Which comic book *should* be made into a movie?

[jducoeur]

It was occurring to me this morning, as I reflected on the rash of (mostly surprisingly good) comic-book movies coming out this summer, that there were some I've always wanted to see. And that seems like a good topic for a conversation.

So: what comic book(s) do *you* think would make a good movie? Feel free to assume that it's a competent adaptation, not a hatchet job, but assume that it has to fit into the usual constraints of a movie: about two hours, and has to be able to make enough money to be worth its budget. (If it doesn't require as many special-effects, it doesn't have to make as much money.) Obscure is fine -- some great blockbusters have been made from little-known comics.

I've got a couple of favorites, but I'll provide my own answers in comments, so as not to bias things too much upfront...

Comments

[jducoeur]

The problems were many, however.

Doesn't surprise me. I mean, Sandman was never really *about* the plot. So compressing it down to movie-length and focusing on the plot kind of misses the point -- it's hard to imagine it feeling right.

This touches on one of my major points about good comic-book movies. The ones that work aren't the ones that are slavishly loyal to the plot and story of the original; they're the ones that *get* the original, that grok what it's about on a thematic level. That's what has made most of the recent Marvel movies relatively good, and Hellboy great -- they're kind of right on a story level, but more importantly they understand what makes the character tick.

But Sandman is *about* storytelling. The digressions aren't detours: they're the heart of the story. I mean, which issues do people talk about a decade later? Not, broadly speaking, the plot-focused ones -- rather, it's things like A Dream of 1000 Cats, or Midsummer's.

So I just have to suspect that a Sandman movie would wind up unsatisfying, even if it was totally loyal to the plot...