I don’t really read comic books anymore, but if I saw it on the rack, I’m pretty sure I’d buy Uninspired Crusader based on the title alone.
Crusader: “What should we do tonight, Sidekick?”
Sidekick: “I don’t know. Maybe fight some crime?”
Crusader: “Meh.”
I was never into comics much, got big into hard SF as an early teen. To each their own. But I do resent comics for not sticking to their own sandbox. They invaded film & TV in such a way in the last decades or so to have sucked up all the oxygen. I figure it’s not because there’s such a huge fan base, there isn’t even name recognition for lots of this stuff, it’s because it’s easy. The pictures are already there, you don’t even have to storyboard it. But SF or fantasy productions that didn’t originate as comics or as bad original concepts by “creative teams” are becoming very rare, and that disappoints me. There’s a lot more great imaginative literature out there that doesn’t have pictures. I wonder if “Snow Crash” had been the graphic novel originally envisioned it would be a film by now.
My intro to comics was when I found a book my dad (who gave up comics by adulthood) had for some reason called IIRC “A History of Underground Comics in America”. It glossed right over the heaps of superhero stuff that never interested me and introduced me to the stuff that really interested me, such as EC (first time I ever encountered zombies) and Zap, Crumb et al. A few years later when I could buy my own comics, they were mostly independent/underground, humor, and a few sci-fi horror anthologies.
That’s what I hate about basically all “creative” industries. When the characters are a brand rather than a story, it starts a dance of homogeneity where risks are assiduously avoided, while trying to still make the latest thing appear fresh and new.
I consider the MARVEL movies my superhero comics. I grew up and looooved comics but moved on from ‘super-hero’ comics in the mid-eighties. Back in the day you could spend a few coins and get yourself a little lite entertainment in a comic book. You could come in the middle of a multi-part story but the writers and artists of the time were able to fill you in within a few panels. Those were skilled visual story tellers that knew the nuances of telling a sequential story. These days it’s almost impossible to just pick up a random hero comic and know what the heck is going on. And good luck trying to figure out what is happening with just the drawings alone. There are tons of fantastic artists out there but they can’t tell a visual story. Not at all. A bunch of poses and stoic looks does not a story make. The MARVEL cinematic universe, as flawed as it is, is still pretty spectacular in their grand cosmic story telling. These are my hero comics now, I don’t care if I have to wait 6 months or a year for the next ‘installment’ it’s just like waiting a month or two for the next printed chapter.
“Deep?”
Uh…yeah…right.
I love comic books and I love fifty-year mythic histories, but it’s definitely “deep” as in the drowning end of a swimming pool, not “deep” as in literature.
Psychology is cool 
Disclaimer: I enjoyed this article.
That’s a pretty revisionist view, IMHO. Superheroes were born from the pulps…Batman was basically a riff on The Shadow, originally. Most of the Science Fiction you’re thinking of is contemporary to Superheroes…if you’re suggesting that Superheroes somehow ‘invaded’ SF or Fantasy, then I don’t think you grasp that they’ve always been in that space. Most superheroes were originally science fiction heroes or straight rips from mythology. Marvels two first superheroes were the Human Torch: an humanistic AI robot that’s body ignited on fire (unintentionally at first) feared by mankind at first and Namor the Submariner, last prince of Lost Atlantis, hellbent on waging a war on mankind. Batman is a pulp hero with SF gadgets. Superman is an alien from another world come to live among humans. Green Lantern is a cop from space. The Flash and Spider-Man got their powers from SCIENCE! and so on.
Now if your complaint is that superhero movies are somehow stealing the budgets away from ‘legitimate’ Science Fiction movies, then I’m just going to have to disagree. That assumes that for decades that SF movies were ever considered by the majority of Hollywood as anything other than expensive boondoggles for summer popcorn flicks or immature fare. For every ‘Silent Running’ we have a ‘Night of the Lepus’. That also makes the assumption that somehow SF movies and adaptions of SF books have been getting short-shrift at the box office. That really hasn’t been the case. Some of the biggest grossing films of the last 30 years have been SF films.
I mean, we live in a world where Steven Spielberg is adapting ‘Ready Player One’ and where ‘Redshirts’ is being optioned as a TV series. I’m having a hard time seeing how the popularity of comic adaptions is harming the adaption of SF books. Really, the problem you’re refering to is that ‘Snow Crash’ is not an easy book to adapt (and time has made it harder, as it now feels outdated in some ways).
No it doesn’t! Hollywood has always had problems dealing with science fiction, and it is the minority there holding the purse strings who make the decisions.
NotL was a much cheaper movie than Silent Running, so I don’t think such productions are taking away from better works.
Most movies get short shrift at the box office - something like 97% of the movies made don’t even get cinematic distribution anywhere. Science fiction doesn’t fare well either, since those which actually do get shown are quite diluted, compared to other genres such as action or comedy.
The first problem is that science fiction was neglected in the first place. And secondly, they usually pick the most boring comic books ro adapt. As a comic reader, I just generally found super heroes to be uninteresting. Some of the movies have been decent, but their success doesn’t make us any more likely to get science fiction movies which are more conceptually involved, they seem as likely as ever to be disguised action movies. And for a genre known for the “fantastic”, they tend to be rather predictable.
Precisely. And the examples given of ‘Ready Player One’ and ‘Redshirts’ emphasize how the shallowest and most derivative concepts are the ones greenlighted. SF has always had problems breaking out of the action genre in Hollywood, but comics has cemented it there. Sure there are great books hard to film, but some, like Snowcrash, read like scripts to begin with. But it takes good screenwriters who love the genre, not hollywood hacks whose only notions of SF is time travel and body snatching.
One of my stock speeches is that SF is not a genre in itself, it’s a genre modifier, similar to its polar opposite ‘Historical’. You can have SF romance, mystery, comedy, tragedy, suspense, horror, and, oh yeah, action-adventure. But we rarely get anything but the last. And comics by their nature is fodder for that.
ooooh, someone doesn’t like some books.
“And the examples given of ‘Ready Player One’ and ‘Redshirts’ emphasize how the shallowest and most derivative concepts are the ones greenlighted.”
What books do you feel have been neglected and are worthy of development? I pulled those examples from the air as two high-profile recent announcements, but if you feel those are not ‘REAL’ SF, what would qualify, in your mind? We’ve got recent announcements of things like an adaption of Asimov’s Foundation and Robinson’s Red Mars for television, for example. Does McIntyre’s “The Moon and The Sun” count? I guess I’m having a hard time seeing how comic book movies are specifically squeezing out SF book movie adaptions any more than straight up SF cinematic properties are already doing so. How does “Kingsmen” take away from the field more than “Chappie” or “Interstellar”, for example?
I just don’t see a lot of evidence that supports the premise that comic book movies have displaced them at all. Some material just doesn’t get adapated…and a lot of it gets adapted POORLY (and then is often used as justification by Hollywood for not doing more).
Exactly. When they adapt comics and pitch overboards whatever mature concepts there were, the movies still manage to be successful on at least a commercial level. I can’t remember the last time a SF work was successfully adapted, I don’t think Ender was an artistic or financial success. But works conceived in Hollywood are just as bad or worse.
As for what I feel is missing? There’s many decades of Hugo & Nebula award winning novels and stories, and plenty that won both. Why not start there, rather than with such “meta” fanboy stories like Redshirts and RP1. It doesn’t need to be over the top “mindblowing” crap like Interstellar, how about something by Niven? Ringworld is a franchise waiting to happen that simply couldn’t have been made well until recently. If you can film a Groot, you can film a Puppeteer.
I loved Moon not because it was the greatest SF movie ever, but because of it’s modesty. It felt like a classic SF short story, exploring an idea. A feature length Twilight Zone episode. And Rod Serling was no dope, he hired SF writers and bought good classic short stories. That’s what’s missing from TV today. The last thought provoking SF with an idea that wasn’t fantasy or the tired trope of time travel was Dollhouse, cancelled after 2 seasons.
I’d argue what’s important about superhero comics is not the continuity or the 50+ year history. As mentioned here in the comments and in the other thread about the Marvel movies this seems to be a common impediment for all but the most stalwart “true believers”. Comics were intended as children’s literature (this is not a derogatory label BTW) and as such require fun, escapism and wish fulfillment for engagement.
So here’s where I’m coming from. Returning to comics after many years, ostensibly with my young son tagging along, the overwhelming thing I found about the little sampling I made of the Big 2’s recent output is that much of it isn’t all that much fun. Especially not for a younger reader. I’m sure there are exceptions but most of what we found was kind of inappropriate and seemed to be aimed at an adult reader. Which is fine but how do you get a kid to develop an interest in something that is frankly not for them? And the stuff aimed at children is way too childish (and I mean that in a derogatory way). So we kind of forgot about reading comics.
However, still being a fan of super heroes, my son suggested we try some cartoons. Someone suggested I check out the animated show the Brave & the Bold. This was a very fun show that sort of salutes the Silver Age era of DC. Each show teams Batman up with some hero, keeping with the theme of the show these other heroes tend be (mostly) third stringers in all their Silver Age goofy glory. Now we were talking. No grimdark action here (for the most part). When Kamandi showed up in an episode my brain exploded. This is what we were missing from the comics.
So we tried to approach comics a bit differently. This time we did it via Silver Age comics! So we went back and dug through my old comics and I picked up a couple of compilations and we couldn’t be happier. What we were looking for was there - fun, escapism and wish fulfillment. Complex characterizations, explorations of contemporary themes, grimdark action and half a century of convoluted continuity & continuity reboots have their place but for my young son and I, we are much happier with Composite Superman and his ilk.
I think sometimes this discussion gets stuck in the whole “comics = superhero” thing which is SO not true. There are many other types of comics and graphic novels out there!
It’s not the discussion, it’s that the productions are mostly superhero, which equals internationally marketable action movie. Now you know why I get pissed about SF=action movie. In both cases only a small portion of the source material is considered “movie worthy”.
And remember, if a woman were doing the same pose, there would be a shit-storm backflip about how you never (derp!) see men in the same pose or wearing such impractical clothing … not inclusive in the right way… fantasy is okay as long as selective parts are real… if you don’t like it, don’t read it, bozo…
The Walking Dead! I’m sure there are other examples, but I’m lazy.
And whatever, I like superhero movies. They are fun. I like fun.
Seriously? Troll, much?
While Daredevil is in a ridiculous pose, it’s still more about the action hero fantasy than anything else. He’s not oversexualized in that photo. It’s still a power fantasy, vs the VERY common over-sexualization of female characters (derp!).
Troll harder.
