Late one night last June I watched PBS talk show host Charlie Rose sitting across from director Ang Lee, their table surrounded by an ominous black void. As usual, Rose’s direct gaze and the way his voice gives measured weight to each word signaled the deep importance of the topic at hand. Rose looked at Lee and asked, “Why is the Hulk green?”
With so many recent movies based on comic books, I find it interesting to see the mainstream media attempting to grapple with a subject that seems so familiar to those of us in the community of comics professionals and aficionados. Some might call this community a subculture, but I contend that there is a lot more knowledge and appreciation of comics in the general population than conventional wisdom – and opinion makers in the media – acknowledges. So I find it oddly gratifying to see The New York Times run an editorial entitled “Incredible Hulk of a Budget” (June 30, 2003) or to do a complimentary editorial about the Spider-Man movie (May 7, 2002). It’s fun seeing David Letterman dressing people up as Spider-Man, the Hulk, and even Daredevil and Nightcrawler, for comedy bits that seem affectionate rather than demeaning. And slowly but surely there is increasing critical respect for comics, not just alternatives but mainstream genre work as well, as in Entertainment Weekly‘s new irregular column of comics reviews.
But still, serious treatment of mainstream comics is the exception rather than the rule. Charlie Rose’s cluelessness on the subject is a rather benign and amusing variation of the phenomenon. (Could it be that the Hulk is green because he’s a monster and it helps make him look inhuman and scary?) Now that many journalists and critics are writing about the recent superhero movies, we can see everything from ignorance about mainstream comics to condescension to them to outright contempt and hostility.
Let me turn to another anecdote to help make my point. Months ago I was at the American Museum of the Moving Image in New York City for a screening of a film of the opera The Tales of Hoffmann that was introduced by George Romero, director of Night of the Living Dead. Romero was being honored by the museum with a retrospective of his work, and Hoffmann, a fantasy film with sorcerers and a dancing robot, was one of his major influences. And I am sitting in the audience thinking: here is a guy who directs movies about zombies who gets more critical respect and acclaim than top creators in mainstream comics.
Over forty years ago, Westerns, film noir, screwball comedies, thrillers and other movie genres were not taken seriously, either by movie critics or by the film industry itself, and were regarded as empty-headed mass entertainments. (If you look back at the history of the Academy Awards and wonder why, say, John Ford’s The Searchers did not win Best Picture – or even get nominated – that’s why. Who takes Westerns seriously?) It took the new auteurist school of critics, first arising in France in the 1950s (like Francois Truffaut) and then in the 1960s in the United States (such as critic Andrew Sarris) who demonstrated that these popular entertainment genres were frameworks within which talented directors created enduring works of art. And thus in the 21st century even George Romero’s low-budget horror films can be recognized as personal artistic statements. (An article in the July 6, 2003 New York Times refers to “the spookily revitalized ghouls in the classic horror film Night of the Living Dead who were allegedly transformed by radiation from a Venus space probe, an emblem of the anxieties of the ’60s.”)
The same critical revolution hasn’t happened with comics in America. Oh, alternative comics are getting increasing respect, especially if they tie in to a Big Subject (the Holocaust, Bosnia, etc.). But mainstream comics, which deal in genres like fantasy, horror, science fiction, and, of course, superheroes, still tend to be regarded as junk.
Are any of you really surprised that The New York Times titled its review of the first X-Men movie “Pow! Misfit Heroes to the Rescue! Zap!”? The real surprise is that most articles I’ve read about this year’s comics-based movies don’t resort to the usual 1960s Batman TV show sound effects.
I am struck by the way that some reviewers and journalists feel free to make pronouncements on comics without having done sufficient research on the subject. Roger Ebert acknowledges having once been a Marvel Comics reader and seems to retain a genuine fondness for Spider-Man. However well-intentioned, Ebert seems to have forgotten a lot about them. He begins his Hulk movie review by stating that “The Hulk is rare among Marvel superheroes in that his powers are a curse, not an advantage … It is about the anguish of having powers you did not seek and do not desire.” And how does this make the Hulk different from the Fantastic Four’s Thing, trapped in a grotesque body, who predated the Hulk, or the persecuted X-Men, or even Spider-Man, who is regularly tempted to renounce his costumed career and the use of his powers?
In his New Yorker profile of Ang Lee (June 30, 2003), drama critic John Lahr writes that “in his comic-book incarnation, the Hulk had little in the way of motivation. Unlike other superheroes, who are agents for good, the Hulk was conceived as a mutant. Part Gargantua and part Green Man … he simply raged when provoked, smashing his world to smithereens.” Just how many things in these few lines are wrong? Let us leave aside the variant personalities that Peter David and other writers gave different comics incarnations of the Hulk. Even Stan Lee’s traditional version of the Hulk is more complex than simply a raging beast: for example, he is paradoxically driven by a need for peace of mind, forever longing for a solitude that his military pursuers refuse to grant him. Are all other superheroes forces for good? The Sub-Mariner, who effectively began as a one-man terrorist army, predated the Hulk by over two decades. What does Lahr mean that the Hulk was conceived as a “mutant”? Even apart from the question of whether the Hulk fits that definition, isn’t Lahr aware that the X-Men were “conceived as mutants”? And aren’t they forces for good?
I suspect that Lahr is actually assuming that the Lou Ferrigno TV version of the Hulk is the same as the comics version. I will give Lahr this, however: I like his comparison of the Hulk to the “Green Man” archetype of folklore, the man of nature, which lies behind such diverse characters as Robin Hood and Swamp Thing. No wonder the movie ends up with Banner in the green world of a rain forest. (So there really is a profound answer to the question of why the Hulk is green, even if neither Charlie Rose nor Ang Lee figured it out.)
If someone writing about a comics-based movie does not do research into the comics, it should be no surprise that they treat comics creators are nonpersons. In his New Yorker article Lahr refers to “the Hulk’s creators, Marvel Comics.” Now how could there be a more perfect expression of the work for hire theory of artistic creation? The company created the character, not any mere individuals. By the same logic, next time that Lahr reviews Hamlet, I should expect him to state that it was created by the Globe Theatre company.
If the creators of the comics are nonpersons, then by extension, there is the assumption that any intellectual substance in a film based on comics must be the work of the filmmakers. Lahr goes on to write in The New Yorker that “Onscreen. . .Lee has given the Hulk psychological depth; he has reimagined the Hulk’s history as part of the universal struggle between patriarchy, repression and desire, which Lee has spent much of his career exploring.” And so Ang Lee has, but, of course, Banner/Hulk’s struggle between repression and desire was inspired by Stan Lee’s acknowledged source for the character, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and every writer of the Hulk comic has dealt with the theme.
As for the patriarchy theme, The New York Times‘s Elvis Mitchell, who seems to have considerably more knowledge of comics than most major film critics, states that Banner’s father issues derive from “the grim melodramatic scenes of the character’s childhood, introduced by the writer Peter David in the late 1980s” (June 22, 2003). In Entertainment Weekly (June 27-July 4, 2003), Jeff Jensen even points to a specific story in which, he says, Peter established Banner’s childhood horrors. And they are both wrong. It’s good to see Peter’s contributions to the Hulk mythos acknowledged in major publications (more than Marvel or Universal will do), and he certainly did more with Banner’s Oedipal traumas, but he did not invent Banner’s dysfunctional childhood. That was the work of Bill Mantlo in Incredible Hulk #312 (October, 1985), and perhaps Mantlo’s most significant contribution to Marvel lore.
Does assigning the proper credit matter? Let’s put it this way: I suspect Mitchell and Jensen might have been embarrassed to have made a similar mistake about film history. Perhaps they should be excused since Mantlo’s story is relatively obscure (though the History Channel’s recent documentary showed a panel from it without mentioning his name) and there are so few sources on comics history (though I mention it prominently in MY book). But that’s really the point: there should be more books and articles written about comics history!
Prejudices against comics also extend to their audience, real or perceived. It has been observed that various old-time Hollywood movie directors resisted being treated as artists by the new school of film critics and historians that rose in the 1960s. Perhaps that is because the conventional wisdom of their time was that the directors’ genre films were no more than well-crafted entertainments. And now one can see something of the same mindset at work. One of the producers of the Hulk movie, Gale Anne Hurd “jests” in The New York Times (June 16, 2003) that she has spent her career making fantasy adventure films, due to “arrested development.” It’s too bad that she has to feel she has to make a self-deprecatory joke about her life’s work, as if to apologize for it, which the rest of the article makes clear she takes seriously indeed. But it’s understandable considering the way people condescend to the genres she works in.Far worse is when insecure apology turns to offhanded contempt. It is clear from his interviews that Ang Lee takes the Hulk seriously, but nonetheless, referring to his sons in The New York Times (June 22, 2003), “‘They’re comic book geeks,’ Mr. Lee says, with an inflection that’s the aural version of a shrug.” Can Lee be unaware that he has just insulted his sons before The New York Times‘ vast readership, likening them to circus performers who bite the heads off chickens? Surely people at comics companies would not insult their audience this way. Here, for example, from last year (May 7, 2002) in the Times: “‘The community of Marvel Comics geeks, from the baby boomers to the newcomers, is a pretty huge community,’ said Avi Arad, president of Marvel Studios.” Hmm. And here I thought the phrase “Marvel zombie” was bad.If the audience is made up of “geeks,” then what they are reading or watching must be garbage. Kenneth Turan of The Los Angeles Times (May 2, 2003) actually likes the second X-Men movie, but says, “It’s the kind of superhero movie we want if we have to have superhero movies at all.” In his own May 2 review in the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert praises X2 with a not so faint damn – “I had a good time. Dumb, but good.” – and claims it is “made for (and possibly by) those with short attention spans,” a nasty knock at the filmmakers as well as their audience. Ebert also claims that X2 is true to the comics in its use of “perfunctory dialogue.” I’ve never heard, say, Roy Thomas’s, Chris Claremont’s, or Grant Morrison’s X-Men dialogue described as “perfunctory” before.
It may be that some reviewers are so put off by the outer trappings of the superhero genre – the costumes, the powers – that they do not expect the movies to have any value and therefore do not try to find any. Ebert contends that X2 is “not even trying to develop a story arc.” What, did he miss the overall plotline about Stryker’s attempt to turn the government against mutants and then wipe them all out? Or the character arcs such as Wolverine’s search for his past, Jean’s attempts to control her expanding powers, or Pyro’s defection from Xavier to Magneto? In his Chicago Sun-Times review of the Daredevil movie, Ebert seems bewildered by the fact that Daredevil is Catholic and belittles it, though this may simply be a measure of the film’s inability to dramatize Frank Miller’s themes of Catholic idealism, guilt, repression and redemption from the comics.
Ebert quite reasonably wonders how the movie’s Daredevil executes all those superhuman leaps. On the Ebert & Roeper TV show, fellow critic Richard Roeper argued that it was simple: Daredevil can leap great heights because his sense of touch is superhumanly sensitive. (Now what possible sense does that make?) In his Chicago Sun-Times review (Feb. 14, 2003), though, Ebert says that the explanation did not really matter, then adding a sneer at comics readers: “Comics fans, however, study the mythology and methodology with the intensity of academics. It is reassuring, in this world of inexplicabilities, to master a limited subject within a self-contained universe. Understand, truly understand, why Daredevil defies gravity, and the location of the missing matter making up 80 percent of the universe can wait for another day.” And perhaps decades ago, someone might have used a similar tactic to castigate Ebert for studying the history of Hollywood studio films.
In fact, in his reviews of superhero movies, Ebert continually wonders about silly things, the very sin he ascribes to comics fans. Why, he seems puzzled, is Wolverine a more prominent character in the movies than Cyclops or Pyro, when they are more powerful? (Because he has such a dramatic personality? Because slashing with claws – this film’s equivalent of Errol Flynn dueling with a sword – is more viscerally exciting to audiences?) “What would happen if Pyro and Iceman went head to head? I visualize the two of them in a pool of hot water.” I think we’re verging on “Who’s stronger, Thor or the Hulk?” territory here, but wait: there’s more. Ebert is puzzled by the X-Men’s sex lives. “How inconvenient if during sex your partner was accidentally teleported, frozen, slashed, etc. Does Cyclops wear his dark glasses to bed?” (And by the way, the real answer about Daredevil’s leaps, as Elvis Mitchell notes in his New York Times review, which does not condescend, is that Daredevil simply can’t move about like Spider-Man and the film made a mistake.)
Then there are the reviewers who seem to be arguing that they like movies based on mainstream comics, as long as they stay entertainingly trivial and do not dare aspire to any serious concerns. In his New York Times review of the Hulk movie A. O. Scott commends Ang Lee and company “for trying to push the musclebound superhero genre in new directions,” but argues that “They seem at once to be taking the material too seriously and condescending to it” leading to “mythomaniacal pretension.” Lisa Schwarzbaum in Entertainment Weekly (June 27-July 4, 2003) complains that Ang Lee “anesthetizes the Marvel comics mutant with a mopey psychological back story that leaves little unanalyzed space for fun. . . a big-budget comic-book adaptation has rarely felt so humorless and intellectually defensive about its own pulpy roots.” Schwarzbaum says she’s “ready for some dumb big fun” and doesn’t get it.
Similarly, writing about the new Charlie’s Angels movie in Time (July 7, 2003), critic Richard Schickel complains that “after The Matrix Reloaded and The Hulk. there’s something refreshing about this movie’s complete lack of intellectual pretense. No Freudian issues are explored. No reference is made to any philosophical systems, fashionable or not.” Note the loaded word: any attempt to give this kind of movie any intellectual depth is “pretense.” Similarly, on CBS Sunday Morning (July 5, 2003) critic John Leonard noted that while he sees Terminator 3 as a “mess,” he gave it credit for not being a “pretentious mess” like the Hulk movie.
Each one of these critics seems to be asking, why can’t these superhero movies be stupid like they’re supposed to be?
And then there is outright hostility to mainstream comics material. Frank Rich, a media critic for The New York Times, positively gloats in his June 29 column, “Harry Crushes the Hulk,” that the first day sales of 100 million for the fifth Harry Potter book far surpassed the entire 62 million brought in by the Hulk movie on its opening weekend.
“As Harry readers suffer no shortage of attention spans” – another jab that people who like comics movies suffer from ADD – “so they still love fantasy that does not come equipped with computer-generated special effects.” (One could point out that the comic books in which the Hulk has appeared for forty-one years don’t have CGI, but the Harry Potter movies have plenty of them.) Rich points out that Harry Potter’s initial popularity came about through word of mouth, and that even this year’s massive publicity for the book reflects “genuine demand for the next installment of Harry’s tale,” contrasting it with Universal’s marketing budget for the Hulk movie. Is it not possible, Mr. Rich, that much of the interest in the Hulk movie – or the Spider-Man and X-Men movies – came about because these characters have been published in comics for forty years, and generations of readers have discovered and developed affection for these characters without benefit of major media campaigns?
Rich predicts that “as you’re reading this, The Hulk, like other summer hits before it, will probably be on the skids, with a box-office falloff possibly as high as 60 percent for its second weekend, its first step to an oblivion that will end some months from now with its video or DVD being dumped in the sales bin at Wal-Mart.” Indeed, the film did have a 70 percent falloff in its second weekend, though I suspect there will be plenty of film and comics buffs buying the DVD. But can’t you sense Rich’s apparent glee in consigning the movie to “oblivion” without actually having any evidence or giving any indication that he has actually seen the movie in question. He says the Hulk movie will fail because he wants the Hulk movie to fail, because how could a movie based on a superhero comic be any good?
A particularly awful recent example of blind contempt for comics is writer Ned Martel’s review of the recent History Channel documentary, Comic Book Superheroes Unmasked (in the June 23, 2003 New York Times). Referring to the show’s middle-aged and elderly interviewees, Martel sneers that “grown men push the comic book’s importance up, up and away from reality.” To Martel comics are no more than “teenage treats.” The show did not make its case for Alan Moore’s Watchmen in Martel’s mind if he can write, “Now as ever the texts are unfailingly jingoistic and offer few plot options other than victory for truth, justice and the American way. With invincibility guaranteed,” Martel goes on, “the creators had extra brain space available to transmogrify the heroes in new and grotesque incarnations.” Wait, even apart from what he means by “grotesque incarnations” (Of Superman? Who does he mean?), is it my imagination or did Martel just imply that comics creators have rather limited brain capacity?
Not only does Martel give no indication he has bothered to look at any contemporary comics but, more damningly, he betrays no knowledge that today’s comics deal with genres other than superheroes. (He hasn’t even heard of Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus, as far as I can tell.) Judging by Martel’s reaction, the History Channel’s attempt to persuade people of the cultural value of comics failed miserably. Martel consigns all of comics not just to oblivion but to damnation: “However wearying the world may seem, the demimonde of comic books has long offered readers an enlivening freak show. Good might never seem so good, nor evil so evil, anywhere else, and one man can don a mask and some tights and protect all from peril. It’s just that simple, despite all high-flying arguments to the contrary. Ka-splat.” There’s no need to examine the evidence; Martel has made up his mind. Perhaps Martel thought Dr. Frederic Wertham, demagogic adversary of comics in the 1950s, was the hero of the documentary.Despite all of the above, there are also film critics who demonstrate their willingness and insight to recognize that comics-based fantasy films can successfully deal with serious matters. In The Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan seems to be surprised to have made this discovery: “One of the unexpected aspects of X2 is the way its concerns seem to be uncannily relevant today, starting with an opening observation that ‘sharing the world has never been humanity’s defining attribute.’ And the central theme of both the film and the comic – how relentlessly suspicious we are of those who are different – has equal resonance just now. X2 might nor be the place you’d think to look for any kind of message, but there you are.”Variety‘s lead film critic Todd McCarthy (in the June 16-22 issue) acclaims Ang Lee’s Hulk film as “this emotionally cool yet anguished tale of dual Oedipal conflicts of Greek tragedy stature.” Well, no, I wouldn’t say the Hulk movie is on the level of Sophocles, but I think it is wonderful that McCarthy does not put a limit on the artistry that a “comic book movie” can achieve. Indeed, McCarthy goes on to say that Lee and writer James Schamus “have used the Marvel comic … as a means to explore such weighty issues as the search for one’s true identity, the struggle of an everyday personality with a dark inner self, father-child legacies, repressed memories, lost love and transformative anger.” At times, McCarthy writes, the film succeeds in treating these themes in a way that is “genuinely expressive and worth taking seriously.” McCarthy sees Ang Lee’s Hulk as falling short of the genuine tragedy he finds in King Kong and concludes, “Hulk is, in the end, a noble, shrewd, skillful but still thwarted try at upgrading one of the preferred genres of the moment and of respecting the intelligence of the audience more than is the norm these days.”
Roger Ebert also admires the Hulk movie. He would probably say that it has not changed his views about other superhero movies, but I suspect that the Hulk movie has opened his eyes to the way of seeing superhero fantasy as metaphor for real psychological and social issues. In his review (June 20, 2003), Roger Ebert observes that “Ang Lee’s Hulk … is not so much about a green monster as about two wounded adult children of egomaniacs …. These two duelling oedipal conflicts [Banner’s and Betty’s] are at the heart of Hulk, and it’s touching how in many scenes we are essentially looking at damaged children …. The movie brings up issues about genetic experimentation, the misuse of scientific research and our instinctive dislike of misfits, and actually talks about them. [Ang Lee] is trying here to actually deal with the issues in the story of the Hulk ….” (And there Ebert seems to acknowledge that these themes may be present in the comics as well.)
Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times clearly not only knows a lot about comics but values the better works in the medium, whether they are in the superhero genre or not. Mitchell knows enough to criticize director/writer Mark Steven Johnson in his Daredevil movie review (February 14, 2003) for altering Daredevil’s origin and to explain credibly why the changes both matter and were mistaken. Mitchell also makes a point of paying tribute to Frank Miller as the creator of much of the source material for the movie. Mitchell’s principal complaint against the film seems to be that it treats the genuine depth of the source material in too superficial and unimaginative a fashion. “It turns the legendary Man Without Fear into something second-rate and ordinary, a fate he suffered too often in the comics until rescued with pulp elan by Mr. Miller.”
Most strikingly, Mitchell notes that “the picture lacks the wit to show the moral qualms an attorney might have over choosing a violent alternative. The movie’s simple-minded concept flattens the protagonist. How often must we note that the comic-book rendition of a character is more fully realized than the movie version?” Exactly! Mitchell goes down as something of a hero in my book just for making that point.
Film historian Neal Gabler, in an article called “American Dreams” in the May 12, 2002 New York Times, goes more deeply into the subject of superhero movies, persuasively arguing that Spider-Man‘s theme of power and responsibility extended not just to the adolescents perceived as the comics’ audience, but to adults (as shown in the story arc for Norman Osborn in the film), and, indeed, to the role of the United states in world affairs. Now, there’s one reason why the superhero is a specifically American mythic figure.
What I find even more gratifying is that Andrew Sarris, a pioneer in bringing critical attention to the film genres of previous generations, now finds himself starting to appreciate comic book fantasy as well.
In his review of the second X-Men movie, (New York Observer, May 30,2003) rather than making sweeping declarations on a subject he has not investigated, Sarris displays a winning humility on the subject, admitting he knows nothing of adventure comic books or contemporary graphic novels. To his own apparent surprise, Sarris says, “But having seen and enjoyed X2, I am now determined to catch up with X-Men the comic book, as well as Mr. Singer’s previous movie, X-Men (2000) – which is to say, in the ancient words of Jerry Lewis, ‘I liked it! I liked it!'” Interestingly, though Sarris has never read Chris Claremont’s X-Men comics or, it seems, even heard of him, he zeroes in on one of Claremont’s major contributions to the X-Men mythos, being particularly struck by the female characters: “Considering the macho fantasizing that traditionally goes on in the genre, the women make up as rich and varied an assortment of female characters – heart and mind, body and soul – as has been assembled in any movie this year.” Sarris enumerates several of the film’s plotlines that Ebert somehow missed, and when Sarris notes that “Faithful Marvel readers can explain all the subtexts better than I can,” seems to be sincerely respectful of the material, rather than condescending towards aficionados who take the genre seriously.
Sarris concludes, “Suffice it to say that I was steadily engrossed and entertained and ultimately moved by a drama that is, in the end, more human than mutant. Even if, like me, you consider yourself too serious-minded to sit through an already certified blockbuster not entirely of this world with a cryptic title like X2, give this prolonged splash of special effects a chance. It is better than its genre.”
Actually, no, it isn’t. X2 does not transcend its genre because it is good; it demonstrates the excellence of which the genre is capable. Why shouldn’t we judge a medium or a genre by the best material it can produce, or by its potential for greatness, rather than by its bad and mediocre examples? Is there a genre in literature or film or any creative medium that has not produced bad work as well as good?
Perhaps the real sign of progress is the increasing critical acclaim and acceptance for other works of adventure fantasy that are closely related to the kind of fantasy in American comics. It’s the masks and costumes, and the knowledge that a concept originated in comics, that seems to trigger the critical prejudices against comics. Look at the widespread critical acclaim and academic interest in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, whose final episode was honored with an editorial in The New York Times. Yet Buffy is a superhero series without the costumes: the frequent references on the show to Buffy as a “superhero” or as having “super powers” make clear to anyone paying attention. Although there is a growing critical backlash to The Matrix films, numerous journalists take seriously the reported philosophical underpinnings of the series. It too is a superhero series, with a hero with superhuman abilities, strong comics influences, and actual costumes (the black leather outfits, long coats, and sunglasses being the contemporary equivalents of tights, capes and masks). Note that Todd McCarthy, in reviewing The Hulk, acknowledges another fantasy adventure film, King Kong as a genuine work of tragedy!
Fantasy adventure films that use the supernatural rather than science fiction seem more likely to win critical acclaim, such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Frank Rich attacks the Hulk movie by praising the Harry Potter books, which are widely acknowledged as being for adults as well as children. Yet the Potter books and films are in fact well written variations on the heroic quest in a fantasy world. (The occasional references I see critics make linking Voldemort to Darth Vader dimly recognize this point.) I have yet to read an article that points out that Harry Potter and X-Men both concern schools that teach “misfit” students how to use their paranormal powers. (But now you have.)
With all the movies and television series based on or influenced by comics, comics have more influence on the popular imagination than before. But, as I’ve shown above, there is too little informed criticism written about mainstream comics. And that’s why I’ve accepted the invitation to do this column, which I have dubbed “Comics in Context.”
Some of you may know of my work, going back to my critiques in comics letter pages, the articles I wrote and interviews I conducted for magazines like Amazing Heroes, The Comics Journal and Comic Buyer’s Guide, and my extensive contributions to The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe and DC’s Who’s Who. More recently, I was Marvel’s archivist and wrote a coffee table book about the company’s characters for Harry N. Abrams, Marvel Universe. For the last year I have been collaborating with producer/director Constantine Valhouli on Sex, Lies and Super Heroes, an independent film about comics, which will have its West Coast premiere this month at San Diego’s Comic Con International.
What I intend to do in this column is to critique comics, both classic material and new, and adaptations of comics series into other media, from an informed historical perspective. I have researched and studied mainstream comics going back to 1935: I can trace the development and evolution of the great characters and important series over the decades, show why they are culturally significant, and identify the important work that major creators have done with them.
There’s a lot to talk about, starting with this year’s run of comics-based movies. So, here’s your invitation to come back for future installments of “Comics in Context”: I hope you’ll enjoy the ride.
-Copyright 2003 Peter Sanderson
Comments: 2 Comments
2 Responses to “Comics in Context #1: Big Dumb Fun – Comics Movies and Their Critics”Leave a Reply |
March 19th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
I’m so happy to have discovered this column, and look forward to working my way through these thoughtful, intelligent essays that so respect my favorite genre. However, at least in the first column, significant snippets of the text on the right and left hand margins are chopped off, making for frustrating and incomplete reading. I hope this will be corrected soon; I look forward to reading this piece in its entirety.
Rick
June 23rd, 2008 at 4:22 pm
You have made many valid points in this essay, but there is one fatal flaw in your logic: All of your points are in defense of comic book stories, and not of the comic book films themselves. Many, if not most, of the movies that have been made using comic books as their source material strip out all the depth that lay in said source material. And, the result is usually pretty silly.
In particular, Ebert’s statement about X2, “I had a good time. Dumb, but good.” is a perfect description of the experience. The movie was a good time. And, as action sequences go, it was very well made. But, let’s compare the story to the source, the X-men graphic novel “God Loves, Man Kills.” Virtually all of the interesting parts of the story are absent from X2. Without elements such as the comparison of religious devotion in Nightcrawler to the Reverend William Stryker, it’s little more than a fun action movie. Which is not to say I didn’t enjoy X2. But, it is, in a word, dumb. And that’s nothing compared to the first X-men which had one of the stupidest plots I’ve ever seen.
I could make similar arguments about most of the other comic book movies. Since the time you wrote this essay, there have been some really good films based on comic books, many of which completely do justice to their source material (Spider-man 2, Batman Begins, Hellboy, Iron Man, and the 2008 Incredible Hulk). But, let’s not excuse the films that talk down to all of us (Daredevil, Spider-man 3, Superman Returns) or the ones that are just plain bad (2003 Hulk).
Finally, I really think who your very well thought out criticisms should be aimed at the film makers who strip out the important parts of the characters and stories we love, as opposed to the film critics who are, rightfully, judging what’s up on the screen.