At Den of Geek, James Hunt casts an eye over the field of licensed comics, and decides that, well, most of them aren’t very good:
One of the first things you can be guaranteed to read when someone brings an existing property to comics is a statement along the lines of “Well, of course, since we have no budget restrictions, we can do anything we want, as long as it can be drawn!” A fair enough statement, yes, but on closer inspection, what does it really mean?
In the case of IDW’s comic-based “Season Six” of Angel, it means taking Los Angeles to hell and having Angel fight a ludicrous number of massively-proportioned demons every issue – something that makes the series almost impossible to take seriously. After all, the Angel show we remember featured a small number of demons, almost always human-like in appearance. It was absolutely a budget restriction, but one that kept the show grounded in believability, as much as a show about a vampire detective could be.
With this new freedom to depict demons of all shapes and sized, the reality constructed over five years of the TV show has been utterly discarded in favour of bigger, better things… that don’t remotely match what the viewers of Angel remember. The solution to this one is simple – let the TV show that you’re adapting inform the look of the comic, and stick religiously to that. Any time you’re thinking “wow, we could never have done this on TV!” that’s a sign that you shouldn’t be doing it.
In addition to “no budget syndrome,” Hunt considers the absence of actors, and “canonocity.”
April 8th, 2008 at 10:05 am
I think that I love the Angel comic precisely because Joss can do what he never could on TV. Never mind that in season four of the show LA has the sun blocked for a week and all sorts of things happen that were not in the least believable or grounded (and that were not done as well as the comic is doing them).
Which isn’t to say that he doesn’t raise a few good points. But I am reading three TV shows reborn as comics – Buffy, Angel and Gargoyles – and all three routinely entertain me more than most other books on the market. Yes, that’s a tribute to Joss Whedon and to Gargoyles writer Greg Weisman. But it tells me that a product is as good or as bad as its writer.
April 8th, 2008 at 10:58 am
I can’t say anything about Angel or his ilk (never watched the shows or read the comics), but the counterpoint to that argument would be that some licensed comics not only do justice to the original property, but even stand on part with much of the source material (the latest IDW Silent Hill mini, two issues in, is so far hitting that mark).
April 8th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
As the co-plotter and scripter of ANGEL:AFTER THE FALL, I hereby declare that that article isn’t canon. Sad but true.
April 8th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
A recent interview with a Doctor Who comic writer (who also works on the show) touched on this. He mentioned that he did some things that were outside the show’s budget, but in other places he restricted himself to keep from getting too far away from what the show is like. I like that idea, that the writer picks a balance between ‘sky’s the limit’ and consistency with the show.
April 8th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Advantage: LYNCH!
April 8th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Heh, maybe the reason we never saw that kind of stuff on the TV show, aside from the budget, was because LA WAS NEVER SWALLOWED UP WHOLE BY HELL BEFORE? Just a hunch, but if Hell took over a city and giant dragons were flying around it… well, giant demons aren’t exactly out of the norm.
“One that kept the show grounded in believability, as much as a show about a vampire detective could be.”
Such as Angel turning into a puppet…
April 8th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
IIRC, something similar WAS planned for Season 6 if the show had been renewed, but I think it was siginifcantly less expensive. Angel and crew would get knocked into a hell dimenson and have to fight their way back home.
April 8th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Jason wins. If you’re not going to take advantage of the benefits of the comic book medium, then why bother telling a story as a comic book in the first place? Likewise, if you’re not going to give your audience what they enjoyed about these characters in their non-comic book versions, then why should that audience buy the comic books about them?
It is a balance, but unfortunately, something I see with writers in most media is that they are, to a large and literal extent, imbalanced in their storytelling, which is why Joss Whedon told decent stories in TV and movies, but has been utterly mediocre in comics so far.
April 8th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
He has (minor) points on 1 and 2, but 3 is Just Wrong. Canonicity is the Bane of Geekdom, and needs to be abused even further.
April 8th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
He has (minor) points on 1 and 2, but 3 is Just Wrong. Canonicity is the Bane of Geekdom, and needs to be abused and stretched out of shape even further.
April 9th, 2008 at 5:58 am
It’s bit of a catch-22 situation. If you diverge too much from the source, you risk alienating the readers/viewers and missing the point but if you stick too closely to the source, if becomes nothing more than an exercise in reproducing screen grabs in pencil and ink.
I’ve read some X-Files comics which got the tone of the early shows dead right and the stories were done-in-one adventures. Successul but ultimately not something that could hold my interest for an extended run. Why bother with the comic when I could have the real thing? (I know it’s slightly different with the Whedeonverse as the shows are cancelled, but still… )
January 17th, 2011 at 12:20 pm
I ran into this page mistakenly, surprisingly, this is a great website. The site owner has done a great job writing/collecting articles to post, the info here is really insightful. You just secured yourself a guarenteed reader.