Top Ten was so great. I wish they made more comics let alone a TV series.
I love Astro City but I am not sure it would play as TV. To less enfranchised people it would just be a new set of Superheros and villains. What makes it special wouldn’t really shine as well in an adaptation.
It’s too late but I really wanted a faithful Fables series. I think now the trope has been done enough that Fables won’t succeed. It would look like a rip off of the rip offs.
Morning Glories seems to be written to be made into a TV show. I am shocked that that hasn’t happened yet. Even a pilot at least.
It has been in development hell but Y: The Last Man would make for a good TV series. HBO or Netflix probably.
Moore’s work was fantastic. I was a tad disappointed by Beyond the Farthest Precinct though, which I thought was uneven. Still, plenty of material to work with, especially if you include the spinoffs.
THE GOLDEN AGE seems like a great fit: we see the WWII-era superheroes mostly hang up their costumes after the war – trying to make it in business or in politics, struggling to beat addictions or keep marriages together, coping with the horrors they saw overseas or the guilt of having worked on the Manhattan Project – all while it becomes increasingly obvious that the mystery men of yesteryear may have to come out of retirement and go into action one last time.
There were two very short-lived DC Comics books that I can imagine doing better as movies or TV shows.
SHADE THE CHANGING MAN (the 1977 series by Steve Ditko): In a parallel dimension, a special agent named Rac Shade is framed for the attempted assassination of a politician. In a massive prison break, he and dozens of dangerous criminals are shifted into our dimension. A team of agents is sent to retrieve (or kill) the escapees. Shade must try to clear his name while also helping to neutralize the criminals, all the while avoiding agent Mellu, his former fiance – and the daughter of the politician whom he supposedly tried to kill, who is also the secret leader of the criminal network that arranged the prison break. His only weapon, a force-field vest which, while it’s activated, distorts his appearance like a funhouse mirror.
THE SECRET SIX (the original 1968 version): Inspired by Mission: Impossible, this series featured six people with special skills who took on spies and gangsters under the guidance of a mysterious leader named Mockingbird (whose goals was not just to defeat the enemies of freedom, but to hold them up to ridicule). There were two twists: (1) None of the Six was working for Mockingbird willingly; they each had a secret which could totally destroy their lives if they crossed Mockingbird. (2) Mockingbird was actually one of the Six; they all knew this, but they didn’t know which one of them he or she was. (Neither did we, the readers – though several clues were dropped throughout the series.)
I know. That really annoyed me, because series creator E. Nelson Bridwell had revealed to his fans in the interim who he intended Mockingbird to be – and it wasn’t him. I was especially peeved by that 1980s revelation because it claimed that Dr. Durant wasn’t really running things as Mockingbird, but was acting under the direction of the U.S. military, relaying instructions from them – meaning that he wasn’t actually the leader, turning the whole concept that the series was based on into a cheat.
I’ll second this – but it’d have to be the original Maxon-drawn Dell/Gold Key/Western series that ran 1954-1982. Turok Classic, not any of the later upstarts that completely rewrote the mythology (and which has already been turned into a dirsct-to-video animated film – Turok: Son of Stone (Video 2008) - IMDb )
I wants my Turok and Andar as straight pre-Columbian Mandans who used their wits and their knowledge of fire and poisoned arrows to fight off Honkers and out-of-their-time Neanderthals.
Totally agree about Alan Moore’s Top Ten - pretty much my favorite comic. I enjoy Astro City, but it doesn’t have the same Hill St. Blues humor that Top Ten does. Until I read the series, I didn’t know Moore was apparently the biggest Hill St. Blues fan around.
What spin-offs are there? I recall there was Smax (the artist Xander Cannon, who also did the inking on Top Ten, I think, hung out here on the SDMB for a while), and then that post-WW2 one where the Jetman figures how his place in the world, both in Neopolis and in his personal life. Are there others?
I know that Joseph Gordon Levitt currently owns the rights to Neil Gaiman’s Sandman but I haven’t heard anything more. Does anybody know if it’s in development or in limbo?
We’re talking about Hollywood. Nudity and sex are automatically R-rated but you can get away with a lot of violence as long as you keep it “comic book” violence - ie you can kill people but don’t show a lot of blood.
And Apollo and Midnighter’s relationship would only be vaguely implied subtext in a mainstream movie.
Zenith. The only thing that stands between humnanity and extra-dimensional Nazi Elder Gods is Zenith, Earth’s only superhero, son of trippy 60’s super-hippies, grandson of a revered WWII super-soldier. Unfortunately, our last best hope is also a spoilt, dim, selfish, narcissistic teen pop idol who has no interests beyond shagging models and getting his latest single to Number One. Grant Morrison made his writing bones on this series, and it has never been more relevant.
