Coupling the critical acclaim and box office success of films like Dark Knight and The Avengers with the widespread popularity of TV shows like Big Bang Theory, there seems to be a consensus that ‘geek culture’ generally, and comic books specifically, have achieved some semblance of mainstream acceptance. However, there remains an underlying lack of respect for comic books which is pervasive, if only just below the surface.
This attitude is encapsulated by a column Dana Jennings wrote for the New York Times in February. It lauded AMC’s The Walking Dead and suggested five comics which should also be turned into television shows. The choices on the list were all well and good, but this nugget stood out to me:
In fact, nowadays a comic book series — especially a new indie comic — can almost be considered a pilot for a TV series, a kind of pop-culture grail for many comics writers.
Putting aside how movie deals are rewarding for artists too, the idea that being adapted to television or film is the highest honor a comic can receive establishes comics as a second-class medium. No one would make the claim it was the numerous films and TV versions of Stephen King’s novels that made him an accomplished writer, and yet there are countless places where the show on AMC is used as proof of Robert Kirkman’s success in comics. Why do people feel this way, and why do we let them get away with it?
I have a few thoughts.
Some people think adapting is a fever exclusive to Hollywood, but translating popular stories from one medium to another has been commonplace since the Victorian Era, and a long time before. The 1782 French novel “Dangerous Liaisons” was turned into a play the same year it was released, for just one example. If you think adaptations are only a recent trend, it probably has more to do with your lack of awareness of old examples, and less to do with any contemporary change in creative behaviors.
Despite the historical nature of adapting, there are people who still think of comic-based adaptations as a fad. Nothing could be further from the truth. While there are certainly more superhero options in the theater now than there were 20 years ago, they’ve been around pretty much forever.
Here’s a fun experiment: ask a few friends when superheroes started leaving the page and showing up on the small or silver screens. Depending on their age or level of exposure, answers may range anywhere from Blade or X-Men to the numerous Marvel cartoons on Fox stations in the 90s to Batman ’89. It’s unlikely any of them will mention Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends (1981), Lou Ferrigno’s Incredible Hulk (1978) or Christopher Reeves’ Superman (1978). Adam West’s Batman from 1966 might be mentioned a couple times.
Before any of them, though, was The Adventures of Superman starring George Reeves in 1952. Let me put that year in context. Television was invented around 1927, but the technology wasn’t marketed until the late 1940s. It was in 50% of American homes by 1955. That means Superman was appearing on television when less than half the country could watch it. The next time you hear someone talk about superhero adaptations being a fad, point out the fad’s been around for over sixty years and ask if they know what the word ‘fad’ means.
Despite the high number of tickets sold for superhero films over the last two decades, there remains a large percentage of the population who consider the characters to be silly. And they’re right. Superheroes, by and large, are silly. They wear tights and do impossible things.
The difference is in the film makers. The production crew behind Bond’s jet pack embraced the craziness. The impossible was incorporated into the film without drawing attention to it, and people accepted it. This hasn’t been the case for comic movies for a long time, dating back at least to X-Men. Remember this?
Continued belowCyclops: What were you expecting, yellow spandex?
Of course Wolverine wasn’t expecting yellow spandex! That would be silly! The man in the movie who wore black leather and could shoot lasers out of his eyes was so much more realistic than the one wearing blue in the comics!
At the time, the significance of this exchange was overlooked. Shoot, it even made comic readers happy because – hey! A comic reference! And it was a movie about the X-Men! How often did that happen? But the non readers? It made them laugh at the comic books. Maybe not out loud, but it was there, in the backs of their minds. It was okay to go see the X-Men movie because it promised not to be like those childish comics.
Nearly every superhero movie since has continued this to some degree. Superman movies are required to point out how flimsy Clark Kent’s disguise is. J. Jonah Jameson has to point out how unlikely it is for a guy named Otto Octavius to have eight arms. Mercifully, the conversation in Thor where Loki makes fun of the thunder god’s winged helmet was relegated to a deleted scene. People normally described this ‘humor’ as being self aware, which is a euphemism for what it really is – self deprecating. Or, in these instances, comic deprecating, since the butt of the joke is the source material, not the film.
The third potential reason people still look down on comics is money. The average person ‘knows’ intuitively that film is a more lucrative option than a comic book, but is there truth to this? Part of the belief undoubtedly comes from the way successes are reported for the mediums. In print media, success is rated in unit sales. For television, it’s the viewership numbers and the market share for a particular time slot. When it comes to movies, though, it’s always reported in terms of money. It’s possible to find out how many theaters carry a film, and the data on ticket sales is available, but you have to actively seek those numbers out. The widely reported measure is the value of the ticket sales, and maybe a comparison to the budget. Furthermore, it’s simple math to calculate how much money a comic brings in – multiply the cover price by units sold. Films will win out every time.
But even if you compare dollars to dollars or units to units, are the numbers really comparable? The net profit of a comic is tougher to calculate than the gross income. (Gross minus retailer’s cut minus publishers cut minus payments to inkers, colorers and letterers, multiplied by whatever the percentage split is between the writer and the penciller). Then there’s the unknowable amount the comic creators receive from the studio (up front fee, maybe plus a percentage). So, yes, the dollars involved in film are larger, but they’re not necessarily always larger for the comic creators. And keep in mind having a property turned into a film isn’t always a happy experience for creators, with no guarantee it will do anything for comic sales.
Whether the condescending attitude towards comics is due to all or none of these reasons, there’s no doubt it’s had an effect on the industry.
Recent years have seen an influx of writers coming to comics because they want to write a movie. The Dark Horse miniseries “Dark Matter” was originally conceived as a television show, and the writers made no secret they still wanted it to be one. “Cowboys and Aliens” was published two years before the movie released, but the movie was in development long before the comic. Arcana’s recent OGN “Headsmash” is also open about it’s intention to be a multimedia franchise. Therecent deal between Boom! Studios and Fox will probably attract more people to comics who should really be writing screenplays instead.
There has also been a dramatic increase in the number of properties whose film rights have been sold prior to the first issue’s release. The worst offender in this category is Mark Millar. You may not remember, but years ago the third issue of “Kick Ass” was a few months late. No big deal, books were frequently late back then. But in the letter column was an explanation for the delay: Millar and JRJR were busy working on the film version. The following issues were also late, with the miniseries finally wrapping up a mere six weeks before the movie premiered. Miller makes no excuses for this. In fact, he predicted in 2010 that it was the future of comic books. He’s working to turn this into a self-fulfilling prophesy, as it seems every book he writes has to be a movie now. To his credit, he is still making comics when he could no doubt sell an original screenplay without much effort.
Continued belowNot every writer feels that way though. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Alan Moore, whose feelings about adaptations of his work are well documented. In the middle are creators like Greg Rucka who prefers to develop a property some before handing over some of the rights, or Matt Kindt who would be happier to see a movie that appropriates his work instead of a straight adaptation.
So why do we as comic lovers let others get away with such a dismissive attitude toward comics? Maybe it’s just easier to live with it than to take on such an uphill battle. After all, the current situation is better than the more overtly negative attitude of a few decades past. And to be fair, some do fight back. But what good would emailing Dana Jennings do? It’s unlikely he’ll go back and edit the language in her NY Times article, and it’s entirely possible an email about it would be dismissed as nitpicking and fanboyish.
We may not be able to change the way others talk about comics and film, but what we can do is pay more attention to the way we talk about them. There are way too many articles themed “x number of comics that should be made into movies,” and pretty much none of them bother to explain why the titles on the list would actually be good movies. They may as well be titled “Here’s a list of good comics.”
What we need are more articles that discuss what makes a comic adaptation good, because not every good comic will translate well to a screen. That’s not an accident, either. Stephen L. Holland said it pretty well: “the best creators choose their media carefully and use those unique properties [of the media] with imagination and wit.” In other words, the same traits that make a comic great inherently make it hard to film. Once this fact it accepted, the lists will stop being about comics that should be movies, and start being about comics that could be great movies.
