Comic Book movies piss me off.
This article in a local blog got me going on this. First of all, Elbowroom's assessment of the Cinti comic book scene seems pretty good. There were the sleazy old stores here 20 - 30 years ago with gross clerks and the ancient porno in the back room, but they are all gone now (I think).
I have not been reading comics much for almost 10 years now, since my eyesight started to tank, and a lot can happen in the comic book industry in 10 years.....
In my prime, I was reading about 10 - 15 titles a week and (mostly) keeping track of the plotlines in all of them. Very few were one book stories, most were monthly, and that is what comic books are about.
Comic Books Are A Serialized Story Format.
So the big blockbuster movies are just wrong. While a title like The Watchmen might lend itself to a movie format because it is a closed ended story, the greatness of the characters like Batman, Spiderman and The X-Men is that they are living, open ended characters. they grow and change over time and relationships and situations blossom, mature and end over time.
The X-Men movies are particularly jarring to a person who has been reading the story for 30 some years when all the characters are there but they are all the wrong ages. The relationships and dynamics of the story are thrown out the window so Hollywood can grab a few moments, rearrange them and glob out a movie they can make a quick buck on. Granted, Stan Lee has a vested interest in making his money quick.
Of course, the only reason the movies are worth a pooh, nowadays, is because the tech finally exists to pull 'em off. It takes a major studio budget to pay for all the effects and that is why we are not seeing the stories being told where they should be, on television. Still, the original Babylon V did quite well with a low budget and FX are better and cheaper now than they were then.
Television, of course has a reputation for being cheap and not being as serious or mature as the movies but, hey, comics have the same bad rap, so, what the hell ?
Ultimately, comics also lend themselves to animation much more than "real" "live" mediums and other cultures (Asian, particularly) are cool with this but Americans are too jaded and require "realism" that puts impossible characters like the Batman in stupid body armour instead of the silky thin costume he is supposed to wear.
I always thought the style of Peter Chung (Aeon Flux, Phantom 2040) would translate well to 3D super hero animation. Japanese Anime has embraced creative, non-realistic animation for a long time. Mainframe's War Planet series is a good example of what can be done and on the low budget and tight schedule that television requires.