comic book movies

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

Captain America’s Wings

Artwork by Jack Kirby

When I was a kid in the sixties, living from comic book to comic book, the mere idea of superhero movies and television shows was an unimaginable dream.

The comics were so magic. To see the heroes in them for real would be utterly miraculous!

Today, as the concept has become commonplace, I have to say the reality falls fall short of my eight year old dream.

With due respect for our times, I must concede that video has become the medium of the superhero for the present century. Why buy comic books when you can see Gotham, and The Flash, and Arrow, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. for free on TV every week? And estimating an average reading time of 15 minutes per book, you could read 8 comics at $3.50 plus in the time it takes to watch one $12 movie. That balances the cost of the movie against an expenditure of at least $28. You can even get popcorn and a drink and still come out ahead.

One of the utter delights of the Silver Age of comics was their price. One dime and two pennies. Let’s look at the inflation rate. A 10 cent chocolate bar from the sixties now costs 11 times as much. A comic book at least 30 times as much. The economics are not kid friendly.

There’s also the issue (hah! comic nerd pun there) of continuity. Marvel Comics through the sixties and into the early nineties told a continuous story, in which what went before mattered to what came after. Now the same heroes have been around over 50 years in some cases. That’s a lot of continuity to reflect, not to mention the absurdity of generally accepting any given hero ages about one week for every year of publication. By their very nature, the comic book experience cannot be what I gloried in primarily during the shorter range of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.

So I give today’s hero worshippers their TV shows and movies. May they derive as much pleasure from them as I did and still do from the original sources.

That being said, today’s fantabulous cinematic industry does not offer the same experience as the actual comics of the Silver Age and after did. And, in my opinion, not as enjoyable an experience.

But I didn’t anticipate that in the 60s. As I said, Silver Age superheroes on the silver screen? What could be more marvellous? (Hah! More comic nerd puns.) Or D.C.ish?

It’s a mystery to me why I thought that way. I mean, you could always see the heroes. That was the whole point of a comic book! The pictures! The artist as well as the writer! Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and Mike Sekowsky, dammit, not just Stan Lee and Gardner Fox.

Artwork by Mike Sekowsky

Why did I think the pictures would be even bigger and more fantastic (Four in a series!) than the actual original illustrated stories?

Some movies have risen to the challenge. Most don’t. The reality came home to me with 2002’s Spider-Man. You had Spiderman, and you had the Green Goblin, in an utterly pointless personality-less redesigned costume for the movie. Big battle at the end! Spiderman in full face-concealing mask, and the Goblin in full face-concealing helmet, faceless face to faceless face.

Am I the only one noting the obvious lapse in cinematic thinking here? You have a moving, morphing medium, and you can’t see the expressions on the faces of either your protagonist or antagonist? You never had any doubts about what the Goblin was thinking in the comic books.

Artwork by Steve Ditko

Then there was Dr. Doom in 2005’s Fantastic Four movie. Jack Kirby designed Dr. Doom’s mask with close ups in mind. His metallic face was endlessly cruel and expressive in the comics. In the movies? Best seen hooded and in the distance, which again completely reduces his villainous personality. Because once more, the masked face in the movie never changes expression.

Artwork by Jack Kirby

And then there’s 2011’s Captain America. Let a picture speak a thousand words.

They did better in the 1944 serial, leaving off the wings entirely.

There have been some successes. Dr. Octopus and the Sandman in the later Spider-Man movies had the right look — if certainly not a viable plot in Sandman’s case — and Heath Ledger brilliantly caught the original spirit of the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. I would even rate Nolan’s Batman Begins as the second best comic book movie ever made, in terms of capturing the true spirit and look of the original medium.

Artwork by Jack Kirby

Oddly enough, the one hero I thought would never work on the big screen was Marvel’s The Mighty Thor. I don’t think the movies are that good, but I have to admit Chris Hemsworth carries off the character well. Strangely by playing the character more relaxed than his eternally high strung comics original often came across. And ditching the winged helmet. Smart move, that.

But on the whole, I find the movies to be either campy mugfests for name stars to dress up and play pretend, or visions that fall short of the full range of the visual imagination demonstrated by the print creators, no matter how many special effects you cram in — again diminishing the original illustrated medium’s magic. Oddly enough, I think this conundrum works both ways. Even though the franchises have been successful in print, I always found Star Wars and Star Trek comic books to be stiff and less fluidly believable than their original video universes.

But until I can see Jack Kirby’s epic artistry duplicated on screen, I won’t believe that movies can give me the same thrill as going back and rereading the stories on paper from the sixties and seventies.

Artwork by Jack Kirby

However, I did say I consider Batman Begins to be the second best comic book movie ever made, in terms of capturing the true spirit of the original medium. So what movie do I consider the best?

Zack Snyder’s 2009 rendition of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen. Moore didn’t like it, but that’s just Alan Moore. See next week’s blog. Just as the Watchmen comic gave the print medium a wake-up call in 1987, Snyder’s movie unrelentingly and legitimately tells the same anti-hero tale establishing the same degree of psychological intensity and disfunction, and the look of the movie breathtakingly brings Dave Gibbons’s artwork and palette to life, accurately duplicating the covers of the original run of 12 comic books in some shots. Throw in a great soundtrack, and even I have to admit the movie makers did the comic professionals justice, accurately translating the dream from one medium to another and hitting the high points of both.

So it can be done.

Leaving us with the eternal paradox — why do the wings on Captain America’s helmet look plausible in a comic book but utterly ridiculous in any other form? The unreproducible mysterious magic of Jack Kirby … 

Artwork by Jack Kirby

*****

REALITY FICTION AND BEYOND!

The Contestants go chivalrous in a send up of Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur this week, part one posting on Monday and part two going up Friday, January 30th. It’s Reality Fiction Three: The Interrupted Edition — Episode Three, continuing at:

http://realficone.blogspot.ca/

King Arthur is spinning in his grave, and Monty Python’s still just spinning.

Episodes to Date:

Episode One: Dante-Ish — Mak’s Inferno

Episode Two: Chaucer-Ish — The Hermit’s Tale

Episode Three: Malory-Ish — Le Morte de Mak

All with illustrations by the author. Omigod, and in the same column with artwork by Jack Kirby! The hubris, the hubris!