{"id":34001,"date":"2012-05-04T12:00:16","date_gmt":"2012-05-04T19:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/?p=34001"},"modified":"2012-09-06T13:26:03","modified_gmt":"2012-09-06T20:26:03","slug":"roundtable-comics-that-need-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/roundtable-comics-that-need-movies\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Roundtable: Comic Book Characters Who Still Need Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>These days, it feels like pretty much every comic book ever written has been turned into a mega-budget Hollywood summer tentpole movie, doesn&#8217;t it? Surprisingly, that&#8217;s not the case. For this week&#8217;s Roundtable, we single out some comics yet to receive the feature film treatment. Which of these do you think has the potential to be the next &#8216;The Avengers&#8217;, and which will probably end up more like the miserable &#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/4367\/greenlantern.html\">Green Lantern<\/a>&#8216;?<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Mike Attebery<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>With the number of comic book movies coming out each year, it&#8217;s getting harder and harder to come up with a comic I enjoyed that hasn&#8217;t been turned into a movie. The closest I think of is &#8216;The Flash&#8217;, and frankly, after seeing the <a href=https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0098798\/>dreadful TV show<\/a> that ran from 1990-1991, I&#8217;m not even sure that would be a good idea. Of course, visual effects have improved, and the reputation of comic book entertainment in general has grown over the past 22 years (holy hell&#8230; it&#8217;s been that long?!!), so maybe it would work. It couldn&#8217;t get any worse than this monstrosity, right? <\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Fa9b7ZQ3Zkw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" gesture=\"media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">M. Enois Duarte<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As a kid, I was a big fan of &#8216;Ghost Rider&#8217; (the first, original series run) and Red Skull, and we&#8217;ve now seen both characters used in movies. Unfortunately, the Johnny Blaze films are a complete travesty. Besides them, I loved Gambit and Deadpool. Of those two, the adventures of Deadpool would be absolutely awesome to watch on the big screen. Granted, both characters were seen in the &#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/1503\/xmenoriginswolverine.html\">Wolverine<\/a>&#8216; movie, but that doesn&#8217;t count because their roles were completely underutilized, near inconsequential and very unlike their comic depictions. Deadpool deserves \u2013 nay, <em>needs<\/em> \u2013 his own dedicated film.<\/p>\n<p>Pick any number of his comics and you have something ready-made for a movie. If not, then have him join a team where he has a bigger role. Since so many characters in the &#8216;X-Men&#8217; universe have already been killed off thanks to &#8216;<a href=\"https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/2110\/xmenlaststand_se.html\">X-Men 3<\/a>&#8216;, maybe he can be recruited by Wolverine for the Weapon X Project. The new team can have a showdown with Apocalypse or perhaps do battle with S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and Agent Zero. Either way, I&#8217;d love to see a Deadpool movie.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Adam Tyner (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dvdtalk.com\/reviews\/bio.php?ID=1&#038;reviewID=38127\">DVDTalk<\/a>)<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The title page to Paul Grist&#8217;s &#8216;Mud Man&#8217; #1 tells readers that they&#8217;ve just been introduced to <em>&#8220;your new favourite superhero comic,&#8221;<\/em> and&#8230; well, that&#8217;s not far off. There&#8217;s not a whole lot on the shelves like &#8216;Mud Man&#8217; these days. Its clean, stylized artwork and wide-eyed, teenaged superheroics harken back to the Lee\/Ditko days on &#8216;Amazing Spider-Man&#8217;. It&#8217;s a reminder of just how much of a blast comics can be, and I&#8217;d love to see something that infectiously fun be adapted rather than yet another grim, gritty, nothing-will-ever-be-the-same angst-fest. Besides, who wouldn&#8217;t pay $8 to see an accidental superhero whose body sporadically turns into mud?<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Steven Cohen<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;The Lord of Dreams learns that one must change or die, and makes his decision.&#8221;<\/em> While deceptively simple, that one sentence summary by series creator Neil Gaiman could not be more appropriate. A sprawling epic of dark fantasy, &#8216;The Sandman&#8217; remains one of my favorite comic books. In 75 issues, the author is able to effortlessly weave a multi-cultural mishmash of otherwise discordant mythologies and legends into a cohesive whole, creating a powerful narrative about storytelling, progress and, of course, dreams. Deeply layered and intricately plotted, the series proves that comics can be literature too, and that poetry can come in all shapes and sizes \u2013 even funny little balloons floating above characters&#8217; heads.<\/p>\n<p>While there have been several attempts at a big screen version in the past, so far the series has evaded Hollywood&#8217;s grubby hands. I honestly can&#8217;t say that I&#8217;m terribly disappointed, since a movie adaptation would likely have to be simplified to such a degree that the end product would bear little resemblance to Gaiman&#8217;s nuanced masterwork. Most recently, an HBO series has been rumored, and if done right (<a href=https:\/\/bluray.highdefdigest.com\/5165\/game_thrones_s1.html>&#8216;Game of Thrones&#8217;<\/a> style), I can actually see it working. For the time being, though, it would seem that any potential adaptation will have to remain a faraway glint floating endlessly in The Dreaming.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Josh Zyber<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Even though I chose this week&#8217;s topic, I&#8217;m at something of a disadvantage here. I wasn&#8217;t much into comic books as a kid, and superhero comics least of all. Most of the few comics I read have either already been turned into movies, or were based on film properties in the first place. However, one title that might qualify here is &#8216;Groo the Wanderer&#8217;, Sergio Aragones&#8217; parody of &#8216;Conan the Barbarian&#8217; and other sword &#038; sandal adventure stories. <\/p>\n<p>The title character is a total buffoon who travels the land in search of odd jobs and mercenary work. His only skill is that he&#8217;s an expert swordsman, who delights at the chance to leap into battle crying his catchphrase, <em>&#8220;Now Groo does what Groo does best!&#8221;<\/em> Yet his combination of incredible fighting skill and equally incredible stupidity means that he&#8217;s liable to forget which side he&#8217;s fighting for and just slaughter everyone all around him, which happens frequently.<\/p>\n<p>I haven&#8217;t read it in ages, but I remember the comic being really funny. How would it fare as a movie? In the right hands, it could be very entertaining. Unfortunately, humorous comics have a lousy track record of being adapted into movies. In the wrong hands, this could be the next &#8216;Howard the Duck&#8217;. Perhaps it&#8217;s best that Hollywood hasn&#8217;t gotten its grubby hands on this one yet.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>Now it&#8217;s your turn to tell us in the Comments about which comic book characters you&#8217;d like to see make the transition to the big screen.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>These days, it feels like pretty much every comic book ever written has been turned into a mega-budget Hollywood summer tentpole movie, doesn&#8217;t it? Surprisingly, that&#8217;s not the case. For this week&#8217;s Roundtable, we single out some comics yet to receive the feature film treatment. Which of these do you think has the potential to&#8230;<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_excerpt -->","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":34031,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132],"tags":[982,5057,2910,5058,2081,5054,551],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34001"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34001"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40585,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34001\/revisions\/40585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}