A few years ago, a co-worker and I were standing around chatting about what else, comics. As the conversation went on he asked me if I had ever read "The Walking Dead"; I said I didn't but had always heard good things. He ended up letting me borrow the first couple volumes and added that he thought the comic would be perfect for a movie. That night I went home and read them and was about half way through the first issue when I realized that this would not be perfect for a movie...
It would be perfect for a television series.
The continuing struggle of the survivors, constant obstacles, the more we learn about the characters over time, it practically screamed for a weekly series. Apparently Frank Darabont had the same idea because this fall "The Walking Dead" premiered to huge ratings and great reviews.
After the success of "The Walking Dead" Marvel has just recently announced that it too is exploring television adaptations, most notably a Guillermo Del Toro produced "Hulk" t.v series; and it was just announced that David E. Kelly's "Wonder Woman" pilot has been picked up by NBC. But my question is... why haven't we had more comic book television series?
We have had many cartoon series over the years, most of which were highly successful due to the creative freedom cartoons have, but live actions comic book adaptations have been a mixed bag. "Smallville" is probably the most successful on televion right now but we've had plenty of failed projects like the "Flash" show from the nineties,the "Blade" show, "Birds of Prey", etc.
In my last article I briefly touched on the fact that comic books and movies are very different mediums. Many times when a comic is being adapted into a movie filmmakers have to compress years of continuity and story lines into a two hour film that will please general audiences and comic fans alike. Many times during comic book movies stuff gets lost in translation or passed up entirely. I remember when "Watchmen" was stuck in development, there was a very vocal group of fans that was pulling for it to be adapted as an HBO mini series because a movie wouldn't be able to contain the story, and I agree with them.
Serialized story telling is all the rage in t.v now thanks to the success of "Lost", and comics would be perfect for that. For example, imagine if there was a live action "X-Men" show, you could take your time to introduce each character and give them their due, as well as explore the rich story lines from the X-Men comics. The first season of the show could strictly be about the X-Men and the Brotherhood and explore the relationship between Xavier and Magneto, second season about the government bringing in the Sentinel program, third season could be the Phoenix saga, etc. Hell, Wolverine's search for his past could be a subplot running through the whole show. In short, an X-Men show could put in all of the things that the movies couldn't fit in for various reasons.
That's just one example of what could happen in a well done comic book show, but one has to wonder why the networks haven't fully jumped on this boat. I would guess that the first reason would be budget; rumors were swirling that many networks passed on the new "Wonder Woman" because of the price tag associated with it. A weekly superhero show can get pricey real quick, and we've seen what happens when shows don't have the budget to support the super heroics (just check out the cheap effects on "Smallville"). Its very clear that the networks would only fork out the cash for a big budget show if they knew it was a sure thing, which leads me to my next point.
The second reason I think we don't see most comic book shows is because of their uneven track record. Like I said earlier, there were shows like "Birds of Prey", "Blade", and "The Flash" which only lasted one season, and then there were ones that just faded away (anyone remember the "Nightman" show? I didn't think so). "Heroes", while not a comic book show, was a success for one season before it quickly lost its audience and fizzled out. But why were most of these shows, which should have had a built in audience, failures?
I think the reason why comic book shows have had a spotty record is pretty simple: bad storytelling. Just look at "Birds of Prey"; it was based off the popular Batman spin off comic and should have been a hit with comic book fans and female viewers alike, but the show was just bad. It suffered from the "villain of the week" formula and made drastic changes with the comic, mostly with the character of Huntress and the "Meta-Human" story line, which was a blatant X-Men rip-off. As said earlier, people love serialized shows that give their stories several seasons to pan out, and if any comic book show did this they would most likely be successful.
I have high hopes for the new "Hulk" show. While the old show is still fondly remembered, it followed very little of the comics and basically just had David Banner wondering the country helping random people and fighting crooks that the Hulk normally wouldn't even bat an eye at. I'm hoping that with the new show we'll get the Hulk on the run from General Ross while also trying to find a cure. I hope we get to see many of his classic villains, leading up to a big confrontation with the Abomination at the end of the first season. But the show would also need an adequate budget to make us buy Banner hulking out every week and not cringe at the bad effects; but if done right this new Hulk show could open the door for more comic book properties to get the television treatment.
As for the new "Wonder Woman", well sadly that sounds like it will follow "Birds of Prey" and "The Flash" into television heaven. Early reports state that Wonder Woman is a "successful corporate executive" who fights as Wonder Woman to protect the city of Los Angeles. Not only does this sound like it will deviate from the comics, but I think we'll get something very low tech like the seventies "Wonder Woman" show which had her fighting petty thugs and corporate criminals every week. Maybe we'll get lucky and the pilot won't get picked up, but if it does I have the feeling it won't last long.
To sum it all up, I think there's a lot to be mined from adapting comic books to television. "The Walking Dead" proved how successfully one and (for the first couple episodes) faithfully one can adapt a comic and make it appeal to all audiences. Hopefully if the big budget "Hulk" show does well it will convince more networks to shell out the cash to bring more superheroes to the small screen.
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