EPISODE 384: NON-SUPERHERO COMIC BOOK MOVIES
In this episode, Tyler and David discuss non-superhero comic book movies.
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In this episode, Tyler and David discuss non-superhero comic book movies.
Tags: a history of violencebattleship pretensioncomic booksdavid baxgraphic novelroad to perditiontyler smith
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All the sapphic intimacy in Blue is the Warmest Color is just a ploy to distract the masses from the fact that it’s bought and paid for by the Big Spaghetti. They get you to sit in one place long enough to be hungry and then BAM hit you over nad over again! Open your eyes sheeple.
David’s ringtone was N.I.B by Black Sabbath. What do I win!?
Full Disclosure: I just re-watched Hangover 3 last night and probably would not have recognized the song had I not.
You guessed correctly! You win nothing!
– David
haha Dammit!
Anyways, great show as always! Another comic adaptation I will throw out there is Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin. While it’s still an action movie and is motion capture, I think its a good example of an film that adapts its source material in a uniquely filmic way. I can’t imagine the chase scene in Bagghar being done as well in any other medium.
What football podcasts do you listen to?
I like football and I like podcasts, but to this point, the two have never met (aside from one blog’s podcast, which I find is basically the same info I get from reading the site).
I don’t go too deep on sports other than hockey. Mostly, I just listen to the ESPN stuff.
– David
Ah, nuts. Thought I’d finally find a good one.
I used to listen to Slate’s Hang Up and Listen podcast, which tends to talk about sports from a more socio-cultural point of view. That one was pretty good, but I just found that my interest in sports was too restricted to football for me to really be interested in their stories, week-in and week-out.
Top 10 Weird Al songs, maybe (mostly from the past 20 years, as I am not so well-acquainted with his first decade):
The Night Santa Went Crazy
Jurassic Park
Trapped in the Drive-Thru
Yoda
Craigslist
Everything You Know Is Wrong
Amish Paradise
Hardware Store
A Complicated Song
Albuquerque
Another vote from me for Weird Al’s “style parodies,” my favorite of which is “Bob,” a Dylan-style song written entirely in palindrome lines that somehow rhyme and maintain the established meter. It’s astounding.
“Bob” nearly made the list, but it’s more impressive than funny, and I decided to go with funny.
At first, I thought you were talking about non-comic book superhero movies. So, I spent the first 30 minutes waiting for Tyler to mention Super.
One of the best Non-Superhero graphic novels I’ve read in the past few years is Daytripper by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá. It is ten issues long, and tells a story that is so completely unique to its medium that I cannot think of how you could adapt it to film. Every issue focuses on one day in the life of an obituary writer in São Paulo, Brazil. And at the end of every issue he dies, and his life up until that point is summarized by a short obituary. Every issue is self contained and yet each issue contributes to a greater story, communicating the precariousness and transience of life.
I also have thoughts on the film adaptations of Alan Moore’s work but I suppose my essay long comments might be becoming a little overbearing. It’s just the way I write. If most people think in sentences and I think in paragraphs.
Hey guys, during this episode I started thinking about films that would be interesting to see in graphic novel/comic book form. The one film I kept thinking of was 8 1/2. The intense black and white cinematography, the onomatopoeia-like words Fellini throws in (like sgulp and snaporazi), and the way it easily drifts between reality and fantasy give it that stretched reality feeling you guys were talking about with films like Ghost World.
I second the Daytripper recommendation! I also highly recommend the two ongoing Brian K. Vaghn series Private Eye and Saga if you like sci-fi, and Garth Ennis’s Fury Max: My War Gone, which, although technically set in the Marvel universe, has no superheroics and is just an excuse to write a Cold War story.
I think why it’s hard to translate some of the comics you’re talking about is that a lot of comics that are thought of as great are impressive because of what they do with the form. You mention Lone Wolf and Cub briefly, which isn’t particularly meaty writing, but a tour de force of drawing and pacing. A director would have to tear apart Lone Wolf and Cub, and then put in back together, to make a really good movie out of it.
Frank Miller is both someone I don’t like as a writer (his work tends to slide into some psuedo-fascist themes), and someone who I think is a brilliant writer because he so dominates the art-form. This probably reflects why his adaptations are so hit and miss for me. When they’re skillfully executed, it’s great, when their not it reminds me of all the dumb stuff I don’t like about Miller.