Vulture No. 1

By Joel Pfannenstiel

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Comic books are the guilty pleasure of America. They’re marginalized and made fun of while being simultaneously strip-mined for as many possible summer blockbusters as the American movie-going public can stomach. Comic “geeks” are still mocked and considered fair game for the average snide comment, but many a frat boy will see Iron Man this summer, then go on and on about how “bad ass” Tony Stark’s alter ego truly is.

If you look a little deeper, you’ll see that comics are as fairly represented by the Hollywood machine as novels-turned-movies (i.e. often not fairly at all) and that the end result of a comic-to-movie translation bears little resemblance to the source material. Two examples that come to mind are the forthcoming WANTED and the even further out WATCHMEN. No one cares about how WANTED is going to be butchered. However, WATCHMEN will cause a mild uproar and produce a baby backlash, primarily because it’s considered by many to be the ultimate evolved form of comics. Mainly, this is because a.) WATCHMEN is a nuanced, layered, multifaceted piece of fiction on par with Orwell’s 1984 (in tone) and b.) a lot of comic book fans really, really want to be taken seriously and crave validation from mainstream America. WATCHMEN has come closer than any other comic to realizing part of that dream for them. Personally, I think it’s a lot of leftover angst from having your lunch-tray upended in the cafeteria by the school’s alpha male and his tittering posse of onlookers. Why? It’s because you dared to bring issues of Legion of Super Heroes to read while you chugged your chocolate milk box. It’s like “black anger” or “white resentment”. Let’s call it “nerd fury”.

So, WATCHMEN will be the next beachhead in the lopsided war of purist nerds vs. Hollywood and the average American. See, I get their gripe, and so do most of you who have shelled ten bucks to see a favorite novel or 70’s television show translated into a slick, mindless, poorly-cast abomination. Why? Don’t we know any better? No, we go via morbid curiosity or some dim segment of hope that reality has yet to stamp from us. We tell ourselves “hey, that wasn’t that bad” or “well, they got the plot right but the acting kind of sucked”, etc.

In reality, we probably should be asking ourselves what is it in us that demands to see a live-action iteration of the thing in the first place. I mean, if we loved the book or the original comic so much, why do we want to see it made into a live-action flick? Isn’t our imagination good enough…isn’t the artwork (in visual mediums) up to par? What about the source material was lacking? If it’s not the original that’s lacking…is it just that we can’t get enough of this thing we put on a pedestal? Maybe that’s it, for most people, but I think that “nerd fury” might be at the center of why there is such a desire for comic fans (nerd, geeks, dorks alike…) to see their favorite creation come to life in CGI and awkward rubber suits (though it runs counter to the pure, final product the geeks want to see realized on the silver screen.)

It goes back to the desire to be taken seriously and the need for comic fans, who were also not embraced by their peers at large, to hide their comic purchases from girlfriends and family in a brown paper bag. If the characters from these stories (that have provided escape from wedgies, mummifying cases of acne, and general social retarded-ness) are accepted by one and all, it makes all of the time spent reading graphic novels about magical rings and alternate dimensions (rather than talking to cute boys and girls whilst developing interpersonal communication skills) seem like a fair trade. It also validates the long-time now-adult collector of comics. Now, he or she feels they can talk sans fear about the best and worst DAREDEVIL villains of all-time in a public forum, and not just the latest thread on their favorite geek-related blog (pun intended).

Anyway, WANTED comes out June 28, 2008 and WATCHMEN comes out March 6, 2009 (supposedly). This spring and summer, though, will see a variety of other comic-related movies. We’ll deal with each of them in hand. Some of the highlights will be IRON MAN (currently in at Hollywood 12), the INCREDIBLE HULK, and HELLBOY 2 (for those of you who can’t get enough of Ron Perlman in monster make-up).

If you want a seriously thought-out comic geek’s perspective on why a WATCHMEN movie should not be made…check out the “Boycott Watchmen” group on Facebook.

If you are interested in reading the “good” version of WANTED or WATCHMEN, check your local comic shop or, if you’re lucky (i.e. live in a “cool” locale with a “hip” library staff), the local library. Both are worth reading and if you’re one of those who prefer to read the novel before it’s turned into a series of polished summaries that will supplant the source material as the definitive version of the work in the mind of the public at large, then you should get out there and snatch these up.

Illustration by Lawrence artist Brent Smith:

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Posted by PatrickJoseph (Patrick Giroux) on May 7, 2008 at 4:32 p.m. (Suggest removal)

"Nerd Fury" Joel? How about "Nerd Rage?"

Posted by mitzibel (Misty Nuckolls) on May 7, 2008 at 10:22 p.m. (Suggest removal)

Love the logo/graphic/whatchamacallit. The blog's not half bad, either ;)

Posted by scary_manilow (anonymous) on May 8, 2008 at 11:47 a.m. (Suggest removal)

I'm both apalled and fascinated by the Watchmen movie. If I go in KNOWING that I'll hate it, it HAS to be better than I expect. Right? Right?

Is THE DARK KNIGHT going to be on the list of movies you plan on covering? On that note, have you scene the scary concept art for Two-Face?

Vulture No. 1

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