The Comic Book. For years their contents were the stuff of the small screen, Superman, Batman, Spiderman, The Hulk, all became fabulously successful TV series, even now they are still entertaining, perhaps for reasons of nostalgia rather than for the quality of the acting and special effects.
Over the years other big screen movie franchises have produced very good and also very poor comic book adaptations. The 80’s Superman was everything a family movie was about when I was little, a hero, a baddie, the world in danger and a girl that needed saving. I think Superman movies are the reason I fell in love with comic books and the movies that were created from them.
Tim Burton’s Batman was the movie that cemented my love of Batman and the reason I began reading Batman comics. And it also made The Joker my favourite comic book bad guy. The Batman films that followed wobbled in and out of entertainment, different directors and actors made the role of Batman become less of the batman I had in mind.
Reading comics such as Arkham Asylum, The Killing Joke and Judgement on Gotham (somebody PLEASE make a movie of that comic!) gave me a love for the darker characters that were Batman and Joker. While I will always love Tim Burton’s Batman, for me the best portrayal of Batman came with Christopher Nolan’s dark and epic Batman Begins. It seemed more styled around the bat flapping darkness of Dave McKean’s art, the creepy and twisted world of Arkham and its residents finally came to life in Nolan’s vision of Gotham. Similarly, when he made The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger’s Joker finally had the frighteningly insane edge that I had found in Grant Morrisons comic Arkham Asylum.
And it seemed that the cinema discovered the world of comics en masse. After the original Batman movies fell into the ‘Un-cool’ after the awful Batman and Robin, one would have thought comics books could slip back into the realms of geekdom again. But luckily a rash of adaptations sprung up, X-Men, The Incredible Hulk, Daredevil, Elektra, The Fantastic Four, Spiderman, and Superman. A super hero renaissance proved massively successful with a whole new generation and comic books became cool again.
Aside from the huge Marvel and DC comic movie franchises, the popularity of comics allowed for several other Graphic Novels to be made into movies.
Frank Miller’s Sin City was a long time favourite set of comics for me, and when i knew a movie was being made, I wondered how it could be done. One of the things I loved so much about the comics was the art, the simple images and basic colours that had a film noir quality to them. Robert Rodriguez’ movie was everything it should have been, visually beautiful, brilliantly acted. It was as though the pages of the comic had come to life.
Similarly Mike Mignola’s art was present in Guillermo Del Toro’s adaptation of Hellboy. An unlikely superhero though he was, the Big Red was popular enough that a sequel was made. It might not have had all the clout of the first movie but it was still a visual feast for the eyes with lots of the usual Hellboy humour.
Another very unlikey hero was brought to life from my favourite graphic novel by director James McTeigue with V for Vendetta. Written by The Wachowski Brother’s of Matrix fame, it may not have had the box office success of films like X-Men, it had a huge cult following. The faceless vigilante voiced by the fabulous Hugo Weaving was a dark hero, much like The Crow had been, meting out justice in a rather violent way. Revenge is always a great reason for amazing knife fights and shoot ‘em ups.
I’m not sure if it was my interest in Jack the Ripper or just my love of the graphic novel but I also really enjoyed The Hughes Brothers adaption of Alan Moore’s From Hell. Aside from an odd choice of casting Heather Graham as Mary Kelly, I liked it.
I can’t not mention Tank Girl, just because I think she rocks and Jamie Hewlett’s girl deserves to be more loved than she is. I liked the movie, not many others do, even Jamie Hewlett doesn’t like to talk about it, but I liked her, even though she was played by an American.
There are so many comic book adaptations now, i lose count, a great deal of them don’t get the following they deserve, I liked The Punisher, but so many didn’t; I sort of liked Ghost Rider and almost nobody did; I hated 30 days of Night and yet so many people loved it. Comic movies like Ghost World would never be mainstream in the same way as Fantastic Four but then neither was the subject matter. However, comic fans always know the good ones shouldn’t be forgotten.
Comic Cool is still running at full speed with recent movies such as Watchmen, Iron Man and its sequel, Kick-Ass, Jonah Hex, The Losers and Scott Pilgrim Vs The World. And we have yet to see Captain America, Men in Black 3, Thor, Green Lantern,Wolverine2, Iron Man 3 and the much anticipated Avengers.
I honestly never thought comic books would storm the cinema in the way they have, making me realise I had been wrong all along about comics. They aren’t just the domain of geeks, they belong to everyone, or at least the geek that lives in everyone.
Anne-Marie Ormsby 