Whaddya want for nothin&#39;?

The following are better as comics (web comics or comic books), and would need to be quite different to be adapted to the big screen:
- Gunnerkrigg Court (www.gunnerkrigg.com): Lots of great short stories, character development over time, and an overall story arc that clearly seems to be going somewhere. Movie adaptation might be along the lines of the Harry Potter Septology, but I don't see the return on investment being high enough to allow ongoing creative control to keep an even tone and style to do justice to the work.

- Wapsi Square (www.wapsisquare.com): The combination of snippets of daily life and a world-changing story arc would make a difficult transition to the big screen, especially if done before the (by me) predicted big-story conclusion that will happen some time in the year 2012.

- Girl Genius (www.girlgeniusonline.com): I could see this as a multi-season TV show, similar to Hercules/Xena. I can't see it as a movie, or as a series of movies coming out once every few years. It would work better in a "Perils of Pauline" format, with a good solid cliffhanger each night... or each commercial break...

- Rex Libris (no online version): See "The Librarian: Quest for the Spear" for what happens when you try to mix a librarian-adventurer and mystic artifacts in a two-hour movie format. I prefer it in the "text-and-serial images" combination of comics, rather than the "live action-and-verbal dialogue" combination of film. I could see some of the adventures as half-hour episodes similar to Samurai Jack, but I think they would need to move the plot at the speed of a Simpson's episode to avoid getting bogged down...

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I'm embarrased to say I'm not familiar with most of those (and I know of GG, but have never read it).

They're doing another "Librarian" movie; my friend

marrus did the storyboards.

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Sandman could concievably be adapted into a cable series, but no one;s going to do that. Watcmen couldd br a really amazing mini series, but it's already in production as a movie

Usagi Yojimbo springs to mind as something that would lose it's charm and look ridiculous on screen.Any of Matt Howarth's stuff would have to be too compromised to go on screen. Pedro and me doesn't seem terribly adaptable , but then again.I wouldn't have thought Pekar's stuff could be done either

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Blessings on marrus. I think my main trouble with the series (I believe this would be their third) is that the main character is still depicted as naiive. Incredibly intelligent, and incredibly naiive. If he's worked there for a year, why hasn't he gotten a clue yet about the complexity of a world where all the mystical artifacts really exist? He should be able to walk through that library and interact with his artifact-colleagues with ease and familiarity. Not with "oh, how strange, this is new" naivety.

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All of 'em?

The thing is, comics are an inherently serial narrative, which is why No One Ever Dies and you have a Cast Of Thousands (or a Rogue's gallery). Movies are inherently a bounded medium, and a tightly bounded one at that -- not just in time, but in attention (you need to expand each character more; cf. people's reactions to Spiderman 3, which included only a most basic team-up but lost most audiences).

So we end up with "the origin story", which is essentially what every superhero movie is about to date, or sequelitis (which eventually audiences get grumbly about). Or a butcher job. (Please prove me wrng here. I feel like I forgot a decent superhero movie that came out recently.)

Now, there are some bounded books -- e.g., Sandman's individual volumes -- that I think *could* be adapted into a movie or perhaps miniseries. But in general my answer to your question is, approximately, all.

Note that adapting situations and characters into a completely different, but familiar, story -- a la X-Men, or FF more recently -- makes more sense, but kills some books. Those two examples have a huge history to cobble from; trying to do that to, say, Watchmen, would be / will be horrific. Watching _Wanted_ was 'fun', in that way where you watch someone speak a foreign language and recognize a word here and there: there I think 4 scenes that paralleled the comic, and the rest was some other story that I'm sure the producer was sitting on and mashed into Wanted, the comic...

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I find Girl Genius fun to read and to look at. I frequently revisit some of what I consider the best artistic moments (such as the central pages of the coffee machine arc). I can't say everyone will like the intricacies of the plot, but I'm hooked, so there we are.

I recommend Gunnerkrigg Court. The combination of odd, fun, and savvy is a treat. Each Chapter is an individual story: they build on each other over time, but they also stand alone.

Wapsi Square is an acquired taste. Starting from the beginning, it feels like a fluff piece. Starting anywhere other than the beginning, and you may miss some of the background and important facts about the major story arcs. I started in the middle back when I first came upon it, and was confused until I went back to read the whole thing. I'm still confused, but only related to what will happen next.

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eclecticmagpie.livejournal.com

I think that the books of the 40s/50s/60s/70s -- when the genre had found and settled into the rut XXX formula of origin/original bad guy arc, followed by a series of bad guys each with his own arc, have the best chance of working as movies, and particularly that first origin arc. Sequels are trickier, as the writers tend to build on what has gone before, getting into novel range, as new-man was discussing. But often those origin stories are more like short stories than like novels. I think in the 80s that formula was seen as played out, and we started getting things like Sandman

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The thing is, comics are an inherently serial narrative

Agreed -- but not not an "unbounded" serial narrative. There are plenty of finite comic book series. Wanted, for example, and Watchmen.

So we end up with "the origin story", which is essentially what every superhero movie is about to date

I can think of several counter-examples, just few off them mainstream comics. One of the things I loved about The Incredible Hulk is that the origin was recapped during the credits. If you were going to see The Hulk, you knew the origin already — or enough of it.

The Incredibles and Mystery Men are neither sequels nor origin stories, but you're right -- for the most part superhero movies show the origin.

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By the way, I didn't expect you would have heard of any of these other than Girl Genius. They are Web comics or obscure comic books, they started fairly recently, and it takes a while for word of mouth to get around about such things.

I chose to talk about my favorites, rather than attempt to choose what would be big enough to actually get noticed by movie producers.

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dreda.livejournal.com

Love Wapsi Square!! (Thank you for the original pointer to it.)

(And yes, start at the beginning.)

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I don't love reading webcomics. In a lot of cases, the pages aren't designed to fit on my screen, so I'm scrolling all over the place to get the entire page (GG does this). There's something about holding the physical object that I'm reading that makes a difference to me.

I realize this is likely to get me lynched by many of my friends, but my reaction to Phil Foglio is generally lukewarm.

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Hm. I think the Incredibles makes a good origin story... for Dash, Violet, the family as a whole, and Syndrome. You're right, though, that it doesn't provide the origin stories of Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl, or Frozone.

And isn't Mystery Men the origin story for their group? If memory serves, the team forms as part of the movie.

I think most successful sequels are origin stories - for their villains. Doc Ock in Spider-Man 2, the Joker and [elided] in The Dark Knight. The hero takes a back seat to the story arc of the bad guy. Alas, with movies, the main way to handle this is to kill the bad guy at the end.

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cristovau.livejournal.com

This is sometimes considered better than the first, which was Spiderman's origin story. I won't get into that, but I think what worked in the sequel was the origin or _one_ good villain. The origin story doesn't have to be the heroes.

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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.

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Both Mystery Men and The Incredibles tell the story of a point of transformation for the main characters, but neither gives the origins of the characters or their powers (Dash and Violet were born with theirs, so it's a bit of a cheat).

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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.

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I think a good, compelling story — and this goes far beyond the superhero genre — shows a major change in at least one of the characters. In the superhero genre, the obvious point of change is the origin -- but there can be other points.

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Ah! Incredibles, Mystery Men -- two excellent examples.

Though perhaps "Incredibles" *is* an origin story -- of the Fightin' Team. Ditto "Mystery Men". This may be why I'm having trouble refuting

siderea's recent comment that superhero fiction is the fiction of identity... it seems to fit, and so many superhero movies are about 'becoming'. Or maybe that's just what movies in general are about.

(Haven't seen Hulk; it's on my short list for the coming weeks. I presume you're talking about the new one.)

As for bounded comics -- you're quite right, of course. But _Wanted_ doesn't work without the weight of the entire DC and Marvel universes behind it, any more than _1602_ would. Things like, say, Squadron Supreme (a miniseries I rather liked when it came out) probably wouldn't work...but perhaps. Again with needing a large universe needed to riff against.

Sandman *can* stand independent of its DC roots, and for that reason I was just thinking yesterday that volume 1 (alone) would be a decent movie, or perhaps 4-part miniseries, with appropriate trimming. It might become simply "An old god descends into Hell to reclaim his power", which is a grievous shortening, but it could work.

Watchmen...well, that's another case. Part of why it works because it's a Faberge egg, with intricate interwoven plots at many levels, and short of having an online movie which is part of a greater online presence (a la I Love Bees, perhaps) I can't see it working in a movie-ish medium. Heck, I could see it being a media event with a "War of the Worlds"-level broadcast for the Big Secret.

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Though perhaps "Incredibles" *is* an origin story -- of the Fightin' Team. Ditto "Mystery Men".

I'm having parallel conversations here. As I said to Peregrinning and Cristovau in seperate comments, both Mystery Men and The Incredibles tell the story of a point of transformation for the main characters, but neither gives the origins of the characters or their powers (Dash and Violet were born with theirs, so it's a bit of a cheat). I think a good, compelling story — and this goes far beyond the superhero genre — shows a major change in at least one of the characters. In the superhero genre, the obvious point of change is the origin -- but there can be other points.

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"comics are an inherently serial narrative, which is why No One Ever Dies and you have a Cast Of Thousands (or a Rogue's gallery)."

Bzzt! Conflation of medium and genre, 10-point penalty.

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Part of Watchmen's appeal, to me, is the way in which it serves as a example of dozens of narrative tricks that can only be done in the comics medium. It's extremely formalist and daring in that regard. Obviously, this aspect could never translate to another medium. OTOH, my love for this aspect is hardly typical; most potential movie-goers wouldn't even understand what I was talking about.

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New_man, your separation of origin and point of transformation is a good one. I think "point of transformation" is a good way of describing what happens in the Incredibles and Mystery Men: it isn't about how people got their powers, it is about the change when they become a team, or get permission to start using their powers, etc.

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You're welcome.

New_Man, Wapsi is a horizontal comic, so may be easier to navigate. Alas, GC and GG are both tied to comic book page dimensions, and thus make you scroll, roll or shrink to see the full page.

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I thought we were talking about genre?

Talking about comics as a medium doesn't make as much sense in the context of moving it to another medium...it wouldn't *be* that medium then, would it?

Maybe I should use the word "milieu". I was never sure what a genre was anyway, and when I went and tried to get other people to define it I discovered they didn't know either.

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...which brings to mind another comic that shouldn't be adapted: Promethea. While you could pull the storyline out, doing any of the tricks that are done in the later books on the Big Screen would be...meaningless.

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"I thought we were talking about genre?"

Well, certainly in the discussion at

jducouer's, the discussion was explicitly about the comics medium, not the superhero genre. I'm not sure if our host intended to continue that aspect or not.

"Talking about comics as a medium doesn't make as much sense in the context of moving it to another medium...it wouldn't *be* that medium then, would it?"

Which is why we call it "adaptation", and why the discussion is interesting at all. Both discussions are about what comics we think would (or would not) work well when adapted to this other medium.

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Well, I think the "genre" is "Superhero stories" (although there have been other stories presented in comic book format), and the "medium" is "serialized graphic novel".

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Hmm. Alright. I can see why both conversations exist. But I was doing the other one.

For me talking about adopting the comics medium (restricted color palettes until recently, frames with some bending of such, transitions, absent control over the tempo and order of reading, 23 page format requiring a climax every month, space for text balloons restricting page layout) for movies (full motion video, overlapping audio possible, 1.25-2 hour length, restricted cast size) wouldn't look like the above.

It'd start with talking about The Matrix as the first movie in my memory to evoke comic art and make major use of (moving) tableau shots; the recent Frank Miller adaptations would then be required topics afterward. I see little evidence of using the visual or layout restrictions of comics being used in FF, or X-Men; these two are notably very Hollywood-esque movies, with all the visual layouts, audio cues, tempo, etc., that that entails. Sin City made much more use of the comic style -- episodic stories in visually distinctive surroundings; stylized characters in scenes suitably framed; extreme effects; even borders, sometimes in fun ways like in the toilet scene.

It'd probably even be an interesting conversation. ;)

If you want to talk about the stories that occur in comics,...I'd call that talking about genre. But genre is restricted by the medium that carries it. (To the extent that I believe in genres at all.) The Rogue's Gallery is a part of the "comics" genre if by comics* you mean the monthly titles. But the rise of Sandman et al. demonstrating the validity of a market for graphic novels seems to have fueled the rise in bounded stories in the past 15ish years. (There may be other causes.) This in turn has led to higher-quality 'specialty' (non-Big Two) comics being mainstream, making more money, driving innovation and story quality, etc. We break away from the Monster of the Week genre and get into actual character development; we end up with Preacher, Y, Fables, etc. But I argue that this is a result of the commercial viability of stories that *fit* that medium, specifically, the ability to make a profit off of a bounded story promoting character transitions. Gaiman's observation at the end of Sandman that good stories have an ending was a direct complaint about the neverending limbo of monthly titles** where (akin to sit-coms) every major transition requires network approval, because it fundamentally changes and may kill a cash cow.

* The old style, monster of the week, is still what I think of when someone says "comics". I guess I think of the other ones as "graphic novels". Perhaps we need better genre terms.

** Yes, I know there are many exceptions to this. They're exceptions. Heck, they might be the rule now; I don't read any monthly titles currently.

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"23 page format requiring a climax every month"

That's not part of the medium, that's part of a specific format that has been used a fair amount in recent years. It's far from a universal constant.

"But genre is restricted by the medium that carries it."

I find this statement puzzling and, in my first reading, clearly false. Unpack, please?

"if by comics* you mean the monthly titles."

Nope. When I mean those, I use specifiers like "monthly" or "serialized". Or, depending what I'm trying to emphasize "Mainstream US comics". (Of course "mainstream" and "US comics" are sort of an oxymoron these days...)

"the neverending limbo of monthly titles** where (akin to sit-coms) every major transition requires network approval, because it fundamentally changes and may kill a cash cow."

They still exist, but their ecological niche is shrinking steadily.

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umbran.livejournal.com

The adaptation isn't going to to do the inspiration justice.

Well, that raises a question in my mind - when one makes a movie from any non-movie source material, is it possible or desirable for them to make a good movie without doing the source material justice?

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Possible? Absolutely. Wanted is a fine example of this. It was a good movie and an awful adaptation.

Desirable? I don't know. I know a lot of people who liked Wanted...

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I'm tying the noose now. Philistine. Girl Genius is free online and if you must read them in book form, they are available. I think the over the top mad steampunk scientist setting might appeal to you more than his other stuff.

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with the exception of the title character, Hellboy and it's sequel mostly skipped past the origins.

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Slip past the people punching people comic and there are a lot of good comics that are complete stories that end and wouldn't benefit from serialization. Clan Apis, Fax from Sarajevo and Why I hate Saturn to name three I can see from where I'm sitting.

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baron-steffan.livejournal.com

I genuflect to the uber-geek-fanpersons in the room %^) and make bold to offer this comment as an old (but disgusted) DC fan.

Been wondering for, well, decades why there has never been a Justice League movie. One is currently in production, but...eh, we'll see.

Likewise Green Lantern, who is arguably a more central character to the DCU than Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman, and could spark up a ton of cool CGI. Oh,and market-tie-ins at your local burger joint.

However..IMO, both have the possibility to be awesome, but a very high potential to be utter direct-to-DVD-bargain-bin-at-the-supermarket drek-o-ramas. The JLA flick is already showing preliminary symptoms.

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jducoeur

Usagi Yojimbo springs to mind as something that would lose it's charm and look ridiculous on screen.

Hmm. I don't know if I agree -- I actually suspect that a faithful animated adaptation of a story like Grasscutter could work fairly well. Live-action or CGI would be a *total* disaster, but I think it's decently suited to traditional animation.

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Any of Matt Howarth's stuff would have to be too compromised to go on screen.

I would go further, and say "butchered". The *closest* Howarth has ever come to filmable is probably the Post Bros, and that would probably be terrible; Keif Llama would be ridiculous.

(Although, now that I think of it, Keif Llama could actually be great for little ten-minute shorts: the sort of thing that used to show up on Liquid Television and now shows up on YouTube. Again would absolutely, positively have to be animated, but it actually might just work in the right form-factor...)

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jducoeur

True -- but it should be noted, so did the comics. I mean, we're only getting to Abe's origin now, after how many years?

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jducoeur

I'll back Alexx on this one: my original post was *intended* to be about the medium of comics as the starting point. Most people took it as being about the genre of superheroes, but that certainly wasn't my plan.

(Neil Gaiman pointed out in his recent lecture that superheroes aren't really a proper genre either, but that's a separate topic. His definition of "genre" is delightful and insightful, but I don't know if I can do it justice.)

On your main point: honestly, I think you're overgeneralizing a bit. While it's true that the best-known comics tend to be the massively serial ones, the *best* comics are typically bounded, especially nowadays. Sometimes those bounds are large (60 issues for Y, 70-some for Sandman and Lucifer, 100 for 100 Bullets), but I've found that the very best stories are usually conceived of as having a clear beginning, middle and end. They may be originally produced in serial form -- but so was Dickens...

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(Funny you should bring up Dickens. See, I write...serials. And I've been studying the tell-tale signs of narrative work that was written before its middle or end were conceived, so as to try to avoid them. And Dickens' work definitely shows some of those. Sometimes it's fine; sometimes, it comes off as sloppy -- as in Great Expectations, when events essentially repeat in the middle. Now when I read a novel, I can hear fairly clearly when the author had a direct line of authorial intent beforehand -- or when they just followed a "and then this happened" style, with or without an overall gameplan.)

But that's actually a different issue: as the Futurama episode When Aliens Attack skewered adroitly, when there is an expectation of infinite future issues (even if that never can actually happen), then you get sit-com limbo, with character development severely constrained.

I agree that most of the best stories are bounded; in fact, it was my point: that well-bounded stories are best suited for adaptation.

But I was using a much more restricted definition of comics than, evidently, everyone, causing mass confusion. To me comics are still the monthlies without end with characters that never stay dead, and arcs that at best survive one editor/writer team. This made the rest of my categorization moot. :-/

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So I need a better word. Our host's "serialized graphic novel" is very close to what I would use, so perhaps I'll stick with that...

Now, what defines the comic medium? I can point to a bunch of examples, but I'm having trouble generalizing.

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My assertion was, essentially, "features of the medium of communication constrain aspects of what genres will be successful in that medium". I'm trying it on for size. I still think it's true, but I'm having trouble separating it from other thoughts.

Example: the invention of the close-up moved movies from recordings of staged plays to intimate looks into private moments. Private moments feel very differently on stage than in a movie, and a good author knows how to take advantage of that. This changes what type of story you can tell in a movie, making it more suitable for certain genres of fiction.

By 'medium' here I include many contextual aspects of how the information is presented, including artificial ones like print length (or the half-hour time-slot for TV), return on investment for publishers/distributors, etc. Dr. Horrible exists because iTunes makes it 'free' to distribute, altering constraints on the short-movie medium.

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As a (probably over-)simple definition: "Words and Pictures". If you want a more formal one, I refer you to Scott McCloud's _Understanding Comics_ (which, if you haven't read, I *strongly* recommend).

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On the one hand, that's a plausible assertion. On the other, it's the sort of assertion that makes uppity young writers deliberately try and create counterexamples. Since these attempts are sometimes successful, and often result in interesting Art even when they fail, I shall not argue against the point :-)

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