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5 Actors Turned Comic Writers

NO FLY ZONE: 5 Actors Turned Comic Writers
© Mania

Greetings, Maniacs, and welcome to another cape-crushing edition of The No-Fly Zone! This is Mania.com’s weekly alternative comics column, where we cover the many strange and varied corners of the medium. A couple of months ago, we ran a nifty little piece called 6 Rock Stars Turned Comic Writers. But, it’s not just musicians who’ve gotten into the act. It seems like artists from several different mediums have moved to write comics, including actors. You may have seen some comics out there by…

Cover art to VOODOO CHILD #1

#5 Nicolas Cage

All right, so Mike Carey actually scripted Voodoo Child, but Nicolas Cage and his son Weston plotted the story, which features the spirit of Gabriel—a boy killed during the Civil War returned to life in post-Katrina New Orleans by a voodoo spell. The story follows a detective on the case of a group of young girls that have disappeared the midst of a gang war. He ultimately encounters the returned Gabriel, who is no longer human. Voodoo Child ran for six issues from Virgin Comics in 2007. The publisher specialized in characters derived from Eastern mythology, but also branched out to include comics by a few film directors, including John Woo and Guy Ritchie. Virgin has since changed its name to Liquid Comics after a management buyout, but it’s still around.

Cover art to THE MAN WITH THE SCREAMING BRAIN

#4 Bruce Campbell

Bruce Campbell’s likeness has certainly appeared in enough comic books. Dynamite has published droves of Army of Darkness comics, which led to Marvel Zombies vs. Army of Darkness. Campbell has disputed the use of his likeness there, but you can also find him in Dark Horse’s recent adaptation of Evil Dead. He even appears in the comic adaptation of the SyFy movie The Man with the Screaming Brain, written by…Bruce Campbell. Campbell directed the film and cowrote both the screenplay and the comic adaptation with David Goodman. Sam Raimi lent a hand plotting the film’s script as well, under a pseudonym. It follows the CEO of an American drug company who, through a series comedic pratfalls, ends up under the knife of a mad scientist. The good doctor splits his brain with a former KGB agent named Yegor. Sharing Campbell’s body, the two go looking for the women that wronged them. Like most SyFy movies, The Man with the Screaming Brain didn’t exactly garner wild praise from critics, but it works pretty well as a comic. And, it wasn’t Campbell’s first foray into the medium, either. He wrote an issue of the promotional series BMW: The Hire called Precious Cargo through Dark Horse. Both that book and the film adaptation came out in 2005, and Campbell hasn’t written comics since then. But, it’s safe to say he’ll probably try his hand at the medium again.

Cover art to BAD PLANET #4 by Timothy Bradstreet

#3 Thomas Jane

Before Ray Stevenson slapped a skull on his chest, Thomas Jane played Frank Castle in 2004’s The Punisher. Though it was released to mix reviews and talk of a sequel that became a reboot, Jane quickly ingratiated himself to fans. He hit the con floors, posted on comic forums, and gave out interviews at the drop of a hat, with no middleman in the process. He also partnered with horror scribe Steve Niles to write Bad Planet for Raw Entertainment, with covers by Tim Bradstreet. The series launched in 2005, but then stalled due to interior artist Lewis LaRosa’s illness. The series relaunched in 2006 with the issues LaRosa had already completed, and then continued with James Daly on interior pencils. The story revolves around an alien fugitive who saves the Earth from a bunch of giant spiders that emerge from a meteorite. While the series was hampered by extensive delays, it’s surprisingly good. The sixth and last issue came out in November of 2008, with talk of an eventual sequel.

Promotional art for LUCID

#2 Michael McMillian

The True Blood star will make his first foray into comics with Lucid, from Archaia Comics in Spring of 2010. The story features a character named Matthew Dee—possibly connected to John Dee?—who works for the United States Department of Secrets, dealing with magical affairs. McMillian calls him a “combat mage,” which evokes thoughts of both John Constantine and Warren Ellis’s William Gravel. There isn’t much more information about the book, and McMillian hasn’t even announced an artist. But, it’s scheduled to hit in Spring of 2010, and it should be interesting stuff. One hopes that it doesn’t just rehash, again, the ground that Hellblazer and Gravel have already covered.

Cover art to GREEN ARROW #1

#1 Kevin Smith

You saw this one coming. We don’t need to recount Kevin Smith’s career. If you read Mania.com, you know him already and you either love him or despise him. Kevin Smith started writing comics with the first arc on a relaunched Daredevil ongoing series, titled Guardian Devil. It was well received, and Smith returned with another relaunch in Green Arrow. Smith also wrote comics for Oni Press based on his Askiewniverse films with Jay and Silent Bob, and Dante and Randall from Clerks. Unfortunately, he garnered a reputation for lengthy delays between issues, namely because of the as-yet-unfinished Daredevil: Target and the very-delayed Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil That Men Do, which took a three-and-a-half year break between issues three and four. Still, Smith has taken a lot of heat for a couple of delays in an industry plagued by them, even amongst its true luminaries. Most of his comics are good reads, and he remains the epitome of a geek made good—and one who did it before a lot of hardcore fans graduated into the film and comic industries.

Its strange how artists from other mediums—musicians and, as we see here, actors—still gravitate towards comic books. It’s common enough now for movies to use still comic book frames—or captions in the same style—for credits or flashback sequences. There seems to be something about the medium that fans have understood for a long time, but only recently have other people noticed. It may be because so many other artists have come out as fans, which is only a good thing. It means that Hollywood has finally woken up to the great things happening in comics, and can only try to keep up now.

You are now exiting The No-Fly Zone.

Kurt Amacker is the writer of The No-Fly Zone, Mania’s weekly alternative comics column. He is also the author of the comic miniseries Dead Souls, published by Seraphemera Books. Dead Souls is available from the Seraphemera Books website, Amazon.com, and at comic shops everywhere. He can be reached at kurt_amacker@seraphemera.org.