The Screengrab

The comics racket is a tough one -- or, as Variety puts it in a bizarre moment of Coen-channeling when discussing Virgin's entry into the field a few years back, it is "a rocky place where their seeds could find no purchase".  (Comics2Film adds the unwelcome phrasing that the company was "inseminated with funds from Richard Branson's media empire".  Those guys really need to get out more.)  After several largely fruitless years of attempting to steal market share away from the bigwigs at Marvel and DC -- and signing a deal with ex-Marvel boss Stan Lee to develop a line of properties for them that went nowhere -- Virgin Comics has finally realized what everyone else in the business already knows:  that the real money in comics doesn't come from the books themselves, but from farming out their characters as properties to be used in Hollywood blockbusters.  In aid of this, they're shuttering their New York office and moving the whole operation to L.A.

Branson insists that the comics wing isn't shutting down, it's simply reorganizing as a development company; but that's just typical business boilderplate.  What should truly concern us here are the various bits of trivia concealed deep within the article, where the author clearly hoped we would not notice them:  the fact that Virgin's "Hollywood development deals" for their characters are almost all slotted for release on the Sci-Fi Channel as opposed to an actual movie theatre, and feature such blockbuster properties as "Guy Ritchie's The Gamekeeper" and "Ed Burns' Dock Walloper"; the fact that, despite deals being inked all over town, not a single Virgin Comics film or TV production has actually been made; and the boffo news that Branson's partner in the venture is Deepak Chopra's son Gotham -- as in Gotham City, home of the Batman -- which likely explains the commonly cited reason for the comics line's failure, that it focuses on stories involving relatively obscure Indian mythology. 

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As more and more movies are made from comic books, the issues of creator's rights will increasingly pick at the film industry.  With Marvel and DC products, it's generally not an issue -- not only are most of the creators long dead, but the characters themselves are corporate properties, held by two huge companies and not beholden to any single artist or writer.  With independent comics, however, the issue grows much more complex.  Some creators will be happy simply to sell the rights to their characters and stories for the kind of huge paycheck that only Hollywood can write; others will insist on being involved, to one degree or another, in the production of any film based on the characters they created.  Frank Miller represents one extreme; displeased at the prospect of what liberties the movies would take with his characters, he decided to learn the film business himself so as to be able to exert maximum control over his properties in 300  and Sin City.  (Although he didn't create the Spirit, he's taking a similarly proprietary approach in the creation of that movie.)  Mike Mignola represents perhaps the oppisite end of the spectrum:  always fiercely protective of the Hellboy character from the time it first appeared in Dark Horse Comics, he has learned when it's proper to let go of his creation in order to see it succeed on the big screen.

In an interview with Comics2Film regarding the new Hellboy 2:  The Golden Army movie, which opens in wide release this weekend, Mignola discusses the differences between the comics and the film, the trust he came to develop with director Guillermo Del Toro when it came to creating the look of the movie, and how he had to learn when to let go of his own beliefs about what the movie should be and how it shouldn't be necessary for there to be major divergence between the two.  "The first film was a loose adaptation, but it was coming off my work, and it was basically taking the Hellboy universe that I had created and translating it into del Toro's world.  The second film, we chucked that idea after about eight hours because even in the first film, that character is already veering away from the world I created in the comic," says Mignola.  "I know in the first film, he was making conscious decisions to try to suggest certain things that I do in the artwork...I'd love to think that he got some of that from studying my comic, but I think he's just a very careful craftsman."

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With Iron Man looking to be a runaway success, Marvel Comics' film production arm is naturally looking to capitalize on the box office take to move ahead with production on future superhero franchises.  So what comic book superhero is next for the House of Ideas?  How about...all of them?

In its quarterly earnings report, Marvel discloses (among other things, including that it made enough money this year to buy Stan Lee a Silver Surfer-themed iron lung) that it's in the process of developing a boatload of new multimedia projects for release in the next four years.  In addition to a plethora of video games, TV shows, animated series and direct-to-DVD animated features, Marvel Film -- the company's in-house production unit -- has scheduled for release The Incredible Hulk, an Iron Man sequel, a Thor movie, a Captain America solo adventure, an Avengers team picture, and, of all things, a feature film starring perennial sad-sack second-stringer Ant-Man.  (We're hoping that this one sticks to the current comics approach to the character and plays as straight-up satire.)  In addition to all of that, Marvel has two licensed properties set to release in the next year:  a Punisher sequel, entitled War Zone, is releasing through Lionsgate this Christmas, and an X-Men prequel, entitled Wolverine, drops a year from now through Fox.  All that, and no Dr. Strange?  I guess no one wants to take on the supreme challenge of out-acting Peter Hooten.

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A little break from bringing you news about the latest Marvel/DC adaptations or Watchmen set reports on the comics front today, Screengrabbers. Variety brings word that Columbia pictures has picked up the rights to Garth Ennis and Derrick Robertson’s The Boys.

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One of our favorite features over at Comics2Film, aside from their constant Watchmen movie updates that we plunder on a weekly basis to feed our sick obsession with the doomed Zack Snyder adaptation, is "The Elevator." Essentially, it's the online version of a pitch meeting: they invite small-press comics creators onto the site to explain why their particular property is worthy of being greenlit for a big-screen adaptation. Of course, since Comics2Film is just a glorified fansite and not an actual Hollywood studio, nothing ever comes of the Elevator pitches, but it's a fun little distraction (this week's features. . .

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When you're a comics nerd, it's Christmas every day, and over at Comics2Film -- rapidly becoming the indispensible site for those of us who can't get enough of men in tights on screen, "Strip Club" blogger Supernaut lays out the case that as great a year as it was for movies in general, it was an even better year for comic book, fantasy, and "geekfare" movies in general.  Elsewhere on the site, we're treated to the first stills from The Incredible Hulk, the debut trailer for Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy II:  The Golden Army, and, via Wizard magazine, an interview with Christopher Nolan about The Dark Knight, in which he discusses Heath Ledger's interpretation of the Joker as "the most extreme form of anarchist" and his own plans, or lack thereof, for a third Batman picture:  "Every film I’m working on, to me. is the last film I’m ever going to make."