Comic book movies -- the other discussion

[newman]

So, over in his LJ my friend Justin raised the question "What comic book(s) do you think would make a good movie? Feel free to assume that it's a competent adaptation, not a hatchet job, but assume that it has to fit into the usual constraints of a movie: about two hours, and has to be able to make enough money to be worth its budget".

In terms of adaptations, novels often make poor source material for films. Even a long movie has trouble fitting in all of the elements that make a novel appealing. Short stories and novellas work pretty well, as do plays, which are already about move-length. Comic books are often serialized novels, taking months or years of issues to complete a story arc. While individual issues (or short collections of issues) might make good films, there are some that just shouldn't be done — either because of reasons of length, or because a good comic book is more than just a storyboard.

Wanted is a prime example of this. It was a fine movie, but it had nothing to do with the comic book. The comic book was a dark, loving, homage to the two great houses in the comic book world, and, if it had been translated to screen accurately, most of America would have said "huh?". Better to have left it on the comic book page — or do what they did, which is the equivalent of never having attempted an adaptation.

There's been a great interest in a Sandman movie or a Watchman movie. I'd happily pass a law declaring these sources off-limits to Hollywood. The adaptation isn't going to to do the inspiration justice.

What comics are simply better as comic books? What comics don't want to be adapted to the big screen? Most of the ones I can think of are comics about comics (Wanted, for example -- but I can think of others). Thoughts?

Comments

[peregrinning.livejournal.com]

The first school year of Gunnerkrigg Court recently came out in print. I need to buy a few copies. I'm trying to decide when I get to introduce N. to the series...

Wapsi Square is also available in print: seems to be both in series and as a collection of the first four years.

Agreed that many comics still stick to comic book dimensions even though they are displayed on landscape screens. I like what Zuda Comics is doing to counteract this: they have a competition going, where people produce eight pages of a comic, in an extremely rigid format, to fit in their display window. Their expanded window fits my screen perfectly, and you just click on the right side of the screen to move to the next page. The winners get a place on Zuda's main page, and probably other benefits I don't yet know about. The Night Owls is the one I've been following so far, but there are other good ones.

[new-man.livejournal.com]

I've read a lot of the Zuda stuff (enjoyed some of it too!). The fact that it's being created to be read on a computer goes a long way to ameliorate my problems with the formatting on many webcomics.