The Downside of Big Screen Comic Book Adaptations

It takes decades to build up a great superhero, but only one bad movie to tear him down.

From an article in Den of Geek...

What does a film adaptation mean for a comic? If you're Ghost Rider or Fantastic Four, it might well mean a diminished reputation, and an assumption that the comic is only as good as its movie. It's worrying that comic books might suffer from an assumption that a film is a badge of honour, something to aim for at the writing stage. They are, as Alan Moore pointed out, different mediums with all this entails in terms of content and audience. The potential problem is that moving pictures are more influential.

The hype surrounding Watchmen led to increased sales in comics as a whole, while the comic book entered best-seller lists for the year. Kick-Ass and Scott Pilgrim performed lesser but similar feats. Mark Millar’s comic Nemesis sold reasonably well, but with a film adaptation some way off, it has not yet become a new Kick-Ass.

Millar's wider appeal seems to require a film adaptation for expansion, if not consolidation. He's a unique case, in that his writing has been deemed zeitgeisty enough to warrant any new script being considered for a film adaptation. Millar is the first, and possibly the last, writer to excel at multi-media creator-owned projects.

A good place for comparison, then, is the Class of 2001, the other Ultimate Universe prime movers: Brian Michael Bendis, Warren Ellis and Grant Morrison. Between them, they have managed one major film adaptation, Ellis' Red in 2010. Considering their output, this is near miraculous, and shows a clear distinction between film and comic book audiences.