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5 Comics That Should Be Movies

No Fly Zone: 5 Comics That Should Be Movies
© Mania

Greetings, Maniacs, and welcome to another week of The No-Fly Zone, Mania.com’s alternative comics column. One of the things we’ve touched on here is the way that film adaptations can raise awareness of comics that are, let’s say, less than mainstream. Keep in mind that we support comics above all things around here. Sequential art shouldn’t serve as some kind of intellectual property factory for Hollywood. But, producing comics costs money. Comic publishers and creators have to pay the bills. That means everyone from the Vertigo office at DC to the guy doing his own book at Kinko’s. Money makes the world go round and film adaptations can spike the sales of graphic novels and comics. People love the movie and they want to read the original work. If people buy more comics—any comics—it’s good for the industry, which means it’s good for the medium. Hence, here are five non-superhero comics that need to be made into movies, with a directorial recommendation or two. Wizard already does that fantasy casting thing, so we’re going to look at the bigger picture and pick someone that would affect the overall look and feel of the film. Some of these might technically be in development hell, but none of them are terribly close to getting off the ground. It’s not like saying “Oh, they should really make a Green Lantern movie someday.”

Transmetropolitan

#5 Transmetropolitan

Warren Ellis’s saga of gonzo journalist Spider Jerusalem in a dystopian future has nearly been filmed before. A while back, word of a webtoon circulated. Unfortunately, nothing came of either. But, Ellis’s freewheeling, madcap dialogue and Darick Robertson’s art beg to go in front of the camera. In the future world of Transmetropolitan, technology has made virtually anything possible. Any vice, sin, or crime can be simulated, thus allowing people to live as they will. More than anything, they live inauthentically. No matter what happens, though, Jerusalem wants the truth. When it comes to bringing down the amoral and megalomaniacal President of the United States—dubbed “the Smiler”—the outlaw journalist will do anything to expose him for the lying bastard he truly is—even if it means his own life.

Transmetropolitan blends an offbeat sense of humor with an undying plea for integrity. It’s the ultimate story about not selling out. That always translates well to screen. And, it has the detailed urban visuals of something like Bladerunner, which, thanks to green screen, isn’t much of a stretch now.

Director of Choice: Paul Verhoeven. You probably didn’t see that one coming, but Verhoeven has proven that he can blend meaningful comedy with action in RoboCop and Starship Troopers. The former film also showed that he can preside over a well-realized sci-fi urban nightmare. Newer effects technology would allow for the visuals necessary to pull off Transmetropolitan.

The Walking Dead

#4 The Walking Dead

Okay, The Walking Dead probably needs to be a miniseries or even a television series more than a movie, but go with it for now. Robert Kirkman’s epic of a band of survivors in a zombie wasteland is, bar none, one of the best comics out there. Kentucky police officer Rick Grimes struggles to keep a group together that barely knows where it’s going (Washington D.C., most recently) and can hardly stand each other. They move from the wilderness to a maximum security prison and then back on the road again, after a nearby settlement declares war on their compound. Kirkman crafts unexpected but painfully realistic plot twists that have touched on the very personal ramifications of his zombie world. Characters go crazy. They do things they’d never consider in their old lives. They enter into unexpected friendships and romantic relationships. Main characters die when you least expect it. The Walking Dead has more zombies than you can aim a shotgun at, but it’s the group dynamic of its cast that keeps the series interesting. The zombie trend has faded a little bit at the movies, but a character-driven road flick could, well, resurrect the genre. The movie would really have to hit on the major points of the series—the outbreak, the initial meeting of the cast, the prison, Woodbury, and so forth—and condense them to get the important stuff in, but it could be done.

Director of Choice: Alfonso Cuarón. Children of Men showed that Cuarón can tell a very human story with a post-apocalyptic backdrop—one in which women haven’t been able to have babies for 18 years, and the world has fallen into chaos. That film had action in spades, but it never lost site of Theo’s relationship with Kee, the first woman to bear a child in a generation. And, it had that “road movie” quality, as the bulk of the story chronicles their journey to the Human Project—a group of scientists that might be able to cure the world’s infertility, if only they could study Kee and her baby.

Maus

#3 Maus

Do we really need to rehash the plot here? Art Spiegleman’s epic about his father’s experiences during the Holocaust turned the literary world’s view of comics on its head. The book won a Special Citation from the Pulitzers, only because they don’t have a category for comics. The story features Spiegelman interviewing his father Vladek about his life, depicting his father’s words. The narrative frequently returns to the present, where Spiegelman must come to terms with his father’s age, prejudices, and imperfections. Maus also depicts its characters as animals, with the Jews as mice and the Germans as cats, while other countries are each assigned their own animal. In simple black and white art, Spiegelman brings the anthropomorphic world to life, with all of its crushing heartache and fleeting moments of triumph. To this day, it stands as a bold, risky take on perhaps the most sensitive subject in Western culture. Spiegelman has long denied offers to turn Maus into a film, citing the many people involved in making a movie. He doesn’t want the story diluted in any way. However, the recent animated adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis proved to be both stunningly faithful to the comic and a fine film its own right. Though the graphic novel was drawn in black and white, the film was shot with a limited range of colors. It stands as perhaps the most faithful comic-to-film adaptation ever, with Sin City and Watchmen offering the only real competition. Maus is begging for the same treatment—a faithful black and white animation that brings the graphic novel to life.

Director of Choice: Teruaki "Jimmy" Murakami. Murakami directed the 1986 animated film When the Wind Blows, which depicts an elderly couple in England after a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Though Murakami doesn’t direct many films these days, he’s still around, having directed a Kate Bush video a few years ago. You may remember him from the 1982 television cartoon The Snowman that used to come on around Christmas.

Cover art to Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

#2 Fun Home

Alison Bechdel’s autobiography is firmly rooted in the many works of literature to which it alludes, but it also plays some interesting games with time and memory that would probably translate well to film. Bechdel describes her often unpleasant childhood after her father is killed by a truck while crossing the street. Her father was generally unpleasant, and worked two jobs—one as a funeral home director and another as an English teacher. He also obsessively restored their Victorian home throughout her childhood. Only later when Bechdel understands her lesbianism does her mother explain that her father is a closeted gay man. Suddenly, the cause of tension in her household becomes increasingly clear, and she salvages something of a relationship with her father before his death. Bechdel relives memories over and over again as more information comes to light. Some of the same situations are presented more than once, but with new insight. The multitude of literary references in Fun Home make a film adaptation seem kind of laughable, but the emphasis on reexamining memory could prove fertile ground for a filmmaker.

Director of Choice: Michel Gondry. It would be easy to pick a LGBT filmmaker and assign them the task, but Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind explored the effect of memories—however unreliable—on the present. While Fun Home lacks the cerebral science fiction qualities of Eternal Sunshine, it would give Gondry the chance to explore some familiar territory. In the film, Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet must decide if they can continue a romantic relationship after learning that they were together once before and broke up horribly. To explain the circumstances would really give away too much, but it should make the choice understandable.

Cover art to Sandman #1 by Dave McKean

#1 The Sandman

Neil Gaimain’s magnum opus has been close to a film adaptation a couple of times, but it’s probably not going to happen for a while—if ever. Gaimain effectively crafted a mythology for the DC Universe with the seven Endless—the embodiments of universal human tendencies: Destiny, Dream, Desire, Despair, Death, Delirium, and Destruction. The series largely focuses on Dream, who presides over the Dreaming, where, appropriately, all nocturnal visions are born. Throughout the series, he encounters beings from literature, history, and mythology. It’s one of the most enjoyable works of fantasy ever written, though the sprawling story would make a concise film adaptation difficult. Really, a film would have to either plan for many sequels or fashion a standalone film from the many storylines for the series’s history. Some of the concepts might prove hard to translate to film, but the comic’s stunning visuals beg to come to life. CGI has made fantasy films a viable genre. Books like Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia were once considered unfilmable. The Sandman could easily be the next great fantasy series.

Director of Choice: Tie between Tim Burton and Guillermo del Toro. Both directors have the visual chops to bring Gaiman’s worlds to life. Burton’s films are a dark visual feast, though they all tend to look very similar. His style is pretty well unmistakable. But, with the right script he could work wonders with the material. Del Toro proved himself with this sort of thing in Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy II: The Golden Army, so there’s no great argument there. In some ways, he would be a better choice. Burton’s just got the experience and the pedigree that The Sandman might need to actually get made.

Elfquest

Honorable Mention: Elfquest

This is actually in development, so it’s a bit beyond wistful thinking. Wendy and Richard Pini’s fantasy epic has been in development hell practically since it was first published in 1978. Animation always seemed like the natural choice, but the market for theatrical animated films outside of Disney was, for years, shaky. That’s not the case now, but the idea of a fantasy cartoon for teenagers and adults based on an underground comic book was probably a hard sell. At one point, there was to be a line of animated home videos, but the first one was so awful that the Pinis pulled the plug on it before anymore could come out. Now, Lord of the Rings and a bunch of other fantasy movies have shown that you can have elves in live action that don’t look completely fucking ridiculous. In fact, Dodgeball director Rawson Thurber announced in July of last year that he’d be directing the Elfquest movie at Warner. Fear not, Maniacs, because he’s apparently a lifelong fan of the comic. Still, there hasn’t been much talk since then. It’s not even clear whether it will be live action or animated. Fans of the series have seen the project close to fruition before, so we’ll see.

You are now exiting The No-Fly Zone.

Postscript: For anyone in the Baton Rouge area this weekend, I will be at Babel Con at the LSU Alumni Center in the merchant room, selling and signing copies of Dead Souls. Stop by and say hello.

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.