Someone in our comments board yesterday asked for clarification if we were discussing comic book adaptations or superhero comic adaptations? It’s an important distinction, and one I’ve let you slide on, Josh.
Until now.
When we kicked around this idea, your thesis, as I remember, was simply “I hate comic book movies, let’s talk about that.” So did you mean strictly superheroes, or does your disdain also cover non-superhero comic and graphic novel adaptations, too – like American Splendor, Ghost World, Persepolis, The Road to Perdition? What about comic strips that have transitioned to screen – like my beloved Peanuts, or the often-wickedly funny The Boondocks? Does everything touched by comic books get thumbs down? What about The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay? That one’s all about men in tights (or rather, the men who draw the men in tights), and it didn’t win the Pulitzer for nothing.
I suspect this will be nonstarter argument – because, really, how could you blanketly write off a movie just for the manner in which its source material was printed – but I figured it was worth mentioning.
This article appears in July 4 • 2008.
