By Glen Ludlow
When I was a kid comics were comics.
When I was a kid comics were comics. That, you’re probably thinking, is true now, comics are comics, but are they really? Who can recall a time when Marvel just published comic books, with the occasional foray into a cheaply made cartoon series based on one of their properties, or some B-movie adaptation that flopped at the box office? You probably all can, in some way remember this dark and distant past, but what has the comic industry become now?
Marvels 1990 Captain America movie aka some B-movie adaptation that flopped at the box office.
Comic characters have always been adapted into the TV/film industry since Batman first pulled on the cowl back in the late 1930’s, as successful as these adaptations were, they never really had the change of attitude that is now affecting the comic book industry as they struggle to mimic their celluloid cousins. Sure, Batman became camp to match the TV series, maybe Superman’s physical appearance may have been tweaked to resemble Christopher Reeve, but the stylistic change comics have undergone since becoming a major box office force in the last decade or so, has left the medium reeling with a massive portion of the industry writing books as storyboards for movies.
I’m not going to attack anyone, far from it, this isn’t an attack on the system, it’s merely a marketplace adapting to attract new audiences, I applaud that. Mark Millar (Superior, Kick-Ass, Ultimates) has written in this way for years. You could quite comfortably take Millar’s work, add a few EXT’s and INT’s to the script, and you would have a shooting script ready for a movie. Millar is a very good writer who excels at his craft, but there comes a time when the beast that is the cinema spin-off turns on its master and begins to dictate how comics should be written, that is now.
You could quite comfortably take Millar’s work, add a few EXT’s and INT’s to the script, and you would have a shooting script ready for a movie.
Marvel and DC are no longer comic book publishers. They are multimedia companies. They use every format possible to sell their characters in. But look at it from this angle: How many children know who Batman is because they’ve played Arkham Asylum or watched him in an animated series? Probably the masses. Now ask the question, how many children know who Batman is because they read the comics first? Probably very few.
I’m by no means insinuating that comic books are a dead medium. They’re a medium in transit. Indie comic sales are stronger than ever, in fact it was an indie book (The Walking Dead) that topped the charts last year as the best-selling book. But how many of those readers that the book now attracts read it because of the TV series adaptation? I imagine quite a few.
Indie comic sales are stronger than ever, in fact it was an indie book (The Walking Dead) that topped the charts last year as the best-selling book.
There is a symbiosis going on now between Hollywood and the comic industry, except this isn’t quite a fair exchange. Comics could go to the great pulpers in the sky and the film machine wouldn’t bat an eyelid. They have their characters, people know who they are, would it really be any great loss if the books were no longer being printed? Probably not. Hollywood gives the comic industry maybe a few hundred thousand new readers when a big movie comes out. These readers will probably pick up the titles of the character they’ve seen on screen, stick around for a few issues, then drop out because they’re either uncomfortable with the medium, or they find it boring. The ones that do stick around, well they’re now feeding the machine that is the Big Two, buying books about people who have spandex fetishes with masochistic tendencies – basically superheroes. These people are blissfully unaware that there might be more to the industry than this, you might get a few slip onto the indie books. They might have friends who get them hooked, but mainly they’re consuming exactly what they see on the screen. Why? Because the industry, at least at the large corporation level of DC and Marvel, has changed to give readers what they can expect from what they’ve seen in the theatre. Gone are the inner-monologues. Gone are the thought bubbles. Gone is the unique opportunity to use a format that is a hybrid of prose and film to do something very unique. What you get is a story you can expect to see adapted for the screen with little worry over how to adapt the material, and it all depends on how the sales go.
The real sadness regarding this change, is apart from a few superstar artists and writers indie titles (most of whom made their names at Marvel and DC) becoming huge hits, you’re left with a top fifty sales chart made up of Marvel and DC books, nearly all of which sell because the latest film is out.
This isn’t what the comic industry is about. Comics, to me at least, were the ultimate place where you could truly experiment with visual storytelling. I’ve read some quite amazing books, but unfortunately most of them face cancellation because they don’t have the audiences they need to survive, mainly because they don’t have the exposure a film adaptation can offer.
I don’t want to live in a world where stories worth telling are snubbed out, because it’s not marketable to the film sharks.
I don’t want to live in a world where stories worth telling are snubbed out, because it’s not marketable to the film sharks. How many writers now sit down and want to write just a comic? How many comic teams sit and create something with no thought of the possibility of their property being adapted into another medium?
I lament for the industry. The true comic industry. It faces a challenging future to survive in a world where comics are no longer a source of entertainment, they are a source of nourishment for games and films.
A world where comics are treated like the art form they deserve to be treated like, and not forced into this hideous beast that feels like it’s auditioning to become a film by showing you the storyboard, well that world would be enough for me.
For more comic views follow Glen on Twitter at @luddersonline
Posted on April 6th, 2013
Category: Blog, NEWS & VIEWS, PANELS OF INTEREST
Tags: Comic Book Movies, Comic Franchises, DC Comics, Glen Ludlow, Mark Millar, marvel comics, Movie Reviews, Panels Of Interest