T he idea of using a celebrity to sell com-ics is not a new concept. For decades, companies like DC, Dell, Marvel and scores of others have published licensed titles featuring the adventures of popu-

lar TV and film stars and characters like Bob Hope, Hopalong Cassidy, Sgt Bilko and many others. In the Seventies, Marvel licensed films like Star Wars and popular TV series like Planet of The Apes and Bat-tlestar Galactica and even huge US band KISS got in on the act. But in the 1990s, a new phenomena was born: Celebrity-written comics. With the short-lived boom in sales and attention focused on comics and graphic novels, scores of TV and film figures crawled out of the woodwork to proclaim their love of the four colour page and their long-held desire to see

their name on the front of a Batman or superhero comic cover.

First out of the gates was US indie film director Kevin Smith. He began his comic writing career spinning his Clerks creations off the big screen and into print through Oni Press back in 1999. Smith has always been a big comicbook fan and his work at Oni led to him writing an arc of Daredevil for Marvel and later a run on DC’s Green Arrow series. At the begin-ning of this decade, Smith also penned a Batman series, The Widening Gyre.

As well as Smith, the same decade saw future su-perstar movie director Joss Whedon, who had built up quite a following thanks to his work as showrun-ner on successful genre TV series Buffy The Vampire Slayer, enter the comic-writing field. Unlike Smith, Whedon’s effort was the creator-owned Fray for Dark Horse, a science fiction comic which was connected to his popular Buffy TV series. Whedon then went on to write Astonishing X-Men for Marvel, a run which was pretty well-regarded. He also acts as a consultant on the long-running Buffy The Vampire

THE RIGHT PROFILE?

The phemonena of celebrities writing comics is one that has come to prominence in the last two decades. JOEL MEADOWS takes a look at its rise and fall...

Slayer comic series that Dark Horse has published since 2007.

The appeal of writing comics at a time when they were seen as easy money and a way to boost your profile as a celebrity brand also attracted other lesser figures like Ron Zimmerman, who was best known as a contributor to the Howard Stern show. His Rawhide Kid and Ultimate Adventures comics both for Marvel gained him a short-lived notoriety thanks partly to his revamp of the former to make him a gay character but his ‘career’ in comics ended over a decade ago.

It wasn’t just TV and film figures who were drawn to comics (pardon the pun). Authors like crime writ-er Brad Meltzer (Green Arrow and event series Iden-tity Crisis), author Eric van Lustbader and successful American author Jodi Picoult, who wrote Wonder Woman for DC, also decided to try their hand at writing comics, to varying success. Even Dark Horse got in on the act with A Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way creating and writing The Umbrella Academy and Lance Henriksen’s To Hell You Ride, which came out in 2012. Way showed that he was an inspired choice with a real understanding of comics and the two volumes of The Umbrella Academy were well-conceived and a worthy addition to Dark Horse’s library.

But with the change in the market and the coming of the recession, the celebrities began to stay away. With comic sales significantly down, it became less

appealing for celebrities to turn their hands to writ-ing comics. The last hurrah was a small burst of UK celebrities like chat show host Jonathan Ross, who wrote Turf and America’s Got Powers, which were both published by Image Comics, and comedian Frankie Boyle, whose Rex Royd appeared in the spo-

But with the change in the market and the coming of the recession, the celebrities began to stay away.

radically published Clint magazine from Titan. But neither were particularly successful creatively: Ross brought two very talented artists on board (Tommy Lee Edwards and Bryan Hitch) but didn’t really know when to step back and let the artist shine. Boyle also showed that he really didn’t have a strong grasp of structure either, with his comic reading like a poor photocopy of Grant Morrison’s writing. The problem was that Ross isn’t a writer, just a fan, and sometimes enthusiasm isn’t enough, trying to parlay his TV ce-lebrity into a career in writing. And the same charge could be leveled at Boyle.

The problem with celebrities writing comics is that while many of them are genuinely aficionados of the form like Ross and Smith, a lot of them don’t understand the delicate dynamics that underpin a good comic series. And some of them also feel that, because they have a brand and a public profile, they have a sense of entitlement to dabble in things that they aren’t really qualified to do. Whedon is of course an exception. Since he is an experienced writer, he gets things like structure and the importance of let-ting the artist contribute to the work. Comics is at its heart a visual medium and so sometimes the writer needs to take a back seat and let the artist work his or her magic.

Comic companies would hire celebrities because

they thought that it would attract a greater profile to the title they become attached to but since a higher profile doesn’t always guarantee impressive sales these days, it is possible that the phenomena of the celebrity comic writer may have run its course. For comics, this is arguably a good thing as it may mean that celebrities will leave the writing of comics to those who have spent years honing their craft and who really understand what makes a good comic or graphic novel.

It is possible that the phenomena of the

celebrity comic writer may have run its course

Twenty-one years ago when Tripwire crawled from the primordial ooze its fledgling editorial policy was to take a swipe at or joyfully embrace just about every kind of

pop culture entertainment, but especially comics and music. As is the way of things, creatures must evolve or go the way of the Dodo, and so too did Tripwire move and change with the times, the music petered out, but the comics grew stronger, and themselves morphed as the genre ebbed and flowed onto the shores of cinema and television.

Ten years ago when the magazine went newsstand in the UK and the US, a buyer at a now flagging High Street news vendor, could not understand why we would want to put a photo of a comic book movie on the front cover. Fair enough, Daredevil never quite hit all the marks for comic book movie greatness, but it was that month’s number one film at the cinema. Spin forward a decade and we have the remarkable situation of a comic book movie smashing (pardon the pun) box office records and threatening to topple some iconic movies from the top of the box office

heap. Kudos to the team at Marvel and especially Avi Arad for a brilliantly conceived and executed plan to drag the Marvel licenses into the 21st Century and bring classic heroes to a new audience that more than ever need the kind of escapism these films represent. But here is the challenge, because for all the millions of dollars pouring into the coffers from the films and associated action figures, the comic book sales remain a shadow of their former past. Are we about to see an evolution of the industry whereby the monthly issue is little more than a proving ground for Hollywood scripts and the fanboys provide the social media approbation of the next big silver screen outing? Well the answer is plainly no, because no publisher can afford the production costs of a monthly book as a write off, and that puts books in a precarious position.

That is because The Avengers is an aberration, certainly in terms of box office, and clearly demonstrated by a gross that outstrips the sum of all its team players individual outings. Nolan’s seminal vision of the Dark Knight, and Raimi’s initial take on Spiderman proved winners, but these are tent pole

channels and nothing on57

Since 1992, comic-related TV has become a dominant force in modern programming, arguably driving some of the most popular shows on TV. Gary Marshall takes a look back at how the success of comicbook movies has influenced the small screen as well and how the landscape has changed in the last 21 years

BEN TEMPLESMITH

characters firmly ensconced in the public’s pop culture awareness. Spidey’s messy third outing and Singer’s banal return of Superman proves even the most beloved characters can flounder within the limits of 120 minutes , which is why comicbook heroes, if they are to live to fight another day, must take a lie down on the TV exec’s casting couch.

What the silver screen has clearly demonstrated is that there is a huge appetite for costumed heroes, and as a storytelling medium comic books lend themselves wonderfully to both live action and animated adaptation. But where cinema’s running time and budget limitations mean only the favoured few can achieve greatness, the long form TV season offers a purer opportunity to adapt and reflect the epic storylines and the deeper character arcs which are so often cast aside in film.

Given the recent cinematic successes of comic originated content the TV networks – both broadcast and in especially cable – are now more than ever more open to developing both the high profile and more interestingly for comic fans those more obscure series for TV. But that’s hardly a new idea, TV has

been plundering comic books for the best part of the last 70 years to varied levels of success and viewer appreciation.

When the synergy between comics and television works it can be hard to beat. Why so much interest in the recent The Avenger’s film? For many, it was a desire to see one character more than any other work again on the screen. Arguably the first comic book character to really embrace the capabilities of the small screen was Kenneth Johnson’s reimagining of the The Incredible Hulk airing between 1977 and 1982. While Johnson took a lot of liberties with Marvel’s character the show was a phenomenal success which critically took the character beyond the often limiting comic book audience. Given the budget limitations leading to painting Lou Ferrigno green, this is one series which truly deserves the television reboot. What would deliver success though is not the flash of a CGI creature (Ang Lee take note) but a human anchor for the series, the real powerhouse, if tightly controlled, performance was always that of Bill Bixby who gave the broader audience a human appeal to latch onto.

That humanity characterised the other big

What the silver screen has clearly demonstrated is that there is a huge appetite for costumed heroes, and as a storytelling medium comic books lend themselves wonderfully to both live action and animated adaptation

breakthrough successes Lois & Clark, and more latterly in Smallville with a ten year run that says more about the series and its ability to engage audiences than any other. It worked though because it unceremoniously dumped all the Superman accoutrements, so much so that a large part of the initial audience hadn’t even realised they were following the early days of Superman! With angst driven teen relationship and its monster of the week format, it is easy to see why that happened. It defined the way to TV could whole heartedly reinvent comicbook heroes, but at the same time, could prove to be true to the core elements of the character, and actually drive the mythos forward, not only on TV but

could feed back in to the comics themselves. That if anything was the success of a show which from the perspective of Warner Brothers was playing with a character that had lost any great value on the screen following the disastrous final season of Lois & Clark and even worse efforts to franchise Superboy in the 80s. For all its success, the producers never achieved their aim of introducing the young Bruce Wayne into the mix, Batman was one character a decade ago that you couldn’t play with. It’s an interesting what if, would Nolan have been less inclined to reboot the Bat if he’d been a regular on the small screen? Instead we got Green Arrow, one character the CW feels worth

his own spin off franchise, rebooted of course. If our favourite spandex clad heroes waver on

the small screen, we’ll politely close the door on the ongoing farrago that is the The Fantastic Four on screen, whether small or silver, and the recently anticipated Wonder Woman which departed before the budget for the invisible jet even needed to be found. And consider that one of the most successful tv adaptations of a comic character, if not in terms of run, then certainly in terms of entering the public conscious was Batman. Between 1966 and ‘68 Adam West and Burt Ward’s iconic take on the dynamic duo worked because it for once didn’t take itself seriously. Batman’s request to not take his usual seat, but one at the back as he was in the restaurant incognito remains one of TV’s greatest gags, and let’s face it, without the modern costume and FX technology available to productions today, most Golden era super heroes did look frankly ridiculous.

Batman’s camp take on the genre may have been accurate, and has rung true on continuous re-runs, it was great fun for the kids, but wears out its welcome fairly rapidly and in the long term destroyed pretty much any attempt for comic heroes to be taken seriously, until Tim Burton gave Bruce his dark soul back, and Bruce Timm gave us one of the best genre series in

1992’s Batman: The Animated Series. Extending the feature films dark tones, and combined with Timm’s unique visual style, animation proved it was not just for the kids. The spinoff featuring the Justice League really cracked the team superhero dynamic like no other show has managed to do before and since, and it creatively animation is still proving to throw up some of the most interesting takes on genre franchises, and while not comicbook originated the Star Wars: Clone Wars series and Disney’s animated Tron haven proven visually dynamic and better written than their big screen siblings. Kudos must be given to the fabulous, though short lived The Tick. If nothing else this 1994 animated series showed that while superheroes could still be played for laughs, they were never going to be the cheap gags of the 60s Batman.

So if the superheroes have struggled to find serious recognition with TV audiences, the same can’t be said of alternate comic genres from horror, through thriller to the funnies. Real success stories were the seven year run of Tales from the Crypt, which ran with a who’s who of the great and good of Hollywood’s directorial talent and served as a rich homage to the original EC Comics. Given the love of all things undead, EC could well have a few graves disinterred as the studio execs look for likely putrefying corpses to pick over

For every Walking Dead, there is unfortunately going to be a Locke & Key. In today’s cutthroat TV landscape, going to pilot is no guarantee of

ever airing and even then, the Sword of Damocles that is the ratings hangs ominously low

for ‘new’ ideas. On the complete flip side it is hard not to admit to falling for with a certain teenage witch, the hot older aunts and a sarcastic cat in the 90’s. Despite popping out of the Archie Comics stable, Sabrina the Teenage Witch exceeded all expectations running like a teen Bewitched and pretty much throwing out any and all reference to its source material. Like the 70s Hulk, this was a series that succeeded due to casting, one generations Bill Bixby was another’s Melissa Joan Hart.

Given TV’s love of the procedural crime thriller it is surprising that more of the past decade’s hard boiled comic series haven’t made the move to the smaller screen. Throwing out its comic-book origins may not have been the best move for 2010’s Human Target, as fan’s were disappointed to lose out on Vertigo’s psychologically intense, master-of-disguise stories and audiences soon followed. Fingers crossed then that Brian Azzarello’s fantastic 100 Bullets gets a better treatment, and with the Dark Knight screenwriter David S. Goyer attached there is high hope this could add weight to the value of future comic book adaptations. And there are many, which does mean for every Walking Dead, there is unfortunately going to be a Locke & Key. In today’s cutthroat TV landscape, going to pilot is no guarantee of ever airing, and even

then the Sword of Damocles that is the ratings hangs ominously low.

Showtime has its adult sights set on crime, developing Image comic’s, Chew, a cannibalistic procedural which certainly distinguishes from the pack, and Oni Press’ The Damned, where mob war meets demons, courtesy of X-Men/Watchmen screenwriter David Hayter. Both interesting sells.

Tipped to at least make our screen in some form though is Brian Michael Bendis’ Alias, in preproduction as AKA Jessica Jones, the adaptation is in the capable hands of Dexter screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg. Jones is a dark, complex character, and although that may not play quite so well on the networks there is no arguing over the popularity of presenting strong female leads in action driven vehicles. It is surprising to see ABC consider such a project, but recent success with Once Upon a Time, suggests it may just happen. Certainly the big networks are not averse to developing portfolios of more mainstay comic book characters. ABC is developing Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger with a more family oriented audience in mind, alongside Mockingbird. Her comic history tying her to SHIELD, and husband Hawkeye, makes this a very interesting concept, a family friendly series that leads younger viewers into Joss Whedon’s agents of SHIELD series