game titled "Moby Dick: A Space Odyssey".
In the video game Skies of Arcadia for the Sega Dreamcast, the character Drachma's relationship to the arcwhale Rhaknam is a parallel to the relationship between Captain Ahab and Moby Dick.
There are at least two card games based on the novel: Moby Dick, or the Card Game (released in 2013) and Dick: A Card Game Based on the Novel by Herman Melville (released in 2015).
An iOS app named OMBY challenges users to unscramble the complete text of Moby-Dick as a series of 10,395 word puzzles.
In the 2015 video game Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain there are numerous references to Moby Dick. Some of these include the story arc focusing on revenge and what it can do to a person, a whale on fire, the protagonist being given the codename Ahab, and a mysterious companion called Ishmael shown at the start of the game. The support helicopter responsible for mission support and transportation is codenamed "Pequod". Lastly, when the game's announcement was a viral publicity stunt, they used Moby Dick as a misnomer to mask it
In PBS's Between the Lions, a segment called "Moby Duck" Captain Ahab and Captain Starbuck, sailing the PeaPod, hunt the Great White Duck. Each time Ahab thinks he's spotted it, it turns out to be a snail or some other animal. The two never realize that Moby Duck is right behind them.
Adaptations of Moby-Dick Wikipedia (Text) CC BY-SA
