Modern Days - Comics and Movies #2: Adaptations.
Thoughts on comics inspired by events in daily life. By Alasdair Watson.

Comics companies love movies. They're like a gift from the gods of merchandising. On top of getting paid for the use of their property, there's always room for toys, posters, badges, and the obligatory comics of the movie. Yes, a good movie can earn a comic company a lot of money.

And yet, so few movies that are adapted from comics are actually good movies.

Tim Burton's first Batman film. Superman 2. A handful of others. The trouble is, I suspect, that the properties that have hitherto been made into movies have always been owned by the corporation, rather than by an individual. If the current writers of the X-men comics have been seriously consulted about the film, I'd be very surprised, and there's no way the film would be cancelled on their say-so. A creator can always choose to walk away and take his property with him, if he doesn't like what might happen with the movie. Brian Michael Bendis has put out a comic, FORTUNE AND GLORY about his experiences dealing with Hollywood, in which it's noticeable that everyone who appears to be on his side keeps on reminding him that he can always walk away.

It's much easier for a creator to say "I didn't like what they were going to do to my work" than it is for a exec at Marvel or DC to justify walking away from a multi-million dollar deal to his boss. So, on the premise that the movies aren't ever going to become good enough to convince people to suddenly start reading comics on their own, what can we do with our movies tie-ins that will do what any comic movie should, and bring new readers to the comic shop in droves?

In a desperate attempt to get them in, comic companies have long resorted to the old stand by - the special. The comic adaptation of the movie. This is useless, because it provides no incentive to come back, and because it frequently isn't as good as the film (which often isn't much good in the first place), because after all, the story it's telling is designed for a medium with motion (and anyway, everyone has seen the film, and already knows the story). So what do we do?

Well, heretical as this may be, I think the answer lies in adapting the comics to be more like the movies, at least up to a point. There's a massive lead time on a movie. Certainly enough to have the regular series position itself such that it will at the very least be reasonably familiar to the viewers of the movie. Not so badly that it will cheat regular fans, but enough so that a new reader might feel that they have *some* handle on things when they pick up an issue of the comic. Unlike the X-men, again, where a new reader is going to be picking up a title after the movie and saying things like "Cyclops is dead? What the fuck? And who the fuck are all these people?". I'm not suggesting that they disregard everything that's going on in the comic, but would it be so hard to engineer a story to be running around the time of the movie that is going to feature more or less the same cast as the film, without requiring the reader to be familiar with years of continuity? Especially given that they're likely to have had a solid year or so, minimum of knowing what the plot of film is?

Yes, this isn't terribly fair on the writers of the comic, who may have to abandon their plans for the title. But another question: Does any writer go into writing the X-men, or other big property and not expect that their plot is going be fucked with? Sure, if you've been working on some middle-of-the-sales-chart title, it may come as a shock. But you're going to have a couple of years to get the plot to that point, and I'm reasonably confident that a writer worth their salt could set things up so as to cause minimum long term-damage. Think of as adding six months to the length of their plot, rather than de-railing it entirely.

Note carefully, again: I am not suggesting re-setting the status quo of the comic to be that of the film, simply ensuring that the story running at around the time of launch will be accessible to a new reader coming off the back of the film. If the story of the comic has got to the point where that's impossible (say, a key character is dead within the continuity of the comic) then just for god's sake don't do anything that would require the fact that they're dead to be referenced…

Now, I'm all for creator power, so how do I reconcile saying "Yes! More interference!" with my general "Let the writer write, and otherwise leave them alone" stance? Simple. I care more about getting new readers into the industry than any one writer. Most of my time I'm for letting the writers work uninterrupted because it results in better stories, which should by word of mouth and sensible promotion by retailers and the rest of the industry result in more readers and cash. But this is not true in the case of the film. Very few people pay attention to who writes the film, and anyway, it's almost certain to be someone different who writes the comic. The only selling point we have is the world of the film. Which means that to some extent the world of the comic needs to resemble that, if only for long enough to get 'em hooked. Give it a couple of months after the movie, then begin to diverge, introduce more elements of back-story, get them out through the back issue bins, and there we go. More readers into the market.

And as an added bonus, the regular readers of the comic should theoretically get a nice, simple story or two that are more or less self contained. Read the Authority and tell me that's not a good thing. It is possible to tell simple stories (and let's be honest, the stories in The Authority are very simple) and still have them be good and involving.

Yes, an infinite extension of my argument could lead to the comics industry being little more than a slave to the movie industry, but let's face it, most comics never get more than one movie. If there was an X-men film coming out every 18 months, then yes, the comic would have trouble keeping any sort of on-going plot of it's own. But there isn't, because comics aren't popular enough. Which is why we need to get new readers in.

Alasdair Watson, at the Movies, February 2000

Alasdair Watson is Webmaster of PopImage.

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