The Great Debate - Graphic Novel vs. Comic Book Movies

By: Alex Susse

Posted: 11/9/09

I've had more than my fair share of fights over the difference between movies made of graphic novels and movies made of comic books. Namely, movies made of comic books typically suck after the first two. Superman, Batman (the Christopher Nolan series not included, since it started over from the beginning), Spiderman, X-Men, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Hell, with The Punisher, they didn't even get one good movie out of the franchise, much less two. Honestly, I'm just hoping that Iron Man stops at 2, and that the Iron Man 3 that I saw on IMDB will be cancelled- it would pain me to see the fantastic works of Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. sullied by a crappy movie (Daredevil and The Shaggy Dog respectively not withstanding). Too many times have I gone to the movie theater simply because I'm inexorably linked to anything comic book (or, for that matter, video game) related only to be let down by shameless fan service deviating from the actual content of the film.

To make this argument, I need to explain where I draw the line between comic books and graphic novels. A comic book is a series of 20-something page books that typically only cover an arc if you put a number of them together. The series is meant to go onto different arcs and continue until its run its course (or the writer gets bored of it, whichever comes first). A graphic novel, on the other hand, is written as a self-contained story. Whether or not it's broken up into separate books after the fact or continued later due to demand is besides the point- the initial lifespan of the characters starts and ends within a single story. One major arc- that's all.

The difference between a comic book adaptation (CBA) and a graphic novel adaptation (GNA) is that with a CBA there's SO much to cover. Odds are that by the time a script is written, the comic book has been around for decades. This presents itself as both a good and bad thing. On one hand, the screenwriter tasked with such a large project has a wealth of material to draw from. Hundreds of story arcs amongst thousands of issues means that there's very little limit to what a screenwriter could choose to adapt. On the other hand, hundreds of story arcs amongst thousands of issues also mean that a screenwriter is bound to upset someone or get something wrong. Either a script won't cover everything that a certain group of people wanted to see, or it'll cover one part of a story and leave other parts out, or it'll try to cover so much of the comic's history that it won't end up doing justice to any particular part. Making a movie out of any story with such a long history is bound to upset at least a few die-hard fans. After a while, a sequel is made just because there's more material, without any mind being paid to the quality of the material. Eventually the well runs dry, and you end up with Spiderman 3.

There will always be people claiming that the original was better, but on the whole there seems to be a feeling that GNAs will generally have more substance than CBAs. I believe this is due in part to the tone that one usually finds in a graphic novel. Comic books, at least the ones which have been around for a long time and are thus candidates for becoming movies, tend to be lighter. For some reason, the graphic novels that are made into movies are richer and contain far more developed characters. Graphic novels like Sin City and Watchmen are fantastic in nature, much like the worlds of Superman and Spiderman, but the characters are more brooding and dark. The Batman series is the only one which seems to bridge the gap, but even then this is only done through a graphic novel about the caped crusader called The Dark Knight Returns. Funny enough, The Dark Knight Returns was used as an artistic source for the 1989 Batman film starring Michael Keaton. The book is sinister and sanguine, which strikes me as sort of funny considering the colorful, almost playful lighting of the film.

Ultimately, the transition from graphic novel to movie tends to be smoother than from comic book to movie. V for Vendetta, Pesepolis, From Hell, 30 Days of Night, Wanted, American Splendor, 300 (okay, they can't all be winners, granted), and I'd already mentioned Sin City and Watchmen. Even so, there are a number of GNAs that aren't even acknowledged as graphic novels. Did you know that A History of Violence, Road to Perdition, Surrogates, and Ghost World were all graphic novels? Now, I'm not saying that ever graphic novel that becomes a movie is going to be great (I mentioned 300, right?), and the same is true of comic books. Iron Man, Superman, Spiderman, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, X-Men and X-Men 2, Hellboy - these are all damned fine movies, every one of them based on comic books. The point isn't that graphic novels always make better movies, but that they don't encourage writers to hold off on delivering good material in lieu of a chance to beat any dead horses (I mentioned Spiderman 3, right?), and that ends up being better for the fans.