We’re seeing more and more comic books being adapted in movies and television series. But there’s still plenty of untapped works out there. So let’s throw out some ideas.
The American: A miniseries from the late eighties. Presents superheroes as part of a government conspiracy.
Astro City: A series that shows different aspects of what life would be like in a city inhabited by superheroes. Would work great as an anthology TV series.
The Elementals: A vastly under-appreciated series from the eighties and nineties. In my opinion, Bill Willingham should be ranked alongside Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Frank Miller in modern comic book history. But putting that aside, this was an excellent series about four people who were brought back from death and given superpowers.
Kamandi: A Jack Kirby series from the seventies. Basically a well done rip-off of Planet of the Apes. Would make a great sci-fi thriller.
Nexus: A superhero story set in a science fiction universe. We finally have the technology to make this work in a movie.
I wish HBO, or Netflix, or some other no-holds-barred would do a series based of the “Hoppers/Locas” stories from Love and Rockets. You know, something that would start with a young Maggie and Hopey, and actually follow them through the years season by season, and last as many, or at least almost as many, seasons as the Locas stories had lasted. I know there were gaps in the stories, so maybe the series would last quite as many years, and there would eight have to be skip aheads (ie, “One Year Later” titles) or else the whole thing would have to be presented as a flash-back, so it could be non-linear.
It has potential to be something great, especially if the bros. Hernandez would come aboard as writers.
It would be the first show I’d be really excited about since I don’t know when.
A lot of great choices. I remember when Lethal Weapon came out some people said that the Riggs character was a great take on the Badger. Of course that was before Gibson went insane.
I think ZOT!would make a great movie or TV series, live or animated.
I keep thinking about whether Kyle Baker’s Why I Hate Saturn would work in film/television form. So much of the book is conversation-based with little actual action (apart from the ending, of course) that it might even work better for radio. But I suppose with some judicious editing it could be condensed into an interesting hour-long HBO movie or some such.
Not a comic book but rather a webcomic - and one still in progress, so it may be far too premature: I’m hooked on Abby Howard’s The Last Halloween and think an animated episodic version would work very well indeed (assuming it doesn’t go off the rails later). Very dark humor. Book 1 has just finished and Book 2 won’t launch until October, so there’s a long way to go yet…
I love the Badger…not sure how well he’d fare with a mainstream movie audience. Also a fan of Willinham’s Elementals; I can remember a few Crowning Moments of Awesome from that series. And Mage was/is (will he ever publish the third installment?) wonderful. Might be the easiest of the three to adapt into a movie.
Double-plus for Astro City and Top Ten. Both series would allow the filmmakers to explore the consequences of a superhero-rich environment without needing to directly shit all over the iconic characters we are all familiar with.
