The other day I mentioned The Onion A.V. Club’s article “In the wake of Watchmen: 24 more graphic novels we’d like to see made into movies,” a list which ranged from the already in-development (Runaways) to the unlikely to ever actually happen (Cerebus) to the likely to happen but Oh-God-I-hope-they-never-even-try (The Sandman).

It’s a fine list, particularly for a sort of theoretical, parlor game-type activity on the Internet (our electronic parlor), and parsing such lists is often a fun way to kill some time (and/or provide easy blog fodder).

In the process of reading/thinking about/parsing the A.V. Club list, graphic novels I’d like to see get made into movies that will likely never actually get made into movies kept occurring to me. So I made a list of ‘em. Which I will now share with you.  At great length. After the jump.

1.) Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo: Kung Fu Panda-style computer animation, traditional old-school Disney 2D animation, Claymation, stop-motion animation, Julie Taymor Lion King-on-Broadway style ethic art puppets on human actors, Jet Li wearing white face paint, a prosthetic muzzle and fake ears…I don’t care how, I’d just like to see this happen. Just imagining the pitch meetings for it makes me smile.

Like, I can see a would-be Usagi Yojimbo producer in a meeting explaining to studio executives that the thng about Usagi  Yojimbo is, “You see, he’s a samurai, but he’s also a rabbit!” And then after an uncomfortable twenty minutes or so, executives asking questions like, “Shouldn’t the rhinoceros be much larger in relation to the rabbit?” and “What are all these little things that look like tiny brontosauruses in the backgrounds?”

2.) Sandman Mystery Theatre: The 70-issue Vertigo crime series featuring a realistic version of the Golden Age mystery man who fought crime with a gas gun already reads like a well-done period crime drama, and seems like one of those readymades that filmmakers don’t have to do much reimagining to in order to get adapt them to the screen. Bonus: No spandex, sculpted plastic muscles or special effects needed.

3.) Enemy Ace: What would be cooler than a movie about The Red Baron? Nothing. Except maybe a movie about a guy just like the Red Baron, only more bad-ass. And with a scarier sobriquet (“The Hammer of Hell”). And whose only friend is a huge wolf.

4.) Congorilla: I spent some time last week re-watching the various version of King Kong and Mighty Joe Young, and this week I’ve been working my way through the early Johnny Weissmuller/Maureen O’Sullivan Tarzan movies, which is why this one occurred to me. Congo Bill is basically like one of those white safari guys who inevitably cause Tarzan some trouble, and, after he gets his magic ring, he can switch minds with a Joe Young-sized gorilla.

The 1930s jungle adventure genre is one you don’t see Hollywood attempt much anymore (Peter Jackson’s King Kong aside), and is overdue for a comeback. Plus, if there was a Congorilla movie in the works, maybe that would encourage DC to cough up some Congo Bill/Congorilla collections.

5.) Judge Dredd: The Cursed Earth: I hear they’re working on a new Judge Dredd movie, which is welcome news, since it’s hard to imagine a new Dredd movie somehow being worse than the last one. I’m sure it will be set in Mega-City One, but I’d love to see a film version of the original Cursed Earth storyline. Maybe for a sequel…?

6.) Batgirl: Year One: People sure like movies about Bat-people these days, right? Strike while the iron is hot, Warner Brothers! Make another, side-continuity Batman movie while Christopher Nolan’s thinking about the next one. The 2003 Scott Beatty, Chuck Dixon, Marcos Martin  miniseries about who Batgirl is and how she came to be would be a perfect doesn’t-have-anything-to-do-with-Nolan’s-Batman movie. Plus, wouldn’t it be kinda nice to see a superheroine movie? One that’s of a bit higher quality than, say, Barb Wire, Elektra or Catwoman?

7.) Batman: The Long Halloween: And speaking of Batman movies…

I think this particular storyline would be perfect simply because it crams in so many villains in a more or less logical fashion. The Joker, Two-Face, Scarecrow, The Mad Hatter, Solomon Grundy, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Calendar Man, The Riddler and others appear, but in such capacities that you don’t need to know their origin stories and they need not fight each other or the hero for screen time.

8.) The Dark Knight Returns: Okay, last Batman one, I swear. This one’s pretty self-explanatory, isn’t it? Based on Sin City, 300 and The Spirit, I’m confident in saying that Frank Miller dialogue sounds hilarious spoken out loud, and this would be chockfull of funny lines.

9.) Kyle Baker’s King David: As long as it’s animated. Baker’s 2002 original graphic novel for Vertigo was drawn and colored to resemble a lush animated feature film anyway.

10.) The Justice Society of America: Okay, a JSA film would probably be a difficult to make and as likely to be awful as a JLA film, if not more so. But I wouldn’t want to see just any old JSA film—I’d want to see a Guy Maddin JSA film. No, it wouldn’t make any money and no, no one other than maybe 100 film critics would even want to see it. But it would be awesome.

11.) The Punisher: Welcome Back, Frank: Don’t rewrite it, edit it, take inspiration from it, try to make it more serious or more realistic or otherwise try to “improve” upon it Hollywood. Just film the damn thing.

12.) Adventures of The Rifle Brigade: Garth Ennis’ bibliography is rife for plunder by Hollywood actually. His two miniseries with Carlos Ezquerra are dumb comedy ready (albeit smart dumb comedy), and they cover one aspect of World War II that has yet to be featured in a film, despite the millions of WWII films made each year: The occult powers of Hitler’s testicle.

13.) Groo: The Wanderer: I can hear the trailer voiceover now: Will Ferrel is…Groo: The Wanderer. Might want to wait until after the next Conan movie comes out though.

14.) The War That Time Forgot: Okay, seriously now Hollywood, what’s the hold up here? Army guys vs. dinosaurs. Saving Private Ryan meets Jurassic Park. You don’t see how this might make for a good summer blockbuster? You don’t see the merchandising potential in this?

If you’ve read the recent Showcase Presents volume, you know that there’s not a whole hell of a lot to the WTTF stories. Some cardboard army guys on a mission accidentally end up on an island full of dinosaurs and other fantastic giant creatures, they fight their way out, and it starts all over again with different army guys and different dinosaurs.

The series of short stories is nothing more than a premise, and its one that could be extended indefinitely, until sequels stopped making any money.

15.) All-Star Superman: They’ll wanna change the name, of course, maybe to something like Superman: This One Won’t Be So Bad, We Swear. Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s 12-issue story arc functioned as an ideal superhero movie would—taking the best bits of all the various pre-existent versions of the character and his stories from all of his various media adaptations and sythesized them into a super-Superman story that hit on the essence of the character in an accessible way that balances character melodrama and spectacle perfectly. I think both Jimmy Olsen and Zibarro, the bizarro Bizarro both have great spin-off potential.

16.) The Superman Stories: Like Guy Maddin’s Justice Society, this might be something with, uh, rather limited appeal, but I think a black and white, indie comedy aimed at art-house distribution based on writer Mark Russell’s weird self-published prose stories of a Superman who suffers from stressed cop syndrome would work quite well.

17.) The Mourning Star: Kazimir Strzepek’s sprawling adventure story about various animal-headed, Nosfearatu-looking, goblin-y guys on various intersecting quests in a post-apocalyptic, ready-for-a-Role-Playing-Game world looks like a transition to film would result in something like The Lord of The Rings meets The Dark Crystal. I wouldn’t mind seeing a meeting like that.

18.) Doctor Strange: The Oath: Another don’t mess with it, just film it offering, this one being Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin 2006 miniseries about Dr. Strange, Wong and Night Nurse working a particular supernatural case in New York City. It struck me as a particularly manageably scaled, character focused Strange story.

19.) Roswell, Texas: L. Neil Smith, Rex F. May, Scott Bieser 2008 alternate history graphic novel about the flying saucer that crashed in a Roswell that was part of the soverign nation of Texas rather than U.S.’ state of New Mexico has some gun fights, air battles and one crazy-looking alien in it, but I would mainly like to see it made into a film simply because it’s a casting director’s dream. Prominent roles are given to John Wayne, Frank Sinatra, Gene Roddenberry, Walt Disney, Malcolm X, Marie Curie and plenty of others, all playing very different roles in this very different world.

20.) Doc Frankenstein

21.) Shaolin Cowboy

Both of these Burlyman Entertainment books seem to have disappeared completely, but I really loved both of them. The immortal Frankenstein fighting as the Jesus of Science versus an evil, militarized Catholic Church, with flashbacks to his days as a gunslinger in the Old West, seems to have the makings of a good movie. The same goes for a bald, chubby kung fu expert cowboy sword-fighting his way through demons and the shark-infested belly of a giant walking city monster thing.

22.) Blue Monday: Chynna Clugston’s miniseries for Oni Press read like John Hughes movies, if John Hughes movies were much, much cooler that they were (And, admittedly, they were pretty cool to start with). Like the in-the-works Scott Pilgrim movie, the prospect of a Blue Monday flick would both excite and terrify me, but I’d really look forward to seeing the results. Additionally, the soundtrack would be guaranteed great.

23.) Angry Youth Comix: The Movie: Johnny Ryan’s horribly wrong comics, animated, for about 90 minutes. I would predict a record number of walk-outs.

24.) Street Angel: Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca’s (too) short-lived series about a homeless teenage skateboarder defending her city from ninjas and fighting her way through a variety of genre set-ups with her colorful allies and more colorful villains would be…what’s that? Oh, someone’s already working on this? Fantastic. Carry on then. Maybe Hollywood could just give those folks lots and lots of money to make a feature film out of it.

Well, that’s what I’ve got. How about you guys?

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 at 4:36 pm and is filed under News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.