From Screen To Page: The TV Shows And Movies That Are Becoming Comics

Joss Whedon is one of the greatest television writers that ever worked for the big Networks. He's also one of the greatest writers to pen mainstream superhero titles for the big two comics publishers. No surprise, then, that his Buffy 'Season 8' comic book series is proving successful - in just about every sense of the word.

And it may prove to be setting a new paradigm.

Talking to The Toronto Star, Rob Thomas has let on that DC Comics want to publish a 'Season Four' of Veronica Mars. The Buffy model must have been in mind - there's a common conception, anyway, that Mars is the new Buffy (but if that were entirely true, surely it'd swap networks for a few more seasons before heading to print?)

Looking at Rich Johnston's Lying in the Gutters yesterday, I saw a piece of art created for a proposed Reanimator comic book. House of Reanimator has had some famous trouble in finding funding, so maybe the route to the printed page has been similar here also - a makedo or an attention spinner when the cash for a screen hasn't been forthcoming.

What's more, there's the prospect of Virgin Comics producing a series of graphic novels (at the very least) based upon unproduced Terry Gilliam projects. Oh... and more Star Trek: Original Series... and the countless projects that have already happened in synch with still ongoing series, from Alias to 24 to CSI.

All in all, it looks like comicbooks are becoming a kind of Limbo for rejected film and TV projects. And let's face it, that's what these projects are: rejects. Buffy Season 8 on TV: rejected. Veronica Mars Season 4: rejected. More Reanimator: rejected. The Defective Detective, Time Bandits 2, The Minotaur: rejected, rejected, rejected.

The potential audience for a comic book is massive, but any realistic projection is not. Has any given issue of Buffy Season 8 been read by anything like the number of people who saw any given episode of the TV show? Of course not. So, the die-hards amongst the numbers, the web-savvy, forum trawling, Browncoat wearing, comic-friendly geekcore, they're going to prove big enough a potential audience base to give comics a shot.

When comics make the transition to the big screen, more often than not there's a kind of smoothing down - which is not necessarily to say a dumbing down. It seems like the geekcore are more open to the idiosyncratic (say, a big purple man with a funny helmet instead of a cosmic cloud of black and grey dirt) and even, it seems to me at least, they expect, want, and sometimes plead for this kind of wild, abandoned fantasy. As such, going from TV to comics, I think, might afford some previously off-limits 'craziness' to occur. Veronica Mars Season 4 might just go into some uncharted territory, push its own limits a little more readily, be less concerned with wide audience expectations and just play into the hands of the geekcore more.

So, perhaps, in a parallel universe Slither wasn't a movie but a comic book, Snakes on a Plane was a comic book, Death Proof and Planet Terror were comic books, Serenity was a comic book and they each did very, very well. They'd each be seen as far greater successes.

But I don't like that universe so much. I like the one where they are all movies just fine thankyou - most of them are very fine films indeed. I can cope with them being not that popular - in fact, I'd expect some of them to be downright unpopular - but I wouldn't want them to stop being films and get forced into a comic book just so they'd be less of a commercial viability.

But, on the other hand, I'm glad that comics have helped people like Greg Pak get attention where their films didn't.

Under The Radar

TIME magazine has done a piece on sites like JoBlo, Aint it Cool, Cinemablend and The Movie Blog. Of course, film ick is small fry, comparatively. We flew miles beneath TIME's radar. And, no, I don't like it that way. Why would I bother writing any of this if I didn't want to spread it, for it to be read and passed on, and to become a talking point?

film ick is in the shadow of the behemoths. But that doesn't mean we don't often break the more interesting stories.

Thankfully, The Movie Blog is a shade different from JoBlo, which is a shade different to Aint it Cool - and I think what I'm trying to do here is different again. If too many sites were too similar, then we'd be in trouble. Everything would be Transformers, Scarlett Johansson and Indiana Jones and Most Likely Something Like The City of Gods.

There's a key point early in the TIME piece that interested me particularly. They represent the casting of Peter Cullen in Transformers as a move to keep the fanbase happy and then go on to suggest this proves that the fanbase has power. Surely the 'talking cloud' versus 'biiiiiig camp giant' argument, regarding Galactus in The Fantastic Four, draws a pretty clear line around the limits of fanboy influence? And the box office for Snakes on a Plane, Slither and definitely Grind House seems to suggest that the fanboy point of view is rather more specialist than Peter Cullen's contract might attest to.

Maybe the fan audience is the one that requires the least tending?

Just Like Snakes On A Plane All Over Again

If you want to submit music by your unsigned band, or your unsigned self, to be asessed by Geffen Execs for possible inclusion in the Bratz movie, now is your chance. Click on the image below and be transported to the promotion's official site. You might be discovered and catapulted to the very same stratospheric heights as Captain Ahab and Louden Swain, winners of the similar promo staged to hype Snakes on a Plane. In case you didn't know, Captain Ahab are now the biggest selling band in the West and Louden Swain are now charging three hundred dollars per ticket to their gigs - that's how useful this kind of exposure can be.

Bratz is being directed by Sean McNamara. Only the other day I was slating him as the least competent director working in professional film today. I'm sure, however, he's a very, very nice guy. I know that sounds sarcastic, but it isn't.

From High Snakes To High Stakes

I'm telling you this simply so I could write the above headline.

Snakes on a Plane director David R. Ellis' next film is High Stakes, about two young chaps in Vega who end up making a 'life threatening' bet. Samuel Jackson is said to be in talks to appear, his casting is far from confirmed.

300 2

First Showing are chasing a rather odd rumour: that Frank Miller is to devise a cinematic sequel to 300. Now, this is probably more dependent on the first film's box-office take than finding subsequent historical events to dramatise so if the film is the smash geekdom is anticipating (but see Serenity, Slither and Snakes on a Plane for a few clear warnings) then I expect this impossible sounding follow-up will in fact come to pass.